France, Paris, along the GR® Paris 2024, metropolitan long-distance hiking trail created in support of Paris bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, Bois de Boulogne, Louis Vuitton Foundation designed by the architect Frank Gehry. Alamy GUIZIOU Franck / hemis.fr.

Humanity’s Profound Loss Cuts Deeply

The moment AOC heard the sad news of the passing of architect Frank Gehry, Anne went to LVMH News, knowing that his passing would be a deeply-personal event for Bernard Arnault, his family and the entire Louis Vuitton group.

Gehry’s civic humanism philosophy impacted and inspired other LVMH maisons as well. But his post-Bilbao identity became deeply embedded in the DNA and soul of Louis Vuitton. As expected, a message from Bernard Arnault was waiting for us. It reads:

U.S. architect Frank Gehry is knighted with the French Legion of Honor by Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres in Paris on october. 3, 2006. Alamy, Abacapress

"I am profoundly saddened by the passing of Frank Gehry, in whom I lose a very dear friend and for whom I shall forever retain boundless admiration. I owe to him one of the longest, most intense, and most ambitious creative partnerships I have ever had the privilege to experience. His oeuvre, crowned by the Pritzker Prize, is immense. He will remain a genius of lightness, transparency, and grace. Frank Gehry—who possessed an unparalleled gift for shaping forms, pleating glass like canvas, making it dance like a silhouette—will long endure as a living source of inspiration for Louis Vuitton as well as for all the Maisons of the LVMH group. With the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la Création, he bestowed upon Paris and upon France his greatest masterpiece, the highest expression of his creative power, commensurate with the friendship he bore our city and the affection he showed for our culture.
My wife, my children, and I express our deepest condolences to his wife, Berta, and his children."

The Fondation Louis Vuitton

Architect Frank Gehry is, was, and will forever be a great humanist. In his heart-felt tribute to Frank Gehry, Bernard Arnault refers to the Fondation Louis Vuitton, the museum Gehry designed in Paris in a creative collaboration with Mr. Arnault.

The Fondation Louis Vuitton opened to the public in Paris on Monday, October 27, 2014, in its unique location in the Bois de Boulogne.

AOC has chosen this image to give readers unfamiliar with Paris a sense of this perhaps ‘unusual’ location for such a prestigious building as the Fondation Louis Vuitton.

Both Frank Gehry and Bernard Arnault frequently spoke about the Bois de Boulogne as the deliberate location for the Fondation Louis Vuitton, viewing it as a "hinge point" between nature and culture, inspired by 19th-century glass pavilions and a desire to create a "magnificent vessel" in a park setting that allowed for bold modern architecture.

Arnault chose the site within the Jardin d'Acclimatation to place the building in a public, natural area, while Gehry saw the park setting as crucial for a transparent, garden-like structure interacting with trees and sky.

In essence, the Bois de Boulogne wasn't just a backdrop; it was integral to the design philosophy, allowing for a structure that was both grand and integrated with the natural environment, a choice heavily influenced and championed by Arnault and enthusiastically embraced by Gehry.

Treading carefully on this now hallowed ground in Paris, Anne inquired if the Bois de Boulogne was in “tip top” condition when the two geniuses Gehry and Arnault decided to build there. Of course, she knows the answer but one must be discreet in asking these questions.

Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris At Nightfall

The Bois de Boulogne is Paris's largest park, historically a place for leisure, but sections, especially near the Neuilly-sur-Seine border where the Fondation Louis Vuitton museum sits, needed investment. The entirety of the park was underutilized — and she adds, except in the early evening hours.

The foundation was intended to bring contemporary art — and a spectacular architectural statement with Gehry's design — to a less prominent part of the park, elevating the area's prestige and cultural offering.

This Gehry philosophy about the transforming effect of a dramatic but inviting and human-centered architectural statement gained great notoriety with the opening of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Bilbao, Spain in October, 1997.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry

Inspired by another humanist, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who built the original Guggenheim Museum in New York City on upper Fifth Avenue, both men focused on humane, nature-integrated designs for the common person.

The word ‘democratic’ is frequently used to describe this design style.

Nearly three decades later, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao has exceeded the most ambitious artistic and cultural expectations, and has contributed in an extraordinary way to the urban, economic, and social regeneration of the city of Bilbao and its surroundings.

