GEHRY’S HOUSE, CALIFORNIA

Gehry House, CaliforniaArchitect :Frank Gehry

Year(s) of construction :1977-1979

Year(s) of remodeling:1991

Floors :2

Façade :deconstructive

Location :Santa Mónica, California, United States

Coordinates :34° 2' 7" N, 118° 29' 5" W 

INTRODUCTION When Frank Gehry and his wife bought an existing home, built

in 1920 in Santa Monica, the neighbors did not have the slightest idea that the corner residence would soon become a symbol of deconstructivism.

Gehry, however, knew something had to be done in the house before he moved.

His solution was daring for the 70s, involved the "balance of fragment and whole, raw and refined, new and old" and from that moment the controversy ensued.

Gehry actually kept the old Dutch colonial house, but not in a conventional manner, the new residence was built around the old.

Holes were made, walls were thrown and were rebuilt and the quiet old house became a loud cry contemporary among the mansions of the astonished neighbors.

The neighbors hated him, but that does not change the fact that the house would become a piece of art intertwined with the architecture.

The architect's experimentation with new materials is very noticeable, like the new look experienced in a simple two-story bungalow.

The Santa Monica home is not a new house built by the architect, but a modification of an existing building, changing the shape, extending, adding new materials and completely changing the appearance.

LOCATION

Gehry Residence is located on the corner of 22nd Street and Washington Avenue in Santa Monica, California,.

The only view of the house are the trees that surround the site, with complete privacy, as they close all the gaps above eye level with the exception of the window which overlooks the garden.

The drawings made by the architect represent its context, the landscape around the house is that of post-war urbanization.

It is surrounded by fields, forests, deserts or grasslands, Gehry's house sits on a small lot, a few blocks from an endless shopping avenue, Wilshire Boulevard.

His views are full of home crowd representing "the American dream". Even the suburban lot purchased by Gehry was already occupied. A two-story building with pink tiles, "a small house without words and charming"

as the architect called, poking her cute mansard roof on the horizon of the green suburbs.

Instead of pulling, Gehry turned the old house at the base of his own dream. Cut walls, dropped ceilings, and wove the dismembered remains with a new

architectural framework: industrial shell plywood, glass wire, galvanized metal and metal mesh.

CONCEPT

"... I loved the idea of leaving the house intact ... I came up with the idea of building a new home about. We were told there were ghosts in the house ... I decided they were ghosts of cubism. Windows ... I wanted to make them look like they're dragging. At night, since the glass is tilted reflect light ... So when you are sitting at this table all these cars are passing by, you see the moon in the wrong place ... the moon is there but it reflects here ... and you think it's there and do not know where the hell are you ... " Frank Gehry

Gehry Residence is a deconstructivist work on a conventional suburban California house, remodeled in phases, over decades, from his reworking seminal 1978 original.

The house meets important properties that make it different, however the principle is really hated renewal neighbors and your own style, it was difficult to understand the deconstructive aspect of the house.

The architect explains: "... Armed with very little money I decided to build a new house around the old and try to maintain a tension between the two, making one define the other, and making them feel that the old house was intact within the new, from the outside and from the inside. These were the basic objectives ... "

SPACES

Gehry used corrugated layers of metal boxes Cubist skylights and windows to create a larger sense of space and movement implied in the kitchen and dining room.

He removed the walls to expose the wooden structure, which is the method of construction of the building.

Before starting the process, Gehry made a list of the positive and negative qualities of the building:

Exterior Positive: A giant euphorbia in the backyardInterior Positive: plywood walls in the studio, narrow

plank floors oak paneled windowsNegative: the neighborhood is occupied by buildings.

Gehry covered outside the house with a new and unusual skin, used a wrapping process, a montage of fences around construction.

Used for the outer layers of corrugated sheet metal, with new walls that stand in odd angles and awnings that continue beyond the house to partially enclose a private courtyard.

Two wired glass cubes form a link between the old house and the new layer.

Along Washington Avenue, a large glass cube looks momentarily interposed between the old and the new structure of the house, its form echoes the overhead trellis.

The cube light flooded kitchen space while maintaining privacy.

STRUCTURE

The original structure is the conventional two-storey bungalow with framing.

Some interior finishes have been stripped to reveal the support of the structure inside the residence.

The bearing wall is raised inner and outer structural frames wooden support beams, girders and joists.

New structure Gehry House is a renewal, in three stages, an existing suburban

building. The original house is embedded with several additions intertwined

conflicting structures, being very distorted its original structure. But the strength of the house comes from the feeling that the additions

have not been "added" to the site, but that came from inside the house. It is as if the house had always harbored these twisted forms inside.

'first Stage' In the first stage, the forms twist their way out from the inside. A bucket inclined, for example, consists of the wooden structure of the

original house, breaks through the structure, removing the layers of the house.

As these forms make their way out, take off the skin of the building, exposing the structure, create a second skin that wraps around the front and the site of the new volume, but disappears right posterior wall of the house to release her as a stage. 

After passing through the structure, forms escape this second skin, but ultimately prevents them from escaping.

Therefore, the first stage operates in the space between the original and its skin wall displaced.

This gap is an area of conflict in the stable differences between interior and exterior, original and added, structure and facade are questioned.

The original farmhouse has become a strange artifact, trapped and distorted by the forms that have emerged from within it.

Step secondIn the second stage, the structure of the rear wall that is

not protected by the skin, operates and planks come out. The structure almost literally breaks.Stage threeIn the third stage, the courtyards are filled with shapes that

seem to escape the house through the gap in the back wall, which is then closed.

These forms are placed under tension by being twisted relationship with each other and with the house.

Gehry House becomes a monograph with a complicated relationship between conflict within and between the forms.

GROUND FLOOR

1 ENTRY2 LIVING ROOM

3 KITCHEN4 BED ROOM7 INTERIOR YARD

FIRST FLOOR

4 BEDROOM5 MASTER

BEDROOM6 WARDROBE

SECOND FLOOR

MATERIALS

It makes use of unconventional materials such as fences with trellis, glass inner wire and corrugated metal sheets, wood framing, corrugated steel, plywood and light wood frames.

The hidden idea behind the work of Gehry in what would be his residence is not the deconstruction of the old house of 1920 and the discovery of his bones.

The sculpted shape and semi-industrial raw materials support the dynamic movement and irregular shapes and fluid.

The kitchen floor is covered with asphalt, suggesting a path to the outside of the original bungalow.

FRONT ELEVATION

REAR ELEVATION

SIDE ELEVATION

SIDE ELEVATION