Frank Gehry was one of the great pioneers of architecture in history and certainly of the twenty first century. With his passing this weekend we think of some of the most innovative buildings of the world. His postmodern designs were characterized by their sculptural, often undulating exteriors and innovative use of materials such as titanium and stainless steel. His first important building was his own house at Santa Monica, which is now a public attraction.

He is perhaps most well known for the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, opened in 1997. The architecture promotes sweeping curves for the galleries and a central atrium, which Gehry nicknamed The Flower. The whole is covered with a titanium shell which captures all the various colours of the cityscape. The building is one of the most significant in architectural history, “one of those rare moments when critics, academics, and the general public were all completely united…”, according to architectural critic Paul Goldberger. The building is also noted for coining the expression, The Bilbao Effect – where the architecture of a single building promotes the cultural regeneration of a run down industrial city.

Born in Toronto, of European immigrant parents, he moved with his family to California in 1947. It is said that his great interest in shape and form together with his understanding of materials came from his grandmother, Leah Caplan. She would bring scraps of material from her husband’s hardware store for the young Gehry to play with and construct imaginary buildings.

Two other buildings worthy of Frank Gehry’s legacy are the Walt Disney Concert Hall opened in Los Angeles in 2003, and the Louis Vuitton Foundation Art Gallery, opened in Paris in 2014. After a century of steel, glass and brick rectangular architecture, pioneered by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, the introduction of curved form may not have been invented by Gehry but his buildings will be the ones remembered forever.