The architect Frank O. Gehry (1929-2025) discovered classical music as a child when his mother took him to concerts in his native Toronto. As an architect, his first major concert hall was the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, a steel ship that this weekend will host the Orfeó Català's US debut with a Solemn Mass Beethoven's concert hall, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. "What interested me most was giving the hall a soul and bringing people together," Gehry said about this project. "In the end, I created a kind of intimacy surrounding the orchestra, which begins to break down the traditional shape of the space." shoebox "The hall is enclosed, reducing the distance between the orchestra and the audience, bringing them closer," he explained. Gehry was convinced that comfort and good hall qualities allow the audience to better connect with the music. That's why Walt Disney Hall was inspired by Hans Scharoun's Berlin Philharmonic. Gehry's seats are arranged in concentric terraces around the stage, and the upholstery features a multicolored floral print. "Somehow, people would feel more connected. So I was thinking about the object itself, separate from the walls of the hall. This gave me much more freedom. It was like putting a ship inside a box," Gehry said.

"I approach each building as a sculptural object," stated architect Frank O. Gehry, who died this Friday at the age of 96 at his home in Santa Monica, California, after suffering a brief respiratory illness, according to his chief of staff, Meaghan Lloyd. Gehry made history from the beginning of his career with works such as his own house in Santa Monica, and in the late 1990s he cemented his impact with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, one of his greatest achievements and most beloved works due to its profound influence on his career. In fact, one of the great deans of American architecture, Philip Johnson, considered it "the most important building of our time." Indeed, one of his most recent works is the Guggenheim Museum Abu Dhabi, the largest of the Guggenheim museums: it covers 80,000 square meters and reaches a height of 80 meters. It is scheduled to open next year. Gehry himself, who was active until very recently, had described it as a journey from chaos to light. Gehry, who received the Pritzker Prize in 1989—the Nobel Prize of architecture—viewed his works as "a spatial container, a space with light and air, a response to the context," which users brought to life. "In that container, in this sculpture, the user brings their baggage, their program, and interacts. If they can't do that, I've failed," he said. Furthermore, before the Guggenheim, Gehry had designed the gigantic fish-shaped pergola next to the Hotel Arts in Barcelona. Later, another project—a headquarters in the Catalan capital, a transport museum, and a tower in La Sagrera—was shelved, and he did design a hotel for the Marqués de Riscal winery.