Gehry Residence Floor | Plan
From the street, the house still looks like a small bungalow. But the second floor plan reveals the deception. Gehry punched a large, asymmetrical dormer through the existing roof. Inside, this creates a master bedroom that feels like a ship’s bow. While the old house is orthogonal, the new exterior walls enter the second floor plan at jarring angles. One wall of the master bedroom leans inward. The closet is a triangular wedge. Gehry famously said he wanted the residents to feel like they were "inside a pair of pliers."
When you hear the name Frank Gehry, you likely think of titanium-clad masterpieces like the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao or the Walt Disney Concert Hall. These buildings dance with light, defying the rigid boxes of traditional architecture. However, long before the global fame, there was a small, unassuming bungalow in Santa Monica, California. This house, known as the Gehry Residence , is arguably the most important architectural dwelling of the 20th century. gehry residence floor plan
To truly read this floor plan, do not look for the living room. Look for the gap between the old house and the new. Look for the chain-link circle. Look for the asphalt rectangle crossing the threshold. From the street, the house still looks like a small bungalow
In this article, we will dissect the floor plan, circulation, material thresholds, and spatial philosophy of the Gehry Residence (1978). Before we look at the blueprint, we must understand the constraint. In 1977, Frank Gehry purchased an existing pink bungalow. He was not allowed to demolish it due to zoning laws and budget restrictions. His solution? He stripped away the interior finishes, exposed the studs and joists, and then wrapped the old house in new, chaotic forms. Inside, this creates a master bedroom that feels
When studying this plan, remember that Frank Gehry designed it by building physical models, not by drawing lines. The skewed angles are the result of tearing paper and gluing wood chips. If you try to draft the Gehry Residence floor plan with a T-square, you will fail. You have to break the square to understand it. Note: The Gehry Residence remains a private home. While public blueprints are available in architectural monographs like "Gehry, Frank: The Complete Works," the house is not open to the public. However, its influence can be seen in every deconstructivist building that followed.
This floor plan predicted the digital age of architecture. Today, architects use software like Rhino and Maya to create "blob" architecture. But Gehry did it with a utility knife, a cardboard model, and a broken Dutch colonial house. If you are searching for a "Gehry Residence floor plan" to download, you are likely looking for more than just a PDF. You are looking for a philosophical diagram.
The floor plan is therefore a palimpsest—an old structure written over by a new one. The Gehry Residence floor plan is unique because it visualizes a conflict: The ordered, grid-like rooms of the past versus the skewed, angular voids of the future. If you look at the original drawings, the ground floor retains the bones of a traditional home: a kitchen, a dining area, a living room, and a bedroom (which Gehry used as a design studio). However, the experience of the floor plan is anything but traditional. The "Old" Core At the center of the floor plan lies the original 1920s kitchen. Unlike the chaotic exterior, the kitchen retains a conventional layout—cabinets, a sink, a stove. But Gehry deliberately left the ceiling open, exposing the old wooden rafters. In the floor plan, this room is the anchor. It is the "normal" point from which you depart into madness. The "New" Living Area Just west of the kitchen, the floor plan expands into a two-story atrium. This is where Gehry inserted a massive, floor-to-ceiling glass wall that looks out onto the rear garden. On the blueprint, you will notice that the walls here are not right angles. They shift by a few degrees.
