5. Dezember 2025
ZUM TOD DES NORDAMERIKANISCHEN ARCHITEKTEN UND DESIGNERS FRANK O. GEHRY
Der am 28. Februar 1929 in Toronto als Frank Owen Goldberg geborene kanadisch-US-amerikanische Architekt und Designer Frank O. Gehry (Bild), der ab 1947 in Kalifornien lebte, ist am 5. Dezember 2025 in Santa Monica gestorben. Für seine dekonstruktivistische Architektur wurde ihm 1989 der Pritzker-Preis verliehen. Die «New York Times» bezeichnete ihn als den «höchstgepriesenen amerikanischen Architekten seit Frank Lloyd Wright». Sein 1997 fertiggestelltes und ausserordentlich expressiv gestaltetes Guggenheim-Museum im spanischen Bilbao hatte und hat eine derart grosse Ausstrahlung auf die Stadt und darüber hinaus, dass sich Bilbao von einer alten Industrie- hin zu einer modernen «Kulturstadt» entwickeln konnte. Diese Wandlung war so exemplarisch, dass es dafür inzwischen einen eigenen Fachbegriff gibt: den Bilbao-Effekt. Im Dreiländereck hatte Gehry 1994 das Vitra-Center in Birsfelden bei Basel geschaffen sowie 1989 in Weil am Rhein (D) das Vitra Design Museum und die Fabrikationshalle, Gehrys erste Gebäude in Europa.
Bild: Frank O. Gehry, 2007 – Foto: National Building Museum, photo by Paul Morigi, https://www.flickr.com/photos/nationalbuildingmuseum/5489221895/?edited=1 – Lizenz: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en – Datei: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Turner_07_FGLecture.JPG
Bild: Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2000 – Foto: User:MykReeve, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MykReeve – Lizenz: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en – Datei: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Guggenheim-bilbao-jan05.jpg
Frank Gehry, masterful architect who transformed L.A.’s urban landscape, dies at 96
Architect Frank O. Gehry, who brought an alluringly new kind of shape-making to his profession even as he fundamentally changed the reputation and civic landscape of his adopted hometown of Los Angeles in such projects as the shimmering Walt Disney Concert Hall on Grand Avenue, has died. He was 96.
Gehry, who arrived in L.A. as an aimless teenager just after World War II and went on to become the most famous and one of the most influential architects in the world over a prolific six-decade career, died Friday at his home in Santa Monica following a brief respiratory illness, Gehry Partners chief of staff Meaghan Lloyd confirmed to The Times.
Christopher Hawthorne
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2025-12-05/frank-gehry-architect-dead-disney-hall
Frank Gehry, who stretched architecture’s boundaries, dies at 96
His unearthly but brilliant designs, from Los Angeles to Bilbao, became global landmarks.
Frank Gehry, whose provocatively adventurous buildings — among them the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles — liberated modernist architecture from its conventions and brought him the admiration of critics, peers and a broad, fascinated public, died Dec. 5 at his home in Santa Monica.
Elaine Woo
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/12/05/frank-gehry-dead/
Frank O. Gehry, Titan of Architecture, Is Dead at 96
Mr. Gehry’s greatest popular success, and the building he will be most remembered for, is the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Set in what had been a dying industrial city on the northern coast of Spain, this wildly exuberant, titanium-clad museum was an international sensation when it opened in 1997, helping to revivify the city and making Mr. Gehry the most recognizable American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright. Its joyful appearance — a composition of glittering, silvery forms that looked as if they had burst out of the ground — seemed to signal the arrival of a new, emotionally charged architecture.
Nicolai Ouroussoff
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/arts/design/frank-gehry-dead.html
Bild: w:Lou Ruvo, Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas, Nevada/USA, 2014 – Foto: Monster4711, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Monster4711 – Lizenz: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en – Datei: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gehry_Las_Vegas.jpg
An homage to architecture’s great liberator and master of the curve, who borrowed from artists and aerospace to “orchestrate agita.”
Frank Gehry, the Los Angeles architect who took inspiration from the work of artists more than from architecture history, and who used aerospace software to help liberate architecture from the right angle and the box, died on December 5, at age 96, following a brief respiratory illness.
An iconoclast who built icons, Gehry produced flamboyant spectacles of extreme complexity that flirted with chaos. He created the most exuberant structures of his time – devilishly difficult-to-build designs that made motorists brake on the street, as though architecture’s function was to surprise and fascinate. But for all these apparent freedoms, Gehry was practical, delivering buildings on budget and on time; he paid great attention, for instance, to waterproofing.
Joseph Giovannini
https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/story/frank-gehry-dead-at-96?
Remembering Frank Gehry, a titan of architecture and a brilliant human being
Frank Gehry was the greatest architect of the past 50 years and a lovable — if sometimes cranky — human being whose passing today at the age of 96 will leave a gap in the lives of his many friends.
We were never close but I consider myself blessed to have explored and written about so many of his buildings, and by his willingness to talk candidly about himself and his work. His range was extraordinary, designing an unrealized Xanadu for insurance mogul Peter Lewis and a vast Guggenheim satellite in Abu Dhabi while taking on humble tasks pro bono. Classical music was a passion and he created a dozen innovative venues, like the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin and the hall for the Coburn School of Music in downtown LA.
