Visionary architect transformed skylines

He designed ebullient cultural landmarks in L.A. and beyond with late-career revolution

- CHRISTOPHER HAWTHORNE

PERFORMING A 'MIRACLE' IN SPAIN

Gehry's work on the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, was a turning point in both his designs and "starchitect" standing.

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.

Gehry had been widely respected among L.A. architects since the 1970s, but his global fame grew from high-level productivity late in his career. This phase, in which his firm, Gehry Partners, pioneered new ways of using technology to help realize geometrically complex buildings, began with the completion of an ambitious satellite branch of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. It opened to the public in 1997, the year Gehry turned 68.

The museum was widely praised for its breathtaking and sinuous profile and dramatic relationship to the Nervión River at its feet. Just as important, it helped reenergize and bring new media attention to architecture. Still looking for direction after the breakdown of the Modern movement and the repeated false starts of a historically minded Postmodernism, the profession badly needed a boost.