The Sirmay-Peterson house was designed by Frank Owen Gehry like a family house for Sirmay-Peteron family.

Commissioned in 1983, Sirmai-Peterson House was completed in 1988 on a secluded site in Thousand Oaks, California. As with several of Gehry’s residential projects, each room is created as a separate building meaning the property sprawls across the site in a village-like arrangement.

“A structure in process is always more poetic than the finished work,” Gehry says, and indeed, in many of the houses, a rough, informal precision conveys vibrancy and energy. By leaving certain aspects undone, the architect reveals his materials and exposes more of his canvas to let it live and breathe. The houses presented here bolster the argument that Gehry is an artist who happens to be an architect.

Gehry used many materials such as metal, glas, wood. It makes also use of unconventional materials. This type of work with materials is for Frank Owen Gehry´s architecture very typical.

The whole building act like a big structure. Around a part of this building is water, around an other part of this building is located a big garden. It is very important that the whole building have enough space around. It looks like an artwork.

For designing this house in California, Gehry is inspired by a church, a central church where the kitchen, the entrance and the dining room revolve around a fireplace-service block dominated by a dome. From this central body a nave is opened (the living room) in whose apside is the fireplace between the volumes of the two gehry rooms. It places a large portal as the entrance to the living room with the intention of creating a square. It’s the movement that understands this building and the countless prospective games. It is technologically molded with brick-clad masonry inlaid inside, from roof-to-ceiling and scaffolded metal staircases, from wooden windows, covering an area of 318 sqm to meet the needs of four people.

References:

https://www.themodernhouse.com/journal/house-of-the-day-frank-gehrys-sirmai-peterson-house/

http://www.latimes.com/home/la-hm-gehry17-2009oct17-story.html

SAGGIO, Antonino. Frank O. Gehry: architetture residuali. Torino: Testo & immagine, 1997. ISBN 8886498276.

A CURA DI MILDRED FRIEDMAN, CON UN SAGGIO DI MICHAEL SORKIN a E COMMENTI DI FRANK O. GEHRY. Frank O. Gehry: architettura + sviluppo. Milano: Rizzoli, 2002. ISBN 8874230680.

Authors:

Andrea Vášková

Alena Mourová

Max Vanhalst