| © samantha krukowski Inhabiting Frank Gehry's Santa Monica House 1994 |
This essay is devoted to an investigation of the well-known house (essentially an addition) Frank Gehry designed for himself in Santa Monica, California.1 While another article on this buillding may hardly seem necessary--it has been publicized extensively--I am choosing to consider it for a number of reasons. The first is that its widespread critical reception is an indicator, if not of its importance, then of its capacity to generate interest. I am curious about the reasons for this capacity and interest. Second, the ways in which the house has been discussed most often address what it represents rather than what might be understood as its nature. Gehry's house is not only an object but a space for inhabitation, and the way in which it is experienced from the point of view of someone who lives in it is rarely mentioned. Lastly, the house, when it is considered first as a dwelling, clears the way for a discussion of issues which are inspired by but not limited to it. The relationship of Gehry's house to the realm of the domestic invokes questions about the meaning, responsibility and role of any house, anywhere. Gehry's house offers a segue for understanding a house primarily as a house, doing what houses do. The questions I am asking of Gehry's house are similar to those which Martin Heidegger once asked of a jug. In his essay "The Thing" of 1951, Heidegger asks "what is the thing in itself?"2 In terms of the house, this question can be rephrased to ask what constitutes the house’s “thingness” (or “houseness” if that is how thingness is inferred by it) and how is this houseness communicated? I have made a leap by crossing so quickly from “thingness” to “houseness,” since Gehry’s house has not always been recognized as a house. Some critics, especially Gehry’s neighbors, would deny that his house is anything but an eyesore. Others might label it an art object before calling it a house, and still others might be so preoccupied with its particular architectural or material gymnastics that what it does or is as a whole is uninteresting to them. Nonetheless, I would argue that each of these is really a response to the Gehry house as a house--the structure in Santa Monica was originally conceived as a house and it continues to function as one. In “The Thing,” Heidegger's interest is in pinpointing that which is essential to something which gives it its identity. His essay is a journey in and around a jug which aims at discovering the jug's nature, but also the nature of any "thing" at all. I want to rely heavily on Heidegger's writing in order to evoke something of the nature of Gehry's house, using it to cut a path to what is most fundamental in Gehry's residence. While it might seem important to turn as well to all of the articles which have been written about Gehry’s house, I do not do so for two reasons. First, despite the quantity of these articles, their content is not particularly varied and can be easily categorized, sometimes to the point of stereotype.3 Second, there is no guarantee that their attempts to discuss the house get me any closer to it, especially since so many are of a descriptive character. Michel Foucault clarifies that “description...is nothing more than a sort of proper noun: it leaves each being its strict individuality and expresses neither the table to which it belongs, nor the area surrounding it, nor the site it occupies. It is designation pure and simple.”4 Designation is not really a significant means of access to the nature of the house, and I want to understand it in a way these articles do not attempt. Because Heidegger’s essay speaks about the nature of things, when the Gehry house is considered next to it, his essay forces the house to reveal those things which are not in the criticism about it but which actually generate that criticism. I am outside, sitting on the low, powder-blue, cinder block wall and staring at the house. A weedy hillock meets the wall behind me, windswept grass and dirt coat the paved ground near the entrance. There is no use for a lawnmower. Two corrugated planes force my attention to the door which is squeezed between them. It is a plain, white, thin, hardware-store door, simply framed by raw wood. It sports no awning, but only the overhead shadow of a strange, sculptural manipulation of chain link fence at the second floor level. An ominous suspension. The steps to the door are material planes--concrete slabs and plywood palettes arranged on top of each other. They insist on one entrance sequence: if I want to get in, that's how I go. A proper chimney pokes up from the facade, alerting me to the 1920’s pink bungalow which supports it and the new encrustation. Standard windows face me, but an angled pane to their right asserts itself against their straightforwardness. Heidegger begins his essay by speaking about proximity and distance. He indicates that some things, like technology, may seem to abolish distance, but that in doing so they do not necessarily produce proximity: "short distance is not in itself nearness."5 While Heidegger's reasons for writing about technology and distance are firmly grounded in the preoccupations of the mid-twentieth century, the point with which he begins can also serve as mine. I am writing about a house which is at a distance, and the way in which I approach it structures what I am able to say about it. Gehry's house is in California, I am in Texas. I am therefore not writing at the place of the house itself--not from inside it, outside it, or in the context of its environment. I am at a geographical distance from its physical self. Likewise, the sources which I can use to establish some kind of relationship with the house are distant from it. They come in the form of words and photographs, and both texts and images are representations which condition their content as they relate it. Photographs of the house only show me certain parts or views. Words written by others contain the house in a previously and consciously structured narrative. Anything I write in response to these sources will not be a response to the house so much as a response to the way it has already been seen. If I was writing from the site of the Gehry house itself, it is not at all clear how close I would be to it. Perhaps I could walk around its exterior and peer inside, perhaps I could sit in the front yard and look at it for a long time, taking in more of its details than one glance could afford. Perhaps I could even get inside it and walk through it, experiencing how the exterior and interior meet to make livable spaces. But even in this last position, arguably the most intimate for a visit, there are questions about how close I am to the actual house. I will only have toured through its spaces. I will not have touched its corners, tripped innummerable times over its misplaced boards, fumed at the windows which are so hard to clean. In short, I will not have known it as houses come to be known over time, through use and repeated gesture. But let me return to Heidegger. “Short distance,” he says, “is not in itself nearness.” Nearness holds a privileged position in Heidegger’s writing because it is synonymous with the nature of something. If Heidegger’s nearness is a goal for addressing the Gehry house, it must be achieved in the midst of the many levels of knowledge possible when thinking about a building. Of anyone, perhaps Gehry is closest to the house. It is, after all, his design and the place of his residence for over a decade. He knows it in drawings and in life: he knows how its joints fit together as well as he knows how it accomodates his toothbrush. But in his references to the house, Gehry doesn’t speak much about it as an inhabitation. The most he has said is that it is comfortable and that “it does leak a little.”6 The majority of his words focus on his design intentions and their manifestations. But the house is not only these things, it is not experienced through them. If Gehry had spoken more about his house as a place for living, his ability to communicate it would be limited as well. He would only be able to relate how he lives in it, and not its potential for other kinds of inhabitation. He would present it as his house, and not as a dwelling. I have stepped onto the top platform before the front door. My feet have traversed the hard concrete and then the soft wood, my ears have heard the different sounds of my steps at each level. Now, facing the white door with its peephole and welcome mat, I put my hand on that stainless steel, rounded handle. The plywood panel by the door imocks the place of a window and replaces its transparency with the opacity of wood grain. I look up into the cage above, back to the street, and turn the doorknob. Since Heidegger’s “nearness” cannot be located in what
Gehry or anyone else says about it, or even by visiting it, there is a
clear distinction drawn between physical or intellectual proximity and
nearness. What we think we know or are capable of knowing may actually
turn out to be foreign. Then, what might have been the source of understanding
provides only the experience of distance. Heidegger notes that this recognition
often results in fear. “What is it that unsettles and thus terrifies?”
he asks. “It shows itself and hides itself namely in the fact that
despite all conquest of distances the nearness of things remains absent.”7
One of the most interesting things about Gehry’s house is that it
has inspired a need to understand it, to engage nearness. But it has also
inspired fear. Imagine the passer-by who goes by the house and says “what
the hell is that?” Gehry enjoys this fear--he has revealed his attitude
towards his neighbors and it takes a superior tone. To him, his neighbors
simply don’t understand his artistry. He says, Gehry’s design, of course, is not the same as a boat or a camper, and his intimation that it is privileges his eye over that of his neighbors when his neighbors are probably right that his aesthetic is not the same as their boat. But Gehry toys with the distance that could be encountered in front of any building by playing it up. His thoughts about the reception of his house prevent any attempt at nearness--the house and Gehry are not open to its local context. I am inside a small , white, vestibule. It takes me to the living room first. At the back of the room is a framed alcove, home to a plush couch and an outside view to the backyard. Sunlight dapples the fabric and plays over the repetitive rhythm of exposed rafters. Phones and books make this little space more enticing than the big room I am in. Here, there is a formal edge. The fireplace, surrounded by plywood, accomodates two chairs and a coffee table. These are arranged and fussy--they say display. But that funny little room, it has a funny little white window. The white window is from somewhere else, a familiar frame collaged onto the studs and rafters and bracing behind it. While any house considered in Heidegger’s terms could elude nearness,
Gehry’s intentions for his house intensify the effect. It is almost
impossible, in the face of his words and ideas, to speak about “the
house” itself. What does “the house” mean? It is a house,
as I have indicated, because of its function. It is also a house because
of its location; it forms a part of a neighborhood. It defines itself
both on its site, in this case the corner, and in reference to its surroundings,
in this case an upper-middle class neighborhood in Santa Monica, California.
But it is not a house like those which pepper the neighborhood. While
it is a redesigned version of an original bungalow, Gehry’s design
is no mere addition in the sense of those house additions which are quite
common, if not necessary, in that part of the world. Gehry does not simply
add. He takes the first bungalow and surrounds it with his design. The
old bungalow could be understood to be spilling out through the addition,
it could be trapped within it, it could be the inspiration and the guide
for it (much as Heidegger is my guide for this essay.) Gehry certainly
envisioned something particular: However the relationship between the old and the new is read, it seems most important to think about the fact that there is a relationship and that what people respond to most is Gehry’s part of it and not that of the old bungalow. Most publications of the house show the South elevation the least (fig. 1) and it is this elevation that reveals the originary bungalow most. And most discussions of this old-new relationship focus on an exterior view, and not the effect on the interior. The focus on Gehry’s’ design over that of the bungalow is of course due in part to the nature of publicity--to Gehry’s self-promotion and to the desires of his promoters. But Gehry’s design is dependent on the bungalow for its existence. Without the bungalow as a point of beginning, the house is not as easily related to its neighborhood. The site might place any design in the neighborhood, but the bungalow roots Gehry’s there. It is Gehry’s design in conjunction with the bungalow that provokes the “what the hell is that?” response. They are conspiring icons. The bungalow is a standard, recognizable, common, predictable entity. The addition may be common in practice, but it changes dramatically that in the bungalow which is familiar. Its materials, form and character are significantly different from the bungalow, and they can be thought of as benefactors or betrayals of that which they invade, enhance, obscure, or clarify. I am not prepared to sit, so I turn right to the dining room. The wood floor changes to asphalt (asphalt?), the ceiling opens up, the art is low and the windows active. A corner of the pink bungalow, its siding revealed to this interior, remains. One window stays horizontal, another shifts away. I go to this angled window and put my hands on its sliding sill, which is just low enough to see above. I imagine the room is crooked and the window straight, or the world outside is straight, and I am ttilting against it. I back away from this window, letting it frame a tree beyond, and then cease to be a window as it devolves into a shape. I am in the kitchen. In Heidegger’s quest to understand a thing, he suggests that something
may be a thing because it is a self-supporting, independent, locatable
object in space. But he also proves that this is not the case. Gehry's
house, nonetheless, has been primarily considered as an object (as an
artwork, as an important architectural example, as the expression of a
distinguished architect) but its objecthood, Heidegger clarifies, does
not prove its existence as a house. When Heidegger asks “what in
the thing is thingly? What is the thing in itself?”10 he indicates
that looking at something only as an object disallows the process by which
it has come into being. And there is a process by which Gehry's house
comes into being--it has been made . One way that Heidegger moves away from the object is to introduce the term “what stands forth.”13 He does so to two ends. First, “what stands forth” indicates that a thing stems from somewhere, and is not an object isolated from its sources. In terms of the Gehry house, these sources are numerous, and include everything from Gehry’s architecture professors to his architectural references to theories like deconstruction or practices like collage. The article I have been using as my primary reference for commentary on or by Gehry is quite eager to place him squarely in the annals of history. It cites Venturi, Moore, Graves, Kahn, Hejduk, Meier, Eisenman, Duchamp, Gaudi, Serra, Oldenburg, Schwitters and abstract art as Gehry’s sources.14 If all of these actually inform the house while they bolster Gehry's status, they are part of its field of reference. “What stands forth” is also that which is in full view of its present circumstances. Here, the neighborhood, as I have mentioned, situates the house. It cannot be read conveniently as a detached and iconoclastic artistic statement--it is responsible for its gestures in a community. The ceiling is low, the light bright. A reinforced glass cube, framed in wood, tilts against the horizontal stretches of cabinets and counters. Oh, but there is a jar of wooden spoons here, a copper kettle, and a row of wine glasses. There is an underwatered plant and a half-full bottle of dishwashing liquid