Gehry Residence — Floor Plan
The additions primarily extended the ground floor, creating new, irregular spaces such as a sun-drenched kitchen and dining area that wrap around the north and west sides.
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The floor plan of the Gehry Residence is celebrated in architectural history because it broke the fundamental rules of traditional residential design:
The resulting floor plan is a fascinating exercise in layers. The original Dutch Colonial house remains largely intact at the center, acting as a traditional core, while a new, jagged skin of corrugated metal, chain-link fencing, and glass extends outward to create new living spaces. Breaking Down the Floor Plan The Ground Floor: The Collision of Materials gehry residence floor plan
The floor plan reveals how Gehry literally cut into the old house to create visual connections. He stripped away plaster to expose the wooden studs hidden within the walls. In the plan, walls are not always solid barriers; they are often porous screens that allow sightlines to cross from the deepest parts of the old house out to the surrounding trees. Upper Floor Plan: Private Disruption
Includes the master bedroom, a second bedroom, and a large attic-like "treehouse" space created by removing ceilings and exposing the wood structure.
Understanding the Gehry Residence floor plan requires looking beyond traditional boundaries to see how a "house within a house" was designed to challenge the status quo. 1. The Concept: Wrapping and Collision The additions primarily extended the ground floor, creating
Standard floor plans use simple doors to separate distinct zones. The Gehry plan uses literal exterior shingles on indoor walls, creating a complex, layered threshold where the inhabitant is simultaneously inside a 1978 radical addition and outside a 1920 suburban cottage.
Contains the master bedroom and a dressing room.
Scattered across the ground floor plan are what Gehry called "cubes." One is a plywood structure surrounding the front door. Another is a plywood volume housing the master bathroom. These cubes act as "rooms within rooms." On the floor plan, they appear as solid, hatched areas—unmovable blocks that break the flow of the open plan. To gather sufficient information, I will perform multiple
Moving in was a revelation. Their old life had been rectangular: bed at 6 AM, coffee at a square table, arguments in straight lines. Here, the hallway slanted. The living room narrowed toward a bay window that looked onto an alley. The master bedroom was a sliver of the original house, but Frank had knocked out a wall and replaced it with a raw plywood plane that cut the space diagonally.
While the final, remodeled house is considerably larger than the original, its footprint is distinct for its strategy of wrapping a new exterior around the old core. The new wing of Gehry's later Santa Monica home is reported to be just 1,000 square feet larger than the house it replaced, with the family room and master bedroom being the exact same modest dimensions as in the older building.