Bold Shapes and Perspectives: Frank Gehry’s Stunning Architecture in California | Frank Gehry

IIn Frank Gehry’s world, no building was left untouched, exposed, or untouched by unconventional materials. The Canadian-American architect, who has died at his home in Los Angeles aged 96, designed his career around challenging what was expected and pulling out materials that were uncommon and therefore relatively inexpensive.

Gehry collaborated with artists to transform giant telescopes into the entrance to a commercial campus, and paid tribute to the writer’s past as a lifeguard by creating a livable lifeguard tower. While he dreamed this, he transformed American architecture along the way.

Below, take a look at how his work wraps around and shapes California’s neighborhoods and urban centers.

Walt Disney Concert Hall

With its stainless steel waves rolling down the corner of downtown Los Angeles, the Walt Disney Concert Hall has become an integral part of this urban center. Lillian Disney gifted the hall to the city, in honor of her late husband’s commitment to the arts. Jerry built the music hall from the inside out, designing it around how the music would sound within its walls with a team of acousticians.

While the hall’s exterior has free waves and Gehry’s touch of unconventional geometry, the interior is surprisingly symmetrical—an intentional contrast. “The reason I made Disney Hall symmetrical is because I knew I was a very questionable architect for a building like this by the general public,” Gehry told Getty. “Everyone will think I’m going to do something. So I decided to give them a comfort zone.”

Jerry’s house

Gehry trimmed this Dutch Colonial bungalow in Santa Monica down to its original wood bones, and in 1978, built around it intricate layers of glass, exposed plywood, corrugated metal, and a chain-link fence. The house is considered one of his earliest works of Deconstructivist architecture, with large slanted windows that allow the outside world to peer into the house’s seemingly unfinished interior structure. Jerry continued adding to this residence until 1992.

Building binoculars

First created as a commercial office building in Venice for the advertising agency Chiat/Day, this bold design has become one of Gehry’s most recognizable works in Los Angeles, thanks to its soaring entrance that looks exactly like what it is: a massive pair of binoculars. This 44-foot feature was designed and created by his collaborators, artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen. Gehry designed the 79,000-square-foot campus to have a tree-like metal facade to the south of the periscope, with a bright white, ship-like exterior to the north. Google has occupied the building since 2011, although it is currently for sale for the first time in 30 years for an undisclosed price.

Norton residence

When artists hire artists to design a home, places like the Norton Residence appear on the famous Oceanfront Boardwalk in Venice Beach. Inspired by photographs of his Santa Monica home, Len and William Norton, artist and writer respectively, hired Gehry to revive this eclectic 1980s beachfront home. Gehry’s design plays with varying sizes, heights and shapes of plaster and concrete boxes, making chaos appear as a cohesive, colorful unit. At the front of the property is Gehry’s version of the Lifeguard Tower in the form of a one-room studio standing on a single column, an obvious reference to William Norton’s former life as a lifeguard.

Loyola Marymount University School of Law

Gehry was chosen to redesign Loyola Marymount University School of Law in 1979 because, unlike other architects who submitted plans for a large building, Gehry proposed a group of smaller buildings designed around a plaza. Robert Benson, a member of the committee that selected Gehry’s design, said the committee “battled” with the architect over his strange but distinctive choice of materials and angles, including sheet-metal-wrapped Roman columns, chain-link fences, or the building’s odd angle. Gehry won most of the wrangling, Benson recalls, and the result is a village-like complex of contemporary buildings, bold shapes, bright yellows, and at least one oversized structure.