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TRIBUTE - Frank Gehry stood 5’4”, almost six inches shorter than the average American male. But he was a giant among men. In fact, he was a giant among giants. At the same time, he was a down -to- earth, an 'Aw, shucks’ man.
Last week the world lost its most celebrated architect.
Gehry forged his own creative legacy on Los Angeles with his striking masterpiece, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. It was during that period that I had frequent lunches with Gehry to discuss the status of the project and other civic issues, a relationship that began years earlier when I engineered the electrical systems for some of his projects.
His attention on the smallest detail became known to me when, in the mid 1970s, I was designing the lighting for a small neighborhood retail center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He asked me to bring to his office on Cloverfield Ave. Santa Monica, a half-dozen catalogs to select a small lighting fixture on the rear wall of the stores. Unsatisfied with standard fixtures, Frank designed his own and said, "Nick, the fixture should illuminate the pavement and inspire the observer."
He told me, he saw architecture as fine art like the ancient Greeks and that he was moved and inspired by the “Charioteer of Delphi” from 500 BC by an unknown sculptor when he visited Greece.
Frank was kind, generous and personally took the time to show both me and my son, Alexi, the exterior and interior models for the Walt Disney Concert Hall, which were kept in a warehouse adjacent to his office. Alexi sat in the prototype chair of the concert hall that Frank had designed and became bonded to the project. As a result, when studying, in England, Alexi frequently inquired about the progress of the concert hall, when it stalled.
During an abundant six-decade career Gehry became the most influential architect in the world and was awarded every major prize architecture had to offer, including the field’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize, the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and the Companion of the Order of Canada.
Gehry’s life story is a fascinating odyssey. After finishing high school in 1947 at age 17, Gehry moved with his parents to L.A. from Toronto. Gehry’s father, a salesman and truck driver who had trained as a boxer, had suffered a heart attack that year and was advised by a doctor to move to a gentler climate and ease up on physical labor. His mother, Thelma, was born in Poland and immigrated to Toronto with her family as a child. It was his mother who exposed him to music and art.
Four years after arriving in Los Angeles he became a naturalized U.S. citizen. At age 22 he married Anita Snyder whom he met when he delivered furniture to her parent’s house while working for a moving company. His birth name was Frank Ownes Goldberg. Anita convinced him to change his last name to Gehry, selecting a name that began with “G” because he liked his initials, F. O. G. and did not want to give up the acronym.
Gehry enrolled in night school at L.A. City College, where he took art and architecture classes, then went to USC, where he studied ceramics with artist Glen Lukens, as well as architecture.
He graduated from USC with a bachelor's in architecture in 1954, served two years in the Army, and worked for Victor Gruen, a Viennese-born architect known for helping invent the American shopping mall. He later studied urban planning at Harvard, returned to work in L.A. for Gruen and the notable Pereira & Luckman firm, and spent a year in Paris.
He returned to Los Angeles in 1962 and, at age 33, started a firm with Greg Walsh. Initially, his work followed Modernist principles like flat roofs and simple geometry, but he soon incorporated elements from L.A.'s postwar commercial scene.
Gehry gained national and international attention for the way he renovated the Santa Monica home he shared with his second wife, Berta Aguilera. The small pink bungalow, bought in 1977, was transformed with glass, corrugated metal, exposed wood framing, and later chain-link fencing. Gehry’s inspiration came from Southern California’s everyday landscape, not traditional architectural theory.
In 1988, Gehry won a high-profile competition to design a new home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Grand Avenue in downtown L.A., an expansion of the Music Center campus next door, the Walt Disney Concert Hall (WDCH). He won over a group of finalists that included several of the biggest names in 1980s architecture.
The WDCH widely celebrated as an exquisite monument to music, served as a critical threshold, providing an irreversible shift for Gehry. It was his dramatic transformation and a point of no return.
In 2024, twenty years after the opening of the WDCH, an enigmatic question emerged in the Los Angeles Times, an uncertainty poised by seasoned classical music critic Mark Swed. Swed rationalized that building the concert hall was a long, laborious, contentious, financially dicey process, “one for which we’ve never had a full or convincing account. I have never gotten straight answers about who did what to whom and when.” Swed continued "did the jury know all along that Gehry was exactly what the orchestra and the city needed and that the only way to get it was to rig the competition by misleading the other architects?"
