Frank Gehry served as a board member at the USC School of Architecture, and joined the faculty in 2011. (Photo/Lionel Bonaventure, AFP via Getty Images)
University
In memoriam: Frank Gehry, 96, famed architect and USC alumnus
Gehry designed distinctive public and private buildings including the landmark Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles.
USC alumnus Frank Gehry, a renowned architect known for innovative design and the university’s Judge Widney Professor of Architecture, died Friday at his home in Santa Monica. He was 96. His chief of staff said Gehry died after a brief respiratory illness.
Gehry designed distinctive museums, concert halls, offices, homes and other public and private buildings throughout California and across the globe. He was known for his use of bold, postmodern shapes and unconventional building materials. Among his many honors is architecture’s top award honoring a living architect, the Pritzker Architecture Prize, which he received in 1989, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented in 2016. Gehry served as a board member at the USC School of Architecture, and joined the faculty in 2011.
“Frank Gehry transformed the field of architecture and captured the public imagination with his breathtaking buildings in Los Angeles and across the world,” USC Interim President Beong-Soo Kim said. “We are exceedingly proud to count him as one of our most distinguished alumni, and grateful for the spirit of innovation and excellence that he passed on to our students as the Judge Widney Professor of Architecture.”
“Frank’s passing is an immense loss — not just to architecture, but to the world,” said Brett Steele, dean of the USC School of Architecture. “He’s a truly global architect whose originality and vision could have only emerged in a global city like Los Angeles.
“From projects as a student at USC in the 1950s, to his own extraordinary house in Santa Monica in the late ’70s, to the way in which he ushered in architecture’s 21st century with the Walt Disney Concert Hall, his sheer talent, imagination and achievement have no peer.
“Frank often said, ‘Architecture should always speak of its time and place — but yearn for timelessness.’ Through his own hard work and brilliance, he too became that for architecture — utterly timeless,” Steele said.
Frank Gehry’s road to USC and beyond
Born in Toronto, Gehry moved with his parents to Los Angeles in the late 1940s. He earned his degree in architecture at USC in 1954, and served in the U.S. Army. He established his practice in Los Angeles in 1962, and launched two popular lines of corrugated cardboard furniture, Easy Edges and Experimental Edges.
He also designed several Los Angeles-area buildings including the California Aerospace Museum and the Frances Howard Goldwyn Branch Library. During the 1980s, his work attracted international attention when he received the commission to build the Vitra Factory Building in Basel, Switzerland, as well as the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany.
His career soared in the late 1990s, when his work leapt to a grand scale with high-concept buildings including the Guggenheim Museum building in Bilbao, Spain, the Dancing House in Prague and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. He has applied his imaginative design skills to more than buildings. Among his product designs are the Wyborowa Single Estate vodka bottle, the World Cup of Hockey trophy and jewelry for Tiffany & Co.
He is survived by his wife, Berta Aguilera, and three children.
