Frank Gehry, Architect of the Bilbao Guggenheim and Fondation Louis Vuitton, dies at 96

Gehry was born in Toronto, Canada. After studying architecture at the University of Southern California and urban planning at Harvard, he set up his practice in Los Angeles in 1962.

Frank Gehry is considered one of the most relevant and influential architects in the world. He is internationally renowned for his unique designs that incorporate new shapes and materials, and is especially sensitive towards his buildings’ surroundings. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Fondation Louis Vuitton are amongst Frank Gehry’s most celebrated works.

Gehry has received the most prestigious architecture prizes, such as the Pritzker, which he was awarded in 1989 or the Praemium Imperiale Award in 1992.

Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH, who worked with Gehry across multiple projects including the Louis Vuitton Foundation, called the architect “a dear friend” in a statement posted to X. "I am profoundly saddened by the passing of Frank Gehry, in whom I lose a very dear friend and for whom I shall forever retain boundless admiration. I owe to him one of the longest, most intense, and most ambitious creative partnerships I have ever had the privilege to experience. His oeuvre, crowned by the Pritzker Prize, is immense. He will remain a genius of lightness, transparency, and grace. 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. With the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création, he bestowed upon Paris and upon France his greatest masterpiece, the highest expression of his creative power, commensurate with the friendship he bore our city and the affection he showed for our culture. My wife, my children, and I express our deepest condolences to his wife, Berta, and to his children."

Main Image: Guggenheim Bilbao