When the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao opened in 1997, Frank Gehry went from being well-known and respected in architecture to a superstar.
The undulating forms of glass, titanium and limestone were designed to effectively reflect the sun and the nearby Nervión River, and have since been acclaimed, with the building being called one of the most significant architectural works of our time.
The building is Gehry's most famous, but far from the only one for which he has been awarded. The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, and the Fondation Louis Vuitton art museum in Paris have all attracted visitors for their design in a postmodern, so-called deconstructivist, style.
According to AFP, he himself said that he was just a simple house builder, but his work, often in unconventional forms that seemingly lack symmetry, required precision and complicated calculations. He therefore took early help from computers and 3D models - innovations that contributed to both celebrity and, according to the news agency AP, virtually all major architecture awards. And participation as himself in the television series "Simpsons" in 2005.
Gehry, who was born in Toronto in 1929, established himself in California in the 1960s and first became known in the United States in the late 1970s for the house in Santa Monica, California, which he himself lived in for the majority of his remaining life.
He remained active until his death. His later works include the Dwight D Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., which was inaugurated in 2020.