Michael Webb
https://www.wallpaper.com/architecture/frank-gehry-obituary
From Bilbao to Las Vegas: Frank Gehry’s incredible architecture – in pictures
The award-winning designer and architect leaves behind unique buildings all across the world from Dundee to Düsseldorf.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2025/dec/05/frank-gehry-architecture-in-pictures
Gehry, the most recognizable American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright, was one of the first to embrace the potential of computer design, and pioneered a distinctively exuberant style of bravura power, whimsical and arresting collisions of form. His most famous work remains the Guggenheim Museumin Bilbao, a fantastical, titanium-clad composition on the Nervión River which received international acclaim upon its opening in 1997, heralding a new era of emotive architecture.
Adrian Horton
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/dec/05/frank-gehry-dead
Visionary Architect
Frank Gehry, one of the most influential and widely recognized architects of the past six decades, has died at his home in Santa Monica at the age of 96. His chief of staff, Meaghan Lloyd, confirmed that the cause was a brief respiratory illness. Gehry’s death marks the passing of a designer whose work transformed not only architectural culture but the global imagination of what a building could be.
Romullo Baratto
Bild: Frank Gehry’s house in a posh area in Santa Monica. It is built upon an old house, with new elements added into the frame – Foto: IK’s World Trip, https://www.flickr.com/photos/ikkoskinen/350055881/sizes/o/in/set-72157594441486676/ – Lizenz: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en – Datei: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gehry_House_-_Image01.jpg
Muere a los 96 años Frank Gehry, un gigante de la arquitectura y el metal
El Museo Guggenheim Bilbao es una de sus obras más celebradas, pero también dejó una fuerte impronta en Los Ángeles, su ciudad de adopción
Frank Gehry, el arquitecto que convirtió el metal en olas, uno de los más populares del mundo, ha muerto este viernes en su casa de Santa Mónica, en la costa de Los Ángeles, en California. La noticia de la muerte del creador del museo Guggenheim Bilbao la ha confirmado la jefa de personal de su estudio, Gehry Partners, a medios como Los Angeles Times o The New York Times.
María Porcel
È morto Frank Gehry, l’architetto del museo Guggenheim di Bilbao
Sarà ricordato da tutti, anche dai non addetti ai lavori, perché nel panorama roboante dell’architettura del Novecento è stato l’artefice di un’opera che ha finito per cambiare il volto e il destino di una città, il Guggenheim Museum di Bilbao. Un edificio così spettacolare che oggi la città basca è identificata totalmente con il suo museo, completato da Frank O. Gehry, gigante dell’architettura scomparso a 96 anni, nel 1997.
Lara Crinò
Frank Gehry, l’un des plus célèbres architectes du monde contemporain, est mort
Premier d’une génération de bâtisseurs-stars, il a su libérer l’architecture de contingences jugées immuables, apportant un vent nouveau dans ses bâtiments, tout en courbes et ondulations comme le Musée Guggenheim à Bilbao ou la Fondation Louis-Vuitton à Paris. L’Américano-Canadien est décédé le 5 décembre, à l’âge de 96 ans.
Frédéric Edelmann
Stararchitekt Frank Gehry ist tot
Neben dem Guggenheim-Museum in Bilbao gehören die Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles und das DZ Bank-Gebäude in Berlin zu seinen größten Meisterwerken. Auch das Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, die Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, die Stiftung Louis Vuitton in Paris sowie die Dwight-D.-Eisenhower-Gedenkstätte in Washington, D.C. entwarf er.
Für seine Architektur erhielt Gehry zahlreiche bedeutende Auszeichnungen. Er gewann alle großen Preise seines Fachs, darunter den renommierten Pritzker-Preis, die Goldmedaille des Royal Institute of British Architects sowie den Lifetime Achievement Award der Americans for the Arts.
lkö/AP/dpa
Gebäude wie Jazzmusik
Hätte Frank Gehry sein Leben nicht der Architektur gewidmet, wäre aus ihm vielleicht ein erstklassiger Jazzmusiker geworden. Wie im Jazz leben Gehrys Bauten von oft wilden und schiefen Formen, von spontaner Eingebung und der Kunst der Improvisation. Weltweit hinterließ Gehry seine unverkennbare Handschrift und setzte den allzu harmonischen, kantigen und klaren Bauten der Moderne seine Skulpturen in Form fantastisch geformter Häuser entgegen.
dpa
Videos:
The playful architecture of Frank Gehry, 2022
Frank Gehry, Jump Into the Unknown
https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/frank-gehry-jump-into-the-unknown
Architecture Biennale – Frank Gehry (NOW Interviews), Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2010
Artist in Conversation: Frank Gehry, 2016
Creating Feeling with Frank Gehry, 2018
Mehr:
https://www.pritzkerprize.com/laureates/1989/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/topic/person/frank-gehry
https://www.ted.com/speakers/frank_gehry
https://www.thomasmayerarchive.de/categories.php?cat_id=291&l=deutsch
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frank-Gehry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gehry
(*) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gehry
Bild: Frank Gehry per Alessi spa., bollitore pito, 1988 – Kettle, Metalware in the Indianapolis Museum of Art – Foto: Sailko, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Sailko – Lizenz: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en – Datei: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frank_gehry_per_alessi_spa.,_bollitore_pito,_1988.jpg
#FrankOGehry #CHcultura @CHculturaCH ∆cultura cultura+
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