Overview
- He died Friday at age 96, closing a career that made him one of the few global superstars of architecture.
- International stature was cemented by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, widely credited with spurring the “Bilbao effect” of culture‑driven urban revival.
- Signature works include Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (2003), 8 Spruce Street in New York (2011), Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2014) and Facebook’s headquarters finished in 2018.
- He received the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989 and became a leading adopter of computer‑aided design to realize complex, curving geometries.
- Born Frank Owen Goldberg in Toronto in 1929, he studied at USC, served in the U.S. Army, pursued planning at Harvard, worked with Victor Gruen and in Paris, and signaled his emerging style with his experimental Santa Monica house.