Gehry Residence Floor Plan May 2026

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

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:

It was safe. It was boring. And for Frank Gehry and his wife Berta, it was the perfect cage to break open.

Why do architects obsess over this specific floor plan? Because it broke every rule of "Good Design" in 1978. gehry residence floor plan

Before Gehry, residential floor plans were designed for comfort, predictability, and the "hearth." The Gehry Residence floor plan is designed for event. It is uncomfortable. The angles are wrong. The exposed studs collect dust. The chain-link rusts.

And yet, it is a masterpiece because it is honest. The floor plan reveals its own construction. You can see the studs as lines on the plan; you can see the old house vs. the new house.

This floor plan predicted the digital age of architecture. Today, architects use software like Rhino and Maya to create "blob" architecture. But Gehry did it with a utility knife, a cardboard model, and a broken Dutch colonial house. The original house’s floor plan remains almost untouched,

If you search for the original Gehry Residence floor plan drawings (held by the Getty Research Institute), you will notice something peculiar: The drawings are messy. There are erasures. There are cross-outs. There is tape holding the velum together.

This is because Gehry designed the house by building physical models (the "Fish" and "Bang" models) and then photographed the models to create the construction drawings.

Key features to look for on the original blueprints: It was safe

Scattered across the ground floor plan are what Gehry called "cubes." One is a plywood structure surrounding the front door. Another is a plywood volume housing the master bathroom. These cubes act as "rooms within rooms." On the floor plan, they appear as solid, hatched areas—unmovable blocks that break the flow of the open plan.

The plan includes a small mezzanine and a separate studio space that exploits the leftover gaps between old and new.