Frank Gehry was known for fantastical architecture

Frank Gehry, whose daring and whimsical creations of leaning towers and sweeping sheets of curved metal such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, made him a superstar in the world of architecture, died on Dec 5.

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He was 96.Ms Meaghan Lloyd, his chief of staff, confirmed his death in an email to Reuters, writing that Gehry died “at his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness”.

Gehry’s most memorable and riotous creations often looked as if they had recently collapsed in an artistic manner or were in the process of doing so. They were lauded as works of genius or reviled as self-indulgent messes.

His works were so fantastical that sometimes even he was not sure what he had wrought, as was the case with the Bilbao museum.

“I went there just before the opening and looked at it and said, ‘Oh my god, what have I done to these people?’” Gehry told Vanity Fair magazine. “It took a couple of years for me to start to like it.”

In 2010, a panel of experts put together by Vanity Fair cited the Bilbao museum as the most important work of architecture since 1980. Eminent American architect Philip Johnson called it “the greatest building of our time” and Gehry “the greatest architect we have”.