The second floor houses the private quarters, including the bedrooms and bathrooms. While it follows the footprint of the original Dutch Colonial house more closely than the ground floor, it is no less radical.
The , located in Santa Monica, California, is a landmark of deconstructivist architecture that Frank Gehry transformed starting in 1978. The floor plan is a fascinating study of how an architect can build a "new" house literally around an existing one, creating a complex dialogue between traditional and avant-garde styles. The Floor Plan Concept: A House Within a House gehry residence floor plan
One of the most misunderstood elements of the is the vertical circulation. There is no grand staircase. The second floor houses the private quarters, including
From almost any point in the house, a viewer can see through multiple layers of history. You can look through a new glass window, across an old porch line, into a traditional living room, and out into a courtyard wrapped in chain-link mesh. The floor plan is a fascinating study of
To truly understand this architectural masterpiece, one must look past the chaotic exterior facades and analyze the Gehry Residence floor plan. The layout is a brilliant exercise in spatial tension, layering, and the blurring of interior and exterior boundaries. The Core Concept: A House Within a House
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.
The floor plan also tells the story of the home as an architectural laboratory. Gehry used a very limited budget—just $50,000 at the time—to turn his own dwelling into a creative workshop. The design strategy, as explained by the architect himself, was to discover and reveal new information about the building and its environment with every decision.