Residence Floor Plan: Gehry

The original house’s floor plan remains almost untouched, providing a sharp contrast to the addition.

While sitting at the dining table, guests look through double-hung glass windows into the living room. These windows were originally the outside facade of the Dutch Colonial house. 2. The Traditional Inner Core

The (1978) in Santa Monica, California, is a landmark of deconstructivist architecture that famously "wraps" an existing Dutch Colonial bungalow in a new, raw industrial shell. Its floor plan is defined by a "house within a house" concept, where the original structure's rooms act as internal volumes surrounded by new perimeter spaces. Core Floor Plan Concept: The "Wrapping"

Frank Gehry, known for his bold and unconventional designs, has always been fascinated by the relationship between architecture and the human experience. In the 1970s, Gehry began experimenting with new design approaches, pushing the boundaries of traditional architecture. The Gehry Residence, his own home, was the perfect opportunity to test his ideas and create a living space that reflected his avant-garde vision. gehry residence floor plan

To understand the genius, you first need the canvas. The original structure was a 1920s Dutch Colonial bungalow—a classic, symmetrical box with a pitched roof and a predictable layout:

[ Back Yard / Deck ] | +-----------------------v-----------------------+ | New Dining Area Asphalt Floor | | (Glass Cube Above) Greenhouse Feel | +------+ +------+ | | | | | New | +-------------------------------------+ | | | Kit- | | Original Living Room | | Pass | | chen |<---| (Stripped to Studs / Exposed Wood) |--->| thru | | | +-------------------------------------+ | | | | | | +------+-----------------------+-----------------------+------+ | [ Front Entry ] The New Kitchen and Dining Wrap

Although Gehry himself does not use the label for his work, critics and architectural historians widely cite the Gehry Residence as one of the earliest and most important examples of deconstructivist architecture, due to its fragmented forms, lack of symmetry, and aggressive juxtaposition of disparate materials and eras. The original house’s floor plan remains almost untouched,

The second level (or the mezzanine) is the most photographed section of the house, but the floor plan reveals its genius. This is essentially a 40-foot-long plywood and glass bridge suspended inside the original house’s volume.

Gehry's approach was to keep the original house largely intact and build a new "envelope" around it. This concept embodies the "balance of fragment and whole, raw and refined, new and old". The design was intended to "wrap around three sides of the old house on the ground floor," extending the structure toward the street while leaving the exterior of the existing home almost untouched. This strategy created a powerful dialogue between the familiar and the experimental, the domestic and the industrial.

The Gehry Residence (1978) in Santa Monica, California, is not merely a house but a manifesto. Its floor plan challenges the conventional separation of interior and exterior, old and new, public and private. Rather than following a linear sequence of rooms, the plan is best understood as a series of overlapping spatial conditions—an architectural collage shaped by the constraints of an existing Dutch Colonial bungalow and the radical addition of deconstructed geometries. Core Floor Plan Concept: The "Wrapping" Frank Gehry,

Some notable features of the floor plan include:

His plan was audacious: to keep the original house physically intact and liveable within, while designing a new architectural shell that would wrap around three sides of its exterior. This decision set the stage for the floor plan's most defining feature—a continuous, layered tension between an existing suburban past and an avant-garde architectural future.

The floor plan functions as an architectural dialogue between the old, neat drywall and the new, raw materials. 2. Ground Floor Plan: The Public Intersections

It teaches us that a home does not need to be quiet. It can be loud. It does not need to be insulated from the street. It can embrace the noise. And a floor plan does not need to be a circle. It can be a collision.