The house Frank Gehry created for himself and his wife, Berta, in 1978 on a highly visible street corner in Santa Monica, and which he renovated and updated again in the early 1990s, helped make his reputation as one of the most potent creative forces in 20th-century architecture. An assemblage of glass, plywood, corrugated metal, and chain-link fencing that enveloped an old Dutch Colonial that remained, slightly disembodied, at its core, the Gehry house was hailed as an icon of residential design from its earliest days, and the architect lived happily in it for decades.
