This strategy created a literal "house within a house." The floor plan reads as a historical artifact enclosed in an avant-garde display case. Gehry stripped back the plaster walls of the original house to expose the wooden studs and joists, turning structural framing into visual screens. Consequently, the boundaries of the floor plan are never absolute; rooms look into other rooms, and structural skeletons frame views of adjacent spaces. Ground Floor Plan: The Collision of Public Spaces
The floor plan is defined by "cubist" windows. Rather than flat panes, Gehry used tilted glass cubes that jut out from the structure, creating breakfast nooks and light wells that feel like they are floating outside the house. The Second Floor: The Private Sanctuary
In the plan, you will find a chain-link cage wrapped around a raw wooden staircase. This "silo" is located near the center of the old house. As you move from the ground floor to the upper floor, the staircase cuts through the existing roof trusses.
Over the years, Gehry has made several changes to the house, including adding a swimming pool and making alterations to the facade and floor plan. gehry residence floor plan
The upper floor is where the "Gehry Residence floor plan" becomes a true optical illusion.
Moving up to the first floor, the floor plan shifts toward a more private, yet equally fragmented, arrangement of spaces.
Traditional floor plans rely on distinct rooms with clear functions (e.g., hallway, dining room, kitchen). Gehry collapsed these boundaries. Spaces bleed into one another through exposed studs, missing doors, and transparent glass planes, creating a continuous, flowing interior landscape. Layered Thresholds This strategy created a literal "house within a house
The house was a collision: an existing two-story Dutch Colonial bungalow, preserved but violated. The old gable roof remained, but Frank had shattered its quiet dignity. He wrapped it in new geometries—plywood, corrugated metal, chain-link fencing. A glass cube pushed out from the dining room, intersecting the old like a transparent scream. Inside, the floor plan was a map of , asymmetrical axes , and unexpected corners .
The ground floor plan includes a series of interconnected spaces that blur the lines between indoors and outdoors. The design features irregularly shaped rooms and levels, with significant use of glass, wood, and stone. A notable feature is the use of chain-link fencing and corrugated metal, materials not typically associated with residential architecture.
Looking at the top-down, you see two parallel lines: the south wall (original exterior, now interior) and the north wall (new glass facade). Ground Floor Plan: The Collision of Public Spaces
Are you interested in more deconstructivist floor plans? Check out our deep dives into the Vanna Venturi House and the Wexner Center.
: The design was so unconventional that it initially infuriated neighbors, who viewed the jagged, metal-clad structure as an "eyesore".
The original house sat quietly on the corner of 22nd Street and Washington Avenue. Gehry’s challenge was simple yet impossible: How do you double the size of a modest family home without destroying its soul—or going bankrupt?
Frank Gehry’s personal home in Santa Monica, California, is a landmark of contemporary architecture. It serves as the definitive manifesto of Deconstructivism. Built in 1978, the house is not an entirely new structure. Instead, it is a radical transformation of an existing 1920s Dutch Colonial suburban home.