Gehry House

Normally, one doesn't expect a Deconstructivist iconic building nestled in a quiet, suburban setting, but that is the house that Frank Gehry built in Santa Monica. The original two-storey "dumb little house with charm," as Mr. Gehry famously called it, can still be seen behind his renovation. While his later experiments in architecture tended toward extravagantly curved titanium skins, in his earlier works everyday materials and techniques such as corrugated metal, chain-link fence and exposed structure were used. In some examples, he wraps the entire building with these materials, completely encapsulating them. However, in doing so, he also frees the building to do much more than it originally could. A renovation in 1993 softened some of the original experimentation, but the original ideas can still be seen in this unique house.