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- Author, Sakshi Venkatraman
- Author’s title, BBC News
Frank Gehry, considered one of the most influential architects of the century, died at the age of 96.
Gehry was known for his avant-garde and experimental architectural style. His design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, covered in corrugated titanium, catapulted him to fame in 1997, while putting the Basque city on the international map.
He built his bold reputation years earlier by redesigning his own home in Santa Monica, California, using materials like chain link mesh, plywood, and corrugated steel.
“Gehry is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, Leslie and Brina; his wife, Berta Isabel Aguilera, and his two sons, Alejandro and Samuel,” his chief of staff, Meaghan Lloyd, told the BBC this Friday.
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Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1929, Gehry moved to Los Angeles as a teenager to study architecture at the University of Southern California.
After founding his own studio, he broke with traditional architectural principles of symmetry, using unconventional geometric shapes and unfinished materials in a style now known as deconstructivism.
“I rebelled against everything,” Gehry declared in an interview with The New York Times in 2012.
His work in Bilbao made him a sought-after architect, and he later designed iconic structures in cities around the world: the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, both in the US, the Gehry Tower in Hannover, Germany, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris.
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With a largely unpredictable style, each of his works is unique.
The Dancing House in Prague, completed in 1996, looks like a glass building that folds in on itself; his hotel for Bodegas Marqués de Riscal in Spain, built in 2006, features thin sheets of corrugated metal and a gradient in the different tones of the wine.
Meanwhile, his design for a business school in Sydney looks like a brown paper bag.
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Conceived in 1994, the Panama Biomuseum, its first and only foray into Latin America, opened its doors in 2016.
Gehry won the coveted Pritzker Architecture Prize for lifetime achievement in 1989, when he was 60 years old.
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