New York ¨C Frank O. Gehry, one of the most formidable and original talents in the history of American architecture, died Friday at his home in Santa Monica, California. He was 96.
Meaghan Lloyd, his chief of staff, confirmed the death, following a brief respiratory illness.
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 Gehry the most recognizable American architect since Frank Lloyd Wright. Its joyful appearance ¡ª a composition of glittering, silvery forms that looked as if they had burst out of the ground ¡ª seemed to signal the arrival of a new, emotionally charged architecture.
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