The place making of Frank Gehry

Other people will do a far better job of discussing this issue than me... I can think of at least four people far better qualified than me...

The architect Frank Gehry passed away earlier this week at the age of 96. His buildings often became the centrepieces of attempts to rejuvenate places, or provide a centrepiece for regeneration work.

The first of his buildings I saw was the Guggenheim in Bilbao back in 2005. 

Image by Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license

This was in his characteristic style and one of the changes that was considered to have helped change the fortunes of the port city in northern Spain. This sort of development was tried in other cities following its success here. I remember some wonderful Richard Serra pieces. The building was also used as the venue for a Mike Oldfield concert premiering his 'Music of the Spheres' album. It has attracted many tourists to the city.

It was also helped by the huge Jeff Koons floral dog outside the entrance.

This Guardian piece says of his 1997 building design.

Grappling with post-industrial decline, its unlikely recovery was catalysed by a building of exhilarating complexity sheathed in an epidermis of 33,000 wafer-thin sheets of titanium that shimmered like rippling fish scales.

As its backers had hoped, it also transformed Bilbao’s wider civic fortunes, attracting 1.3 million visitors in its first year and begetting the “Bilbao effect”, which became shorthand for uplift through cultural tourism predicated on “iconic” architecture.

His style was often described as "maximalist".

He was also known as a "starchitect".

The second of his buildings that I visited was actually in Dundee. It was a special building providing care for cancer patients, called Maggie's. It had only opened a few years earlier.

By now he had a style which was parodied in The Simpsons.

According to the Guardian piece:

Latterly, he was involved in terraforming the environs around Battersea power station, designing silos of luxury housing that for all their cleverness feel distinctly formulaic. He was also invited to devise a Serpentine pavilion, London’s annual architectural fête d’été, reconceptualising it as a whirlwind in a lumber yard.

A gallery of images here.

The most recent of his buildings that I visited was the headquarters of the Fondation Louis Vuitton.

Image by Alan Parkinson - shared on Flickr under CC license

This sits on the outskirts of Paris and was home to a huge retrospective of David Hockney's work, which I visited in April 2025. It's a stunning building like a ship with its sails billowing in the wind.

The term "place making" is often used to describe the processes which change places.

“Each destination has its own DNA created by the combination of its people, culture, climate and the built environment. The latter is frequently a multi-layered townscape or landscape resulting from residual heritage buildings through to contemporary structures, with the public realm a glue that provides a cohesive element. Each urban centre and rural location is unique. People, and in particular designers, inevitably make their own mark on a place and cities are characterised by constant change. While this is inevitable, and welcomed, without a feel for context and local distinctiveness some changes can lead to a dilution of character. The key starting point for any new design is assessing and defining the particular qualities of a place and ensuring these are reflected in the design approach.”

Plagiarism doesn’t work. Every destination needs to find its own narrative and convert this into a design specification for placemaking. This must be informed by the destination’s core values, its territorial, cultural and heritage assets and its inherent sense of place.

Rob Burns, urban design and heritage manager for Liverpool City Council

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