The great architect Frank Gehry, master of deconstructivism, has died

The man behind iconic buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris, died "this morning at his home in Santa Monica following a short respiratory illness," his team wrote in an email to AFP.

It was there, on the Los Angeles seafront in California, that the young architect built his house in 1978, an envelope around a Dutch bungalow which laid the principles of his architectural style.

Born Frank Owen Goldberg in Canada in 1929 into a Jewish family, he changed his name after his studies in California to protect himself from anti-Semitism.

With the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, conceived between ancient references and ruptures, he created his first large-scale work, and a few years later, in 1989, received the Pritzker Prize, the highest architectural distinction in the world.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney praised his "revolutionary approach" to architecture on Friday evening.

"Bold imagination"

The opening of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in 1989 cemented his international reputation. "We will be eternally grateful to him, and his spirit and legacy will always remain linked to Bilbao," the institution responded on X.

He would later borrow the complex and asymmetrical curves of the Spanish museum to design the vast Walt Disney Concert Hall, at his home in Los Angeles in 2003. The Los Angeles Philharmonic, which uses this building, said on Friday on X that it was "devastated" by the death of an architect with a "bold imagination."

With all these projects, Frank Gehry blurs the line between architecture and art. An innovator, he shakes up the world of contemporary architecture and popularizes the profession.

One of his last major works will be the Louis Vuitton Foundation, a futuristic monument of concrete and glass that adjoins the Jardin d'Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne, in western Paris.

His client, French billionaire and head of the luxury group LVMH, Bernard Arnault, said in a statement that he was "immensely saddened" by the death of Frank Gehry. The architect, he affirmed, "knew incomparablely how to shape forms, to pleat glass like a canvas, to make it dance like a silhouette."

"With the Louis Vuitton Foundation for Creation, he gave Paris, France, its finest masterpiece and the highest expression of his creative power, commensurate with the friendship he felt for our city and the affection he showed for our culture," he added.

He also left his mark in New York by completing, in 2010, 8 Spurce Street, his first skyscraper and one of the tallest residential towers in the world with 76 floors.

Key dates in the life of architect Frank Gehry

Here are the key dates in the life of the American-Canadian architect Frank Gehry, who died Friday at the age of 96.

• February 28, 1929: Frank Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto into a family of Polish Jewish origin.
• 1947: emigrated with his family to Los Angeles.
• 1952: married Anita Snyder with whom he had two children before divorcing in 1966. He remarried in 1975 to Berta Isabel Aguilera, with whom he had two sons.
• 1954: Graduated from the University of Southern California School of Architecture. He changed his name to Gehry to protect himself from anti-Semitism.
• 1962: opens his architecture firm, Frank O. Gehry and Associates, in Los Angeles.
• 1978: built his house in Santa Monica, California, a work that went against the architectural norms of the time, where he lived for four decades.
• 1984: delivers his first large-scale project, the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
• 1989: Winner of the highest architectural distinction, the Pritzker Prize.
• 1997: opening of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, which cemented its international reputation.
• 2003: Inauguration of his monumental Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
• 2010: completed the construction of its first skyscraper, 8 Spurce Street in New York, which is among the tallest residential towers in the world with 76 floors.
• 2014: The Louis Vuitton Foundation for Contemporary Art, designed by Gehry, opens its doors in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.