Gehry Residence Floor Plan: [2021]
The Gehry Residence in Santa Monica, California, stands as a seminal masterpiece of contemporary architecture. Designed by Frank Gehry for his family in the late 1970s, this radical renovation of a traditional Dutch Colonial house became the blueprint for deconstructivist architecture. At the heart of this architectural revolution is a deeply complex, layered, and unconventional floor plan.
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The old living room and stairs remain the structural heart, but they are stripped back. You can see the lath behind the plaster, blurring the lines between "finished" and "under construction." gehry residence floor plan
To the north on the floor plan, Gehry converted the detached garage into a design studio. This space, accessed via a plywood bridge, functions as the master bedroom suite and studio. The floor plan reveals a raw rectangle with a bathroom wedged into the corner—no frills, just corrugated metal and glass.
On the second floor, the original gambrel roof of the Dutch Colonial house becomes an internal feature. Gehry cut away sections of the roof, floor ceilings, and exterior walls to create unexpected vertical voids. Standing in the master bedroom, one can look down through the exposed floor joists into the kitchen below, or look out through a chaotic matrix of glass and chain-link fencing. 2. The Backyard Extension The Gehry Residence in Santa Monica, California, stands
Completed in 1978, the Gehry Residence (often referred to as the Gehry House) is not just a home; it is a manifesto. To understand the floor plan is to understand how Frank Gehry taught the world to read architecture backward. In this long-form analysis, we will strip back the corrugated metal and chain-link fencing to examine the raw bones of the layout, the circulation secrets, and the spatial philosophy hidden within the .
The wrapper contains the new, avant-garde public spaces. If you are analyzing this iconic design for
The floor plan of the Gehry Residence is a physical manifesto of Deconstructivism. It proved that architecture did not need to be clean, unified, or harmonious to be functional and profoundly beautiful. By slicing open a mundane suburban home and wrapping it in a raw, industrial exoskeleton, Frank Gehry created a floor plan that is simultaneously fragmented and cohesive, chaotic and carefully ordered. It remains a masterclass in how to manipulate space, history, and materials within a domestic footprint.
Gehry installed a steep, wooden that climbs from the original living room up to the new mezzanine. On the architectural drawing, this ladder looks like an afterthought. But in practice, it is the hinge.
Before we put pen to paper, we must understand the constraint. Frank Gehry did not build from scratch. In 1977, he purchased an existing 1920s Dutch Colonial-style house for his family. His neighbors expected a renovation. What they got was a collision.
When the Gehry Residence floor plan was first published, critics called it "an eyesore." Neighbors demanded it be torn down. But today, it’s considered the birth of .