Naming of Gehry as the project architect is fully explained in my book, “The Making of Modern Los Angeles,” based on straight answers given to me, clearly and coherently, by the protagonists themselves. I summarized the convincing accounts of jury members who made the selection provided to me by one of the jurors, Robert S. Harris on the choice of Gehry.
On May 12, 1987, Lillian Disney donated $50 million for a concert hall to honor Walt Disney, the largest arts donation at the time. The hall was required to be an addition to the Music Center. Frederick M. Nicholas, experienced in civic projects and builder of the Museum of Contemporary Art, was chosen to lead. Over lunch, he told me that to take on that difficult responsibility, he wanted two things: Mrs. Disney’s support, and a concert hall that related to the orchestra and audience, and to Los Angeles’ urban environment.
Nicholas picked an expert committee of nine relevant companions and toured Europe’s concert halls to gauge the vitality and artistry of each one, and to evaluate the acoustics. Returning to Los Angeles, he had architect Donna Vaccarino draft the building program with the help of Ernest Fleischmann, executive director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Despite initial resistance by the old guard at the Music Center, Nicholas initiated an architect search by forming a subcommittee that selected 100 candidates, narrowed them to 25, and then down to six: : Gottfried Böhm of Cologne; Harry Cobb of New York; Frank Gehry of Venice, California; Hans Hollein of Vienna; Renzo Piano of Genoa; and James Stirling of London.
Nicholas excluded city and county officials from the architectural subcommittee to prevent political influence. The subcommittee included directors and deans from several major Los Angeles museums and architecture schools.
I was cognizant of the selection process and was provided with the meeting notes taken during the procedure by subcommittee member Robert S. Harris, Dean of the USC School of Architecture.
Gehry was a happy narrative for Harris. His proposal included a particular quality that Harris encouraged in all architecture, “the kind of surprise that over-realizes our expectations. His design is not only clear but somewhat familiar,” he noted. “I did not know Walt Disney, of course, and I cannot say that he would approve. But I grew up with his films, and I know his fans will understand the connections.”
Finally, on December 5, 1988, following exhaustive deliberations, the Disney Concert Hall Committee gathered to hear the recommendations of the subcommittee. Mrs. Disney was also present, wearing her “lucky red dress.” Four of the five subcommittee members nominated Frank Gehry for the project, who presented an original architectural statement, a “living room” for the city, with openness and space and a lush garden.
That is exactly how Gehry was selected.
In the interim, the Walt Disney Concert Hall project limped badly and almost crashed, victimized by disturbing funding shortages, bickering, and protracted construction holdups. Gehry went off to Spain and designed the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao building, said by experts to represent a magnificent example of the most groundbreaking 20th-century architecture. It was an instant architectural landmark of audacious configuration and innovating design, providing a seductive backdrop for the art exhibited in it, claimed critics.
It was Gehry’s way of using Computer-Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application (CATIA) technology to create geometrically complex buildings, as is evident both in Bilbao and Los Angeles.
With Gehry’s passing, the Music Center and its Board of Directors said they were “deeply saddened to learn about the passing of Frank Gehry. A groundbreaking architect who reimagined the field, Frank's profound and courageous artistic vision resulted in the creation of one of L.A.'s most iconic buildings.”
Gehry is gone, but he left us with masterpieces that will withstand ages, as was his wish. In fact, he had personally articulated this thought: “Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness.”
(Nick Patsaouras is an electrical engineer and civic leader whose firm has shaped projects across residential, commercial, medical, educational, institutional, and entertainment sectors. A longtime public advocate, he ran for Mayor in 1993 with a focus on rebuilding L.A. through transportation after the 1992 civil unrest. He has served on major public boards, including the Department of Water and Power, Metro, and the Board of Zoning Appeals, helping guide infrastructure and planning policy in Los Angeles. He is the author of the book "The Making of Modern Los Angeles.")
