STORY: Frank Gehry, whose daring and whimsical creations of leaning towers and sweeping sheets of curved metal such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, made him a superstar in the world of architecture, died on Friday (December 5). He was 96.

Meaghan Lloyd, Gehry's chief of staff, confirmed his death in an email to Reuters, writing that Gehry died "earlier this morning at his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness."

Gehry's most memorable and riotous creations often looked as if they had recently collapsed in an artistic manner or were in the process of doing so. They were lauded as works of genius or reviled as self-indulgent messes.

His works were so fantastical that sometimes even he was not sure what he had wrought, as was the case with the Bilbao museum.

"You know, I went there just before the opening and looked at it and said, 'Oh, my God, what have I done to these people?'" Gehry told Vanity Fair magazine. "It took a couple of years for me to start to like it, actually."

In 2010 a panel of experts put together by Vanity Fair cited the Bilbao museum as the most important work of architecture since 1980. Eminent architect Philip Johnson called it "the greatest building of our time" and Gehry "the greatest architect we have." Still, Gehry flinched when he was called a "starchitect."

In March 2015, Facebook's campus in Menlo Park, California, opened a massive expansion designed by Gehry, who was given instructions not to be too bold so that the facility would still fit in with its surroundings.

Gehry also opened La Fondation Louis Vuitton museum in Paris in 2014.

French billionaire Bernard Arnault paid tribute to Gehry following his passing.

"Frank Gehry - who possessed an unparalleled gift for shaping forms, pleating glass like canvas, making it dance like a silhouette - will long endure as a living source of inspiration for Louis Vuitton as well as for all the Maisons of the LVMH group," he said in a statement.

His other notable buildings included the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Dancing House in Prague, the Experience Music Project in Seattle and the 8 Spruce residential tower in New York.

Gehry's critics accused him of disregarding function in favor of form. His Disney Center was lambasted by various critics as "a pile of broken crockery," "a fortune cookie gone berserk," "deconstructionist trash" and "an emptied waste basket."

Gehry tried to shrug off criticism and told the New Yorker in 2007, "You kind of say, 'At least they’re looking!'"

But he was not always so sanguine. While in Spain in October 2014 to accept an award Gehry was asked about criticism that his work was too showy. He raised his middle finger and said: "In this world we are living in, 98 percent of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit. There's no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else. They are damn buildings and that's it."

Gehry was born Frank Owen Goldberg on February 28, 1929, in Toronto, the son of Polish Jews. He was already designing buildings and miniature cities out of scraps of wood as a child.

"That's what I remembered, years later, when I was struggling to find out what I wanted to do in life," he told the New Yorker magazine in 1977. "It made me think about architecture. It also gave me the idea that an adult could play."

After graduating from the University of Southern California, Gehry went through a restless period. He worked at a couple of Los Angeles architecture firms, began studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design but quit without a degree, served a year in the U.S. Army and moved to Paris for a year.

By the time he returned to Los Angeles in 1962 he had changed his last name to Gehry at his wife's suggestion as a way to avoid anti-Semitism.

His breakthrough project was in 1978 rebuilding his own Santa Monica home - taking a pink traditional Dutch colonial house and turning it into something fantastical with common materials such chain-link fencing, corrugated aluminum and unfinished plywood.

By the mid-1980s, Gehry was attracting international attention with buildings sheathed in stainless steel or aluminum that seemed to bend and sway, subverting the conventions of architecture.

In 1989, Gehry won the Pritzker Prize, his profession's most prestigious award. But he really hit the big time with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, which was completed in 1997 using computer software that enabled him to build in increasingly eccentric shapes.

Gehry, who was married twice and had four children, also designed furniture, jewelry, watches, a bottle for a vodka distiller and a hat for singer Lady Gaga that looked like a tall, crumpled mass of silver fabric.

