Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Architect Frank Gehry Dies at 96

Frank Gehry, the pioneering architect whose daring, sculptural designs reshaped the global architectural landscape — including the Guggenheim Museum Abu Dhabi and the iconic Guggenheim Bilbao — has died at the age of 96.

Gehry passed away on Friday at his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, his chief of staff Meaghan Lloyd confirmed in an email to Reuters. “Earlier this morning at his home in Santa Monica,” she wrote.

Renowned for his leaning towers, sweeping sheets of curved metal, and buildings that appeared to defy gravity and convention, Gehry became one of architecture’s most recognisable and polarising figures. His work was celebrated as visionary by admirers and criticised as excessive by detractors, often provoking debate wherever his structures appeared.

Few projects embodied that tension more than the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, completed in 1997. Gehry later admitted uncertainty about the building when he first saw it finished.

“You know, I went there just before the opening and looked at it and said, ‘Oh, my God, what have I done to these people?’” Gehry told Vanity Fair. “It took a couple of years for me to start to like it, actually.”

In 2010, a Vanity Fair panel named the Bilbao museum the most important architectural work since 1980. Architect Philip Johnson famously called it “the greatest building of our time” and described Gehry as “the greatest architect we have,” though Gehry himself resisted the label of “starchitect.”

Global landmarks and cultural icons

Gehry’s influence extended far beyond museums. In 2015, Facebook opened a major expansion of its Menlo Park, California campus designed by Gehry, following instructions to maintain harmony with its surroundings. A year earlier, he unveiled La Fondation Louis Vuitton museum in Paris.

French billionaire Bernard Arnault paid tribute after Gehry’s death, calling him a lasting inspiration.

“Frank Gehry – who possessed an unparalleled gift for shaping forms, pleating glass like canvas, making it dance like a silhouette – will long endure as a living source of inspiration for Louis Vuitton as well as for all the Maisons of the LVMH group,” Arnault said in a statement.

Among Gehry’s other landmark works were Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Dancing House in Prague, Seattle’s Experience Music Project, and New York’s 8 Spruce Street residential tower.

Criticism, defiance, and legacy

Gehry frequently faced criticism for placing form above function. The Disney Concert Hall was derided by critics as “a pile of broken crockery” and “a fortune cookie gone berserk.” Yet Gehry often brushed off such attacks.

“You kind of say, ‘At least they’re looking!’” he told The New Yorker in 2007.

At times, his frustration surfaced more forcefully. Asked in 2014 about claims that his work was overly showy, Gehry responded bluntly:
“In this world we are living in, 98 percent of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit. There's no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else. They are damn buildings and that's it.”

From Toronto to architectural fame

Born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, in Toronto to Polish Jewish parents, Gehry showed creative instincts from an early age, building miniature cities from scraps of wood.

“That’s what I remembered, years later, when I was struggling to find out what I wanted to do in life,” he told The New Yorker in 1977. “It made me think about architecture. It also gave me the idea that an adult could play.”

After graduating from the University of Southern California, Gehry worked at several Los Angeles firms, briefly studied at Harvard, served in the U.S. Army, and spent a year in Paris. He returned to Los Angeles in 1962 and later changed his surname to Gehry, at his wife’s suggestion, to avoid anti-Semitism.

His breakthrough came in 1978 with the radical redesign of his own Santa Monica home, using unconventional materials such as chain-link fencing and corrugated aluminum.

By the mid-1980s, Gehry’s unconventional style had drawn global attention. In 1989, he was awarded the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honour, cementing his place among the profession’s greats.

Beyond buildings, Gehry also designed furniture, jewelry, watches, a vodka bottle, and even a sculptural hat for Lady Gaga.

Married twice, he is survived by four children. His legacy, etched into skylines from Los Angeles to Abu Dhabi, continues to shape how architecture is imagined — and argued over — around the world.