Frank Gehry renovated his 1920 home in Santa Monica, California in the late 1970s in a daring deconstructivist style that shocked neighbors. He kept the original Dutch colonial structure but cut holes in walls, rebuilt them at odd angles, and wrapped the exterior in corrugated metal and other industrial materials. This transformed the quiet home into a symbol of deconstruction. The renovation added twisted volumes around and through the original structure, blurring boundaries between interior and exterior in a complex relationship between old and new forms.

1. GEHRY’S HOUSE, CALIFORNIA

2. Gehry House,
California
Architect :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.

3. 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.

5. 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 ... "

7. 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 backyard
 Interior Positive: plywood walls in the studio, narrow
plank floors oak paneled windows
 Negative: the neighborhood is occupied by buildings.

9.  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.

10. 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.

11. '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.

12. Step second
 In 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 three
 In 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.

13. GROUND FLOOR

14. 1 ENTRY
2 LIVING ROOM
3 KITCHEN
4 BED ROOM
7 INTERIOR YARD
FIRST FLOOR

15. 4 BEDROOM
5 MASTER BEDROOM
6 WARDROBE
SECOND FLOOR

16. 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.

17. FRONT ELEVATION
REAR ELEVATION

18. SIDE ELEVATION
SIDE ELEVATION