DESCRIPCIÓN DE IMÁGENES

SHOWS: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (FILE - OCTOBER 5, 2023) (REUTERS - Access all)

1. AMERICAN ARCHITECT FRANK GEHRY AND AGUILERA POSING FOR PHOTOS AS HE ARRIVES AT LOS ANGELES PHILHARMONIC GALA

2. VARIOUS OF GEHRY AND WIFE BERTA ISABEL AGUILERA POSING FOR PHOTOS

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (DECEMBER 5, 2025) (REUTERS - Access all)

3. VARIOUS OF EXTERIORS OF WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL

PARIS, FRANCE (FILE - MARCH 8, 2017) (REUTERS - Access all)

4. GEHRY, LVMH CHIEF EXECUTIVE BERNARD ARNAULT, THEN FRENCH PRESIDENT FRANCOIS HOLLANDE, AND OTHER OFFICIALS UNVEILING MODEL OF MUSEUM PROJECT

5. VARIOUS OF MODEL, GEHRY SPEAKING BEHIND

6. (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARCHITECT, FRANK GEHRY, SAYING:

"To have a second chapter is very exciting for me. We passed this building many times as we were working on the Foundation and wondered what was its future and I'm very happy to be part of the team to figure out what its future will be."

GRAPHICS (FILE) (LVMH - Access all) (MUTE)

7. VARIOUS OF NEW DRAWING OF NEW MUSEUM "LA MAISON LVMH"

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (FILE - SEPTEMBER 9, 2015) (REUTERS - Access all)

8. VARIOUS OF FRANK GEHRY EXHIBIT AT LOS ANGELES COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART

9. FRANK GEHRY MODEL OF WALT DISNEY HALL

10. FRANK GEHRY MODEL OF GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, BILBAO

11. (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARCHITECT FRANK GEHRY ON THE EXHIBIT, SAYING:

"I don't look back easily, I don't bring myself to look back. So, we don't photograph our stuff or anything. We put it in crates and I never know what is in those crates. So I couldn't do it it would have been painful, partly because there are a lot of buildings that I really loved that never got built."

12. VARIOUS OF MODELS

PARIS, FRANCE (FILE - OCTOBER 17, 2014) (REUTERS - Access all)

13. REFLECTION OF FOUNDATION LOUIS VUITTON BUILDING IN WATER / BUILDING SHAPED LIKE A SAILBOAT

14. INNER SIDE OF SAIL

15. WATER CASCADING DOWN STEPS

16. VARIOUS OF CURVED SIDES OF GLASS SAILS

17. EXTERIOR OF THE SAILBOAT-SHAPED FOUNDATION LOUIS VUITTON

18. LOUIS VUITTON LOGO ON BUILDING / ENTRANCE TO FOUNDATION LOUIS VUITTON

19. STRUCTURES ON TERRACE

20. REFLECTION OF BUILDING IN WATER

21. VARIOUS OF ARCHITECT, FRANK GEHRY, BEING INTERVIEWED

22. (SOUNDBITE) (English) ARCHITECT, FRANK GEHRY, SAYING:

"We had to make a building that was glass and ephemeral and then that became sailing ships for me, a regatta... A sense of movement was important, that it looks like it's moving slowly through the Bois de Boulogne."

23. VARIOUS OF LVMH CHIEF EXECUTIVE BERNARD ARNAULT AND GEHRY POSING FOR PHOTOS

BILBAO, SPAIN (FILE - JUNE 1, 2020) (REUTERS - Access all)

24. VIEW OF GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

25. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM

26. PEOPLE WALKING BY MUSEUM

BILBAO, SPAIN (FILE) (REUTERS - Access all)

27. VARIOUS OF THE GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM NEXT TO RIVER

PARIS, FRANCE (FILE- OCTOBER 17, 2014) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

28. STILL PHOTO OF ARCHITECT FRANK GEHRY ATTENDING A PRESS VISIT AT THE FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (FILE - FEBRUARY 11, 2019) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

29. STILL PHOTO OF ARCHITECT FRANK GEHRY WALKING PAST HIS ICONIC WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL AS HE ATTENDS AN OFFICIAL GROUND BREAKING FOR "THE GRAND" A FRANK GEHRY DESIGNED MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT IN DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES

OVIEDO, SPAIN (FILE - OCTOBER 23, 2014 )(REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

30. STILL PHOTO OF GEHRY GESTURING AFTER ARRIVING AT THE RECONQUISTA HOTEL WHERE GEHRY WAS AWARDED WITH THE 2014 PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARD FOR THE ARTS

PARIS, FRANCE (FILE- OCTOBER 17, 2014) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

31. STILL PHOTO OF ARCHITECT FRANK GEHRY ATTENDING A PRESS VISIT AT THE FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON

PARIS, FRANCE (FILE - OCTOBER 20, 2014) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

32. LVMH LUXURY GROUP CHIEF EXECUTIVE BERNARD ARNAULT (L) SPEAKING WITH THEN FRENCH PRESIDENT FRANCOIS HOLLANDE (R) AND GEHRY (C), IN FRONT OF THE PAINTING "GUDRUN", AN OIL ON CANVAS BY GERHARD RICHTER DURING THE INAUGURATION OF THE FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON ART MUSEUM

OVIEDO, SPAIN (FILE - OCTOBER 24, 2014 )(REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

33. STILL PHOTO OF GEHRY SHAKING HANDS WITH SPAIN'S KING FELIPE VI AND QUEEN LETIZIA BEFORE RECEIVING A BADGE DURING A RECEPTION FOR THE PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARDS. GEHRY WAS THE WINNER OF THE 2014 PRINCE OF ASTURIAS AWARD FOR THE ARTS

CARACAS, VENEZUELA (FILE - DECEMBER 23, 2014) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

34. STILL PHOTO OF VENEZUELA'S PRESIDENT NICOLAS MADURO (C) GREETING GEHRY (R), NEXT TO VENEZUELAN CLASSICAL MUSICIAN GUSTAVO DUDAMEL DURING THEIR MEETING AT MIRAFLORES PALACE

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (FILE - JUNE 14, 2014) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

35. STILL PHOTO OF PEOPLE RIDING PAST THE WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL, DESIGNED BY FRANK GEHRY

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (FILE - MARCH 4, 2015) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

36. STILL PHOTO OF THE WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL, DESIGNED BY FRANK GEHRY

PARIS, FRANCE (FILE - JUNE 1, 2017) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

37. STILL PHOTO OF THE FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON ART MUSEUM DESIGNED BY GEHRY AS SEEN FROM THE ROOFTOP OF THE ARCHE DE LA DEFENSE

PARIS, FRANCE (FILE - AUGUST 5, 2018) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

38. STILL PHOTO OF THE FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON DESIGNED BY GEHRY

PARIS, FRANCE (FILE- OCTOBER 17, 2014) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

39. STILL PHOTO OF CURVED SIDES OF GLASS SAILS ON THE EXTERIOR OF THE FONDATION LOUIS VUITTON DESIGNED BY GEHRY

ELCIEGO, RIOJA REGION, SPAIN (FILE - OCTOBER 10, 2006) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

40. VARIOUS (2) STILL PHOTOS OF THE GEHRY DESIGNED "CITY OF WINE", A WINERY AND HOTEL, SEEN DURING ITS OPENING

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, UNITED STATES (FILE - NOVEMBER 8, 2007) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

41. STILL PHOTO OF THE STATA CENTER, DESIGNED BY WORLD RENOWNED GEHRY, AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. MIT WAS THEN SUING GEHRY, SAYING THE CELEBRATED BUILDING CONTAINED DESIGN FLAWS

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (FILE - NOVEMBER 7, 2014) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

42. STILL PHOTO OF A PERSON RIDING A BICYCLE PAST THE GEHRY DESIGNED BINOCULARS BUILDING THAT HOUSES GOOGLE

LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM (FILE - JULY 9, 2008) (REUTERS - Access all) (MUTE)

43. STILL PHOTO OF THE SERPENTINE GALLERY PAVILLION DESIGNED BY GEHRY IN HYDE PARK