Frank Gehry died this weekend at the age of 96.
If you didn’t know who Frank Gehry was, don’t feel bad; neither did Ice Spice, Rachel Sennott, Alex Cosani, or several other influencers when they were asked two years ago at Dion Lee’s New York Fashion Week show. To catch you up, Gehry was one of the most influential architects of the last century, a designer who dragged architecture out of polite modernism and into something stranger, more sculptural, and more experimental. Most obituaries will focus on the Guggenheim Bilbao, the Disney Concert Hall, and the big, swooping, titanium-clad monuments that made him famous. Instead, we'll focus on the small Dutch Colonial house he bought in 1978 and what we all can learn from it.
In 1978, Frank Gehry wasn’t yet “Frank Gehry™. He wasn’t a Pritzker winner. He wasn’t the architect of Bilbao or Disney Hall. He was a mid-career architect with a modest budget, a young family, and a stubborn curiosity about materials no one took seriously. So he bought a perfectly ordinary 1920s Dutch Colonial in a quiet Santa Monica neighborhood. An utterly unremarkable house, something many architects today would either politely renovate or tear down and rebuild for the content.
Gehry did neither.
Instead, Gehry wrapped the house in corrugated metal, chain-link fencing, plywood, and exposed wood framing. Why? Because he wanted to see what happens when you use materials honestly, materials most people thought were too cheap, too industrial, or too ugly to be architecture.
The neighbors hated it. Some probably still do. But that house, not the Guggenheim, not Disney Hall, reveals more about Gehry’s understanding of materials than any of his famous buildings.
During the day, the chain-link fence created a shimmering, semi-transparent mesh that filtered light and cast patterned shadows across the interior walls. At dusk, when the lights came on inside, the fence glowed and the industrial material transformed into something almost delicate. The corrugated metal wasn't painted or treated, so it would oxidize over time, develop rust stains, and age visibly. Gehry wasn't trying to prevent that. He was designing for it.
Exposed wood framing jutted out at odd angles, revealing structure instead of hiding it behind finished walls. Plywood sheets, the kind contractors use for sheathing before applying "real" siding, became the final surface in some areas. You could see the grain, the laminations, the texture of a material most architects spend their entire careers trying to hide.
The effect was jarring.
It still is.
Walk past the house today, and it still looks like a construction site that never finished, or an avant-garde installation dropped into a quiet residential street.
Apparently, a neighbor was so furious that they threw a rock through a window. Others filed complaints with the city. Some circulated petitions. The house violated every assumption about what residential architecture should look like: polished, cohesive, expensive-looking, respectful of the neighborhood's aesthetic. It was rough, cheap-looking, and made people uncomfortable because it refused to perform the role houses are supposed to perform in nice neighborhoods. Gehry wasn’t building for the approval of the crowd or to be contrarian for the sake of provocation; however, he was courageously following his curiosity and was willing to let it lead him wherever it determined he should go.
What Gehry’s Santa Monica House Reveals About Honest Materials
Most of what we call "good design" is just expensive materials arranged conventionally.
Think about the last residential project you saw praised in a design magazine. Chances are, it featured the most expensive countertops, hardwood floors, the most expensive fixtures, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a color palette of whites, grays, and natural wood tones. All beautiful. All expensive. All safe.
What did that project teach you about materials? About their structure and potential? About what's possible when you work with constraints?
Probably nothing.
It taught you that if you have enough budget, you can buy beautiful things and arrange them in a beautiful space. Which is true but also completely useless if you're trying to create something meaningful and personal, like the look of your first apartment or new home.
The Santa Monica house proved that honest materials, used with genuine curiosity, can be more interesting than expensive materials used conventionally.
This is why the house matters more than the Guggenheim Bilbao. The Bilbao had a massive budget, sophisticated engineering, custom-fabricated titanium panels, institutional support, and global attention. It's an incredible building. But you can't learn much from it if you're not working with a $230 million budget.
The Santa Monica house you can learn from because Gehry made it with the same constraints most designers and homeowners face: a modest budget, ordinary materials, skeptical clients (in this case, his neighbors), and the challenge of making something meaningful anyway.
What Gehry’s House Teaches That People Have Forgotten
Curiosity beats expense.
Gehry didn't choose a chain-link fence because he couldn't afford something better. He chose it because he was genuinely curious about what chain-link could do that other materials couldn't. How light moves through it. How it creates a boundary that's both physical and visual, but not solid. How it ages, oxidizes, and changes over time.
This kind of curiosity is rarely encouraged today. When was the last time you designed something with a material you'd never used before? A material you were genuinely curious about, even if, and especially if, it intimidated you a bit or was unconventional?
Showing the process is more interesting than hiding it.
The Santa Monica house reveals how buildings are made. Nothing is hidden behind drywall or finished surfaces. Most contemporary design does the opposite. Everything is hidden, finished, or polished. You're only supposed to see the final result, pristine and perfect.
But perfection is boring. The process is interesting. Seeing how something was made teaches you how to make things yourself. Seeing only the finished product teaches you nothing except that you can't afford it.
Constraints force creativity in ways unlimited resources never do.
The Santa Monica house happened because Gehry had constraints. A modest budget meant he couldn't use expensive materials. Working on his own house meant he could experiment without risking a client's money or reputation. The existing structure meant he had to figure out how to work with what was already there instead of starting from scratch.
Those constraints led to the most creatively important project of his career. Not despite the limitations, but because of them.
How to Apply Gehry’s Principles to Your Own Creative Work
You're might not be doing a full renovation on a house. You might not be working on anything architectural at all. But the principles Gehry proved with corrugated metal, plywood, and chain-link fence apply to any creative work.
Stop waiting for better materials.
Whatever project you're avoiding because you don't have the right materials, the right budget, the right conditions, start it anyway. With the materials you have. With the budget you have. With the constraints you have. Constraint is the catalyst. Waiting for better conditions is just procrastination with better branding.
Get curious about honest materials.
Find one material you've dismissed as too simple, too honest, or too ordinary. Spend a week looking at it. Really looking. How does light hit it? How does it age? What can it do that dishonest materials can't? Then design something around that one material, not to prove a point but because you're genuinely curious about what it can become.
Show the process.
Whatever you're making, a building, a product, a piece of content, anything, show how it's made. Let people see the rough draft, the failed attempts, the decision points. The finished version is less interesting than the journey to get there. And showing process teaches others how to make things themselves instead of just consuming what you made.
Use the old thing.
If you're renovating, remodeling, or updating something, consider wrapping instead of demolishing. What happens if you keep the old structure visible and build the new thing around it? Let the collision between old and new be visible instead of pretending everything was always meant to be this way. The tension between old and new is interesting. Seamless cohesion is boring.
What Frank Gehry’s Santa Monica House Actually Proves About Creativity
Frank Gehry spent 70 years designing buildings that changed skylines and sparked arguments across industries. But the Santa Monica house, that rough, confrontational, chain-link-wrapped collision of old and new, matters more than any museum or concert hall he built.
That house proved you don't need the most expensive materials to make something meaningful. You don't need a massive budget or perfect conditions, or institutional support. You just need curiosity about the materials you have, honesty about what they are, and the willingness to let them be themselves instead of forcing them to pretend.
Most people are waiting for the right project, the right client, the right budget to do their most important work.
Frank Gehry did some of his most important work with a modest budget and materials that everyone else dismissed.
The difference wasn’t resources. It was curiosity, and we all have some of that.
"I approach each project with a new insecurity, almost like the first project I ever did, and I get the sweats, I go in and start working, I'm not sure where I'm going." - Frank Gehry