Remembering Frank Gehry, Architect of Walt Disney Concert Hall

December 5, 2025, 10:25 PM · Frank Gehry, the architect who designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 96.

Frank Gehry, Walt Disney Concert Hall. Photo illustration by Violinist.com.

Disney Hall, completed in 2003, was among Gehry's most famous and recognizable buildings, which also include the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, 8 Spruce in New York, the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, the Dancing House in Prague and the Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin, built for Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.

Gehry also designed the new $335 million, 100,000-square-foot expansion of the Colburn School, currently under construction in downtown Los Angeles, a block away from Disney Hall. It includes the 1,100-seat Terri and Jerry Kohl ConcertHall, slated for opening in fall 2027.

"Frank Gehry did more than any other single individual in the 21st century to benefit music," wrote Mark Swed, the longtime classical music writer for the LA Times. "Disney, with stunning acoustics, proved both a place of modernity for a new millennium and one of the world’s most acoustically engaging venues.... Of all his buildings, other than his home, Disney is the one Gehry spent the most time in, regularly attending concerts."

Born in Toronto, Gehry came to Los Angeles just after World War II, as a teenager, to study architecture at the University of Southern California. He went on to study at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1956 and 1957 and set up his practice in Los Angeles in 1962.

His own home in Santa Monica - which he wrapped in corrugated steel, chain link and exposed wood framing - was a testing ground for his experimental style.

In 1989, at age 60, Gehry was awarded the industry's top accolade, the Pritzker Architecture prize, for lifetime achievement. It was only after that - in his late 60s (when some might be considering retirement) that he was asked to design the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain - a project that catapulted his reputation to new levels with its completion in 1997. Disney Hall came some six years after that, and Gehry continued working up until the end of his long life.

"I've always been for optimism and architecture not being sad," Gehry told NPR in 2004. "You know, a building for music and performance should be joyful. It should be a great experience and it should be fun to go to."

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Remembering Frank Gehry, Architect of Walt Disney Concert Hall

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