Week 1 Researching Frank Gehry- Deconstrustivist Architecture

Deconstructivist Architecture

Frank Gehry

As part of my research to generate ideas for my final major project I found it crucial to research architects and artists who will inspire me to create distinct designs with the help of their style and influence. One of these special architects I've decided to use is Frank Gehry because of his famous deconstructivist style that he incorporates into his unique designs like the ones below. 

This is the Lou Ruvo Brain Health Center in Las Vegas designed by Frank Gehry. It is a research centre for degenerative brain diseases which is also divided into two separate buildings connected by a courtyard.  

This unique home ‘ Gehry Residence’ is Frank Gehry’s own house which was built and designed by himself, it was also originally an extension built around an existing Dutch Colonial style house where he decided to wrap the outside of the house with a rare but extremely captivating exterior.  It makes use of unconventional materials, such as chain-link fences and corrugated steel. It is sometimes considered one of the earliest deconstructivist buildings, although Gehry denies this. What really inspired me from this house is how he wedged in tilted glass cubes on the sides of the house, this is an aspect of his work that I really thought I could use to make my idea abstract like, as a normal shape can be altered to look unusual but unique.

The Gehry Residence is located in Santa Monica, California. In 1977, Frank and Berta Gehry bought a pink bungalow that was originally built in 1920. Gehry wanted to explore with the materials he was already using — metal, plywood, chain link fencing, and wood framing. He hardly touched the rear and south facades and to the other sides of the house he wedged in tilted glass cubes. Then in 1991, he chose to remodel due to the needs of a growing family. Many of Gehry's neighbors were not happy at the unusual building being built in their neighborhood

"Frank Gehry's own house in Los Angeles is rather a collision of parts, built to stay but with a deliberately unfinished, ordinary builderlike sensibility of parts."

"With the original house almost intact form wise, Gehry, in effect, lifted back the skin to reveal the building as layers, with new forms breaking out and tilting away from the original, to create a forerunner of the Deconstructionist spirit of the eighties.