Frank Gehry left his mark on Massachusetts architecture with 2 notable buildings
Frank Gehry, the world-famous architect, has died at 96 years old. The designer of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles also left his mark on the Massachusetts architecture scene with two recognizable buildings in the Boston area.
Gehry designed the Ray and Maria Stata Center, a quirky looking building on the MIT campus in Cambridge that opened in 2004.
The school describes the 720,000-square-foot structure made with 2.6 million pounds of steel as "a cacophony of structural elements wedged, pushed, toppled, and fused into one another."
"The angles and curves of this building represent our ability to solve problems," Cambridge Mayor Michael Sullivan said at the time. "It stands as an economic anchor of this community."
Gehry once said the design "looks like a party of drunken robots got together to celebrate," according to The New York Times. It was also reported that MIT sued Gehry and a construction company over the building a few years later, claiming that the design and construction failures resulted in leaks.
The other local Gehry design is 360 Newbury Street in Boston, at the corner of Mass. Ave.
The former home of Tower Records was originally an office building before it was renovated in the 80s to add condo units. It's also home to the Hynes Convention Center MBTA stop on the Green Line.
The TJ Maxx that's currently housed in the building will close in early 2026.