It’s a little hard to find given the trees and the high wall, but there it is, architect Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica family home, smack dab at the corner of 22nd and Washington Streets. Frank and his wife Berta bought their conventional Dutch colonial family home in 1977 and quickly started to tinker with it, adding corrugated steel cladding, chain link fencing and angular protrusions which drastically altered the look of the place. It’s difficult to make out the shape of the original, although parts of it, notably the roofline, are still visible from certain angles.
Gehry was experimenting with shapes and materials and what better way to play with space and volume than to experiment with his own house? His neighbours were not impressed. His penchant for large flat planes interrupted by sharp angles, a design feature of his Santa Monica home, can be seen in his Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, which he designed a year later and in the ultra modern Vitra Design Museum, built in Weil am Rhein, Germany in 1989. Shortly afterwards he moved away from angularity in favour of the undulating, curved masses for which he’s recognized. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilboa Spain is arguably the most famous.
Vitra Design Musuem in Weil am Rhein, Germany
Loyola Law School in Los Angeles
The Gehry family moved out of the home a few years ago and others moved in. The house is presently empty. Rumours persist that the City of Santa Monica wants to turn the house, which is already a tourist destination; Trip Advisor calls it number 57 of 110 things to do in Santa Monica, it into a museum honouring the legendary architect but Gehry himself will have none of it.
“I have no interest in having a personal vanity museum when I’m alive or dead,” he says. No doubt his ex-neighbours, fearing a flurry of admirers, are breathing a sigh of relief.
