Gehry House

Architect Frank Gehry

Remodelation Architect Frank Gehry
Built in 1977-1979
Remodeled in1991
Floor2
Façade deconstructive
Location
Santa Mónica, California, United States
Calor
18c a 24c
Frio
9c a 18c
Vientos ´
5.3mph a 9.2mph
some parts of this article have been translated using Google’s translation engine.
We understand the quality of this translation is not excellent and we are working to
replace these with high quality human translations.
Introduction
When Frank Gehry and his wife bought an existing home, built in 1920 in Santa
Monica, California, 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.

The American Institute of Architects awarded the Prize in 2012 for 25 years (2012
25 Year Award) to Gehry House, the home of architect Frank Gehry, being
recognized for his contribution to the history of design and its continuing
importance as an architectural landmark for more than two decades since its
construction.

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

Description
Although the house retains a sense minimalist design is full of expressionism and
sensitivity is freely understood as artistic intuition unresolved accident. The palette
is anti-high-tech, “high tech”, in favor of a visual presence that is ordinary and
created with “low cost technology”, “cheap tech”.

First reform
The new design proposed by the architect surrounds three sides on the ground
floor of the old house, extending it to the street and leaving the exterior virtually
intact, barely touched the facades that were encased in glass cubes, with the
exception of the rear facade it was removed to open the rear garden.

Inside were made considerable changes in its two plants. In some places it has
stripped the plaster coating to reveal the framing, exposing the joists and studs. It
was renovated in accordance with the other side, showing the old and new
elements. This is especially evident when walking through the rooms of the house
and go through the new doors placed by Gehry and original housing.
The entrance is barely visible amid the salient angles of the exterior, which Gehry
created from wood, glass, aluminum and metal mesh. The apex of the old house
looks from inside this mix of materials, giving the impression that the house is
constantly under construction.
The housing is made for people who live and move in it. Gehry uses routes that
circulate through the space to create areas within or rest and motion through
space. On the ground floor are located the kitchen, a living room, two bedrooms, a
bathroom and backyard. On the first floor the master bedroom, a second bedroom,
a dressing room, a bathroom and a terrace.

In 1991, due to family growth Gehry, the house had to be expanded. Although
Gehry tried to maintain the same style, which allows the original design, to
determine the addition, the house underwent significant change. The residence
became much more “finished”, awakening the angry voices of those who strongly
supported the original deconstructivist aesthetics. Yet the Gehry House is still a
classic California architectural works.

The skylights were designed as separate entities, each with its own identity. None
of the skylights were perceived as connected to each other, any relationship
between them is haphazard and accidental. Nothing is consistent.

Second reform
The house was reinvented twice by the architect. The second reinvention was in
1992, due to new requirements. The children were grown, they needed a better
family privacy and more room, so turned the garage into a guest room and a
games room whilst adding a pool. Moreover, renewed the wooden structure that
covered the house, missing some details of the first reform.
Gehry said early on that kept only the kitchen window, I wanted to make it look like
the “ghost of Cubism”, it really was a cube without any symbolism. Just a cube, or
the ghost of Cubism that tries to escape from the house and is trapped, not
wanting to be there.

Spaces

AXONOMETRÍA
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.

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 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.

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.

“… I was raised at the beginning of my career with a Viennese master to produce

perfection, but in my first projects, I could not find the office to achieve this
perfection. My artist friends, people like Jasper Johns, Bob Rauschenberg, Ed
Kienholz, Claes Oldenburg, were working with very inexpensive materials, broken
wood and paper, and were producing beauty. These were not superficial details,
was rather straightforward, raised the question of what was the beauty. I chose to
use the available jobs, and work with builders and make a virtue of its limitations.
The painting had an immediacy that I wanted for architecture. Explored the
processes of building materials to try them raw emotions and soul. Trying to find
the essence of my own expression, I fantasized about being an artist blank canvas
in front of deciding which was the first action. He called it the moment of truth. The
architecture to solve complex problems. We need to understand and use
technology, we have to create buildings that are safe and do not get wet, respectful
of its context and its neighbors, and face a myriad of social responsibility issues,
and even customer satisfaction.
But then what? The moment of truth, the composition of elements, selection of
forms, scale, materials, color, finally, all the same issues that face painter and
sculptor. The architecture is definitely an art, and all who practice the art of
architecture architects are definitely… “[Gehry, 1989]