Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid – Digital Pioneers

Frank Gehry died on December 5, 2025 in Santa Monica, CA.  Obituaries for him number in the dozens. I’ve read a representative sample of them. Very few of them mention Gehry’s very important contribution to architectural technology. Those that do mention it do so only in passing. Edward Keegan, in his most informative December 10, 2025 Chicago Tribune article “Frank Gehry’s generous and democratic architecture,” does pay some attention to Gehry’s use of technology; but generally, that aspect of Gehry’s overall contribution to architecture is given short shrift.

Prior to the 1990s, architectural renderings were done on paper, as they had been (if they were done at all) for centuries. We’ve all seen blueprints: those that had white lines on a blue background and those that reversed the plan, placing blue lines on white paper.

The blue renderings were fine for straight lines or gentle curves, but renderings for multi-curved spaces and objects were beyond difficult. The kinds of buildings architects like Gehry and Zaha Hadid designed from the 1990s on were simply not possible prior to the 1990s because the translation from design idea to implementation by contractors could not happen.

Zaha Hadid reportedly tried to create renderings of a heavily curved surface by placing a drawing of a flat surface on the platen of a copier and curling the original upward off the platen. If you’ve ever tried this, you will know that it just doesn’t do what you hope for. She clearly had radically different designs in her mind, but no good way to convey them.

In the early to mid-1990s, architects on the east and west coasts were trying new things. As a most informative 2007 Aaron Betsky article pointed out, “On the West Coast, architects Wes Jones and Neil Denari were particularly fascinated by the ways in which computers were letting engineers in other industries come up with composite materials that more efficiently served their purposes and with devices that made machines operate more smoothly – significantly they paid particular attention to the ways in which the aircraft industry was using computers.* Meanwhile, on the east coast at Columbia University, “[Bernard Tschumi] in 1994 instituted a ‘paperless design studio’ for the [Graduate School of Architecture” that had a galvanizing effect on the possibilities of different architectural concepts.¹

By the mid-1990s, Frank Gehry had become very interested in the possibilities of using the Computer Assisted Drawing (CAD) software employed by fighter aircraft airframe manufacturers. According to Betsky, “Several young architects were soon working for Frank Gehry . . . and they brought with them the know-how that let Gehry build the forms he had been dreaming for decades. The Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, for example, made use of a technology developed by Dassault Systems for designing fighter aircraft. When it opened in 1997, this building immediately captured the public’s imagination with its free-flowing forms (see photo below). Indeed it is still the icon nonpareil of computer-aided design.” ²

Meanwhile, Zaha Hadid independently started using CAD tools to visualize her ideas and to render complex surfaces. Early on she used a software tool called AutoCAD. As the 1990s progressed, her studio developed what they termed “parametric modeling.” A recent Pragya Laungani article tells us: “In the 1990s, when many firms still relied heavily on manual drawings, Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA) began experimenting with digital modelling and scripting. The studio saw computers not as a constraint but as a canvas for fluidity. This forward-looking approach made them pioneers in computational design long before it became the industry norm.

Projects like the Vitra Fire Station (1993) showed the seeds of this language, but it was with later works like the MAXXI Museum in Rome or the Guangzhou Opera House that parametric thinking fully blossomed. These projects demonstrated how digital processes could orchestrate complexity—turning

Langani further describes four traits of “parametric workflows:” Fluid geometries; dynamic spaces instead of static rooms; structural expression (versus “skin-deep aesthetics”); performance and sustainability. In essence, “parametric workflows . . . connect design with data-driven analysis.” ⁴

Langani cites the Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan as an example of these traits.

He says of the Centre, “Perhaps the most iconic expression of Hadid’s vision, the Heydar Aliyev Centre embodies seamless fluidity—its facade and roof merging into one continuous surface. Such a project relies heavily on parametric modelling to rationalise complex curves into manufacturable components.” ⁵

Gehry, meanwhile, was going full bore into CAD software. In the late 1980s his studio began using CATIA (Computer-Aided Three-Dimensional Interactive Application), a product for designing airframes. A principal example of its use was the 1997 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Catia allowed “the realization of incredibly complex forms unimaginable until then. In experimentations in curvilinear geometries with precise control over material behavior and construction feasibility, Gehry’s innovation with CATIA was unprecedented.” ⁶

By 2009, design software had effected a cooperative convergence between Zaha Hadid and Frank Gehry. A November 17, 2009 press release from Dassault Systèmes (Vélizy-Villacoublay, France) and Gehry Technologies announced “that world leading Zaha Hadid Architects has expanded the deployment of Digital Project (DP), Gehry Technologies Building Information Modelling (BIM) system based on Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA virtual design solution.” ⁷

Suffice it to say that those drastic and dramatic Hadid curves and Gehry swooping metal panels would not be part of our present lives had architecture in general, led by Hadid and especially by Gehry not fully adopted digital design tools.

The irony is that Frank Gehry himself did not use computers, or if he did use them, his use was rudimentary. Such are the vagaries we encounter with artists.

 Notes

¹ Aaron Betsky, “A Virtual Reality: Aaron Betsky on the Legacy of Digital Architecture,” ArtForum (https://www.artforum.com/features/a-virtual-reality-the-legacy-of-digital-architecture-180730/), September 2007.

² Ibid.

³ Pragya Laungani, “How Zaha Hadid’s Legacy Shapes Today’s Parametric Modelling,” September 12, 2025, https://www.kaarwan.com/blog/architecture/zaha-hadid-and-parametric-modelling?id=1861.

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Ibid.

⁶ Nikil Sunil, “Frank Gehry’s Digital Blueprint: Revolutionising Architecture with Technology,” Parametric Architecture (https://parametric-architecture.com/frank-gehrys-digital-blueprint-revolutionising/?srsltid=AfmBOopNQO-r7AwRqFDECgFTQ1Nya7kpXJcbBDb-l02OZOeFNypn2KK8), November 20, 2024.

⁷ “Zaha Hadid Architects Develops Visionary Buildings with Software from Dassault Systèmes Partner Gehry Technologies,” https://www.3ds.com/newsroom/press-releases/zaha-hadid-architects-develops-visionary-buildings-software-dassault-systemes-partner-gehry-technologies