Tributes paid to Frank Gehry, designer of Guggenheim museums in Bilbao and Abu Dhabi

Renowned architect who has died at the age of 96 was highly influential globally and leaves a lasting legacy in the UAE

Frank Gehry, the legendary architect who has died aged 96, during a visit to the site of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, in 2009. Galen Clarke / The National

The Canadian-born architect was known for his experimental and unconventional designs. Galen Clarke/ The National

Gehry shows his furniture designs made from corrugated paperboard, in March 1972. Getty Images

His most notable works include the highly anticipated Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. Photo: Gehry Partners

Gehry designed The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. EPA

Gehry with his wife Berta at the launch of his eponymous collection with Tiffany & Co in Beverly Hills, 2006. Reuters

Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, in conversation with Frank Gehry. Victor Besa / The National

The Gehry-designed Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany. Grischa / Unsplash

Frank Gehry with his sons Alejandro and Samuel. Getty Images

Gehry and Los Angeles developer Rob Maguire stand behind a model of the campus at the giant Playa Vista project in LA. Getty Images

Gehry's Binoculars Building in Venice, Los Angeles is home to Google. Reuters

Gehry is knighted with the French Legion of Honor by Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, culture minister at the time, in Paris, 2006. Reuters

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain was also designed by Frank Gehry. Unsplash

The Dancing House in Prague is a famous Gehry project. Te Lun Ou Yang / Unsplash

The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is scheduled for completion this year. Gehry Partners, LLP

Gehry's Santa Monica house showcases some of his favourite materials. Getty Images

Gehry in Abu Dhabi in 2021, meeting Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, at the time Member of Abu Dhabi Executive Council and Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Office. Wam

The architect designed the bronze Olympic Fish at the Olympic Park in Barcelona, Spain. Getty Images

New York by Gehry, the architect's 76-storey, luxury residential tower in New York's Lower Manhattan. Reuters

Gehry's Barclays Centre in Brooklyn, New York - home to the NBA's Brooklyn Nets - opened on September 21, 2012. Reuters

The Fondation Louis Vuitton art museum in Bois de Boulogne, Paris, was designed by Gehry. Reuters.

Gehry attends the groundbreaking ceremony of his project, The Grand, a mixed-use development in downtown Los Angeles, in 2019. Reuters

Tributes have been paid to visionary architect Frank Gehry, designer of some of the world’s most distinctive buildings, who died on Friday aged 96.

His most notable works include the highly anticipated Guggenheim Abu Dhabi museum, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and Paris's La Fondation Louis Vuitton museum.

The Canadian-born architect was known for his experimental and unconventional designs. And this is hugely evident in the design for the Abu Dhabi museum, with its series of striking cones.

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Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, with architect Frank Gehry, second right, at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi museum site on Saadiyat Island, in 2021. Photo: Abu Dhabi Media Office

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney extended his “deepest condolences” to Mr Gehry's family and the “many admirers of his work”.

“His unmistakable vision lives on in iconic buildings around the world,” he said.

Dr Mariet Westermann, director and chief executive of the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, paid tribute.

“The Guggenheim community mourns the loss of Frank Gehry, whose visionary architecture reshaped our institution and changed cities around the world,” she wrote on Instagram.

“From Bilbao to Abu Dhabi, Frank's genius magnified the Guggenheim's mission and showed why museum architecture matters. His buildings paid profound homage to Frank Lloyd Wright's foundational vision for the Guggenheim-architectural distinction in service of, art, artists and visitors of all stripes,” she said.

“Our decades-long collaboration with Frank and Gehry Partners was built on friendship, shared values and an unwavering belief in art's power to transform lives. Frank's legacy will inspire generations to come. We are so grateful.”

Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum said it would “be forever grateful” and “his spirit and legacy will always remain connected to Bilbao”.

Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, first announced in 2006, is nearing completion on Saadiyat Island. It is surrounded by other landmark institutions in the Saadiyat Cultural District, such as Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Natural History Museum and Zayed National Museum.

During the 2022 Culture Summit Abu Dhabi, Mr Gehry spoke about the design, with The National reporting at the time on how it was the structures of minarets and domes that captivated him the most.

“I understood that the same form multiplied was something that was part of the language of the architecture of the region,” he said.

The Abu Dhabi museum will feature nine cone-shaped structures, which aim to be spaces for commissions and acquisitions.

“The cones will have amazing commissions,” Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of Abu Dhabi's Department of Culture and Tourism, previously said.

“You will have galleries that will continuously have rotating artists. You will have spaces where we marry live performances with art.

“Frank Gehry has worked with us in creating a beautiful architectural feat.”

Mr Gehry, born in Toronto in 1929 and who then moved to America in his teens, enjoyed one of his first successes by rebuilding his own Santa Monica – a pink traditional Dutch colonial house – with chain-link fencing and corrugated aluminium.

He won the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1989 and was an early and avid user of computer software that allowed him to stretch the boundaries of architecture.

But it was the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, completed in 1997, that propelled him to stardom.

Not only did the design make Mr Gehry famous, it also played a role in rejuvenating the city.

And it led other cities to try to replicate its success, in what has become known as the “Bilbao effect”.

Aside from buildings, he also dabbled in furniture, watch and jewellery design and even a hat for singer Lady Gaga.