The most celebrated architect of his age, a wry, pugnacious, singular genius, Frank Gehry, who died Dec 5 at 96, redefined American architecture and became so famous that he was even a character on The Simpsons.
In Bilbao and Berlin, New York and, especially, Los Angeles — where the Canadian-born Gehry settled and became inseparable from the city — he left behind playful, polarising, materially and technologically stunning buildings. They emerged from an artistic evolution that tracks the larger arc of American postwar culture.