What is called the ‘Bilbao Effect’ of Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum continues in 2025, driving significant tourism and solidifying Bilbao's global cultural brand status.

Debates persist about equitable wealth distribution from the ‘Bilbao Effect’ and case studies at prestigious, global universities explore why other cities have tried and failed to duplicate Bilbao’s success.

Positive Bilbao Effect Cities

Cities like Oslo, Norway have achieved positive ‘Bilbao Effect’ regeneration through strategic cultural investment. In America, Pittsburgh is a more expansive model of urban regeneration that has achieved stellar renewal for some but not all.

The Pittsburgh project also embodies failures that displaced and demolished vibrant communities, and especially African American neighborhoods.

Anne of Carversville will look at the Pittsburgh project in-depth in the coming months, along with the much-delayed but under construction Obama Presidential Center project in Chicago. The Obama Center has similar goals for south-side Chicago.

Louis Vuitton and Frank Gehry in Los Angeles

At age 96, Frank Gehry — and Gehry Partners — was/are deeply involved in creating the new Louis Vuitton ‘experience’ in Los Angeles.

The Beverly Hills Planning Commission unanimously approved the proposed Louis Vuitton flagship store and exhibition space at its September 25th meeting this fall. Located on Rodeo Drive, the Louis Vuitton cutting-edge, experiential design complex will span the block of South Santa Monica Boulevard between Rodeo and Beverly Drive.

AOC believes that the Gehry-designed Louis Vuitton complex in Beverly Hills will have a positive effect on the larger Los Angeles community, even though there’s no confirmation of that goal, let-alone a result.

LVMH/Louis Vuitton executives Bernard Arnault, Pietro Beccari, Nicolas Ghesquière and Pharrell Williams are all well aware of the positive impact Louis Vuitton can have on this entire city and nearby Los Angeles communities.

Both Creative Directors are in and out of the LA frequently, and Nicolas Ghesquière now owns the famous Wolff House in Los Angeles, which he acquired in 2022 with his partner, Drew Kuhse.

After reading the backstory on Frank Gehry’s biography as narrated by the NY Times [free link], he would be pleased that in writing about the final approvals for the Louis Vuitton Beverly Hills site, AOC chose to feature the summer 2022 opening of Frank Gehry’s pro bono The Children’s Institute [CII] in Watts, Los Angeles.

The prestige of the 20,000 square-foot facility being designed by the world-renowned architect Frank Gehry has been a beacon of hope to the people of Watts.

What Would Frank Gehry Want?

I was emotional before writing this narrative, but after discovering new facts about Gehry’s entire life and background, it’s even more clear that the world has lost a great humanist — a New Humanism man of 21st century vintage, as the originals go back to the Italian Renaissance and Francesco Petrarch [1304-1474].

Other key early figures included Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, who laid groundwork, and later scholars like Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni, who developed civic humanism.

This concept of ‘civic humanism’ is core to the identity of Frank Gehry — and to Bernard Arnault as well — in the writings on Anne of Carversville.

AOC knows that with Gehry’s passing, Bernard Arnaud and the entire Louis Vuitton family will keep the spirit of Frank Gehry alive and thriving in both Los Angeles and Paris.

LVMH — and Louis Vuitton specifically — are the heirs apparent to Frank Gehry’s global legacy, vision and values. In AOC’s opinion, this stewardship could be redefined change with the opening of the long-delayed, under-construction Gehry’s largest Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi.

Clearly, the Guggenheim is also a torch-bearer for the Frank Gehry legacy

From AOC’s proud American, France-lover perspective, I’d like to see the legacy in LVMH hands, as they have the power, the pocketbook and the direct-contact, years-long, intimate working collaboration to advance his values and vision as Frank Gehry imagined it.

May the mind and heart of Frank Gehry shower his many admirers and followers with his visionary, civic-minded, human-centered spirit dust.

We carry on with his loss in our hearts, but our grief metabolized as fuel for our convictions to create a more beautiful, fair and inspiring world.

The soil of incomprehensible and staggering wealth that surrounds us in every corner of our 21st century world can surely do better in creating Frank Gehry’s vision of a better life for the many. ~ Anne