The Sirmai-Peterson house, which Frank Gehry and his then partner Greg Walsh created in the mid 1980s, is hidden away on a leafy estate in Thousand Oaks, a 1960s planned community north-west of Los Angeles. It’s one of the most ambitious, though little-known, of the houses that the firm designed close to home, using simple forms and materials to brilliant effect, before the commissions for the Bilbao Guggenheim and Walt Disney Concert Hall marked a radical shift of scale and expression.
Tour Sirmai-Peterson house, an early Frank Gehry design
Forty years ago, Frank was beginning to win attention from high-profile clients, but most of his commissions were still small-scale and frugal, and his practice was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Like Robert Rauschenberg and other artists he admired, Frank created assemblages of humble materials, transforming simple forms into sculptural masses and magical labyrinths. The Sirmai-Peterson house, designed for a couple from Minneapolis, is a cluster of cubes with a towering lantern that plays off the softly rolling terrain and is reflected in a tranquil pond. The material palette is basic: concrete blocks, stucco and Douglas fir, with accents of galvanised aluminium.
Flagstones lead to the understated, slate-paved entry hall, which flows into a dining area, kitchen and one of two primary suites in a linked pavilion. The house is set on a gentle slope, and steps lead down to a spacious living room, from where one descends to a second bedroom pavilion. Expansive windows frame a landscape of oaks and olive trees resembling that of Tuscany, and light filters in from above. The geometry of the plan turns the house into a cinematic experience of shifting perspectives.
A jutting balcony overlooks the pond, which is fed from a waterfall and a stream. It’s home to frogs, migrating birds and even bass that have strayed in from a neighbouring pond. An elevated walkway leads to a guest house, set on a rise, that doubles as an office. This impassive block of fair-faced concrete with huge square windows was designed by Brian Murphy, an inventive local architect, to serve as a foil to Gehry’s cubic composition.
This house and the Schnabel house in West LA that followed represent the culmination of Gehry’s early residential work. Little noticed when new, they have been overshadowed by the later masterpieces. That’s a pity, because they were radical departures from convention at the time and their power to surprise and delight is undiminished.
Brian Linder and Rick Grahn of The World of Architecture, who handled the recent sale of the house, came with low expectations but were blown away by its complexity and the way that each room feels like a little house in itself. They didn’t have far to look for a buyer who would respect the integrity of the original design. A medical professor and his wife, who had lived thirty years in a ranch house a short walk away, were tipped off by their window washer, fell in love with the house at first sight, and snapped it up.
It represents a radical departure from their previous home and its picturesque neighbours, and there’s the challenge of fixing a leaky roof and integral gutters, but the house can now enjoy an extended life as part of the rich legacy of modernism in southern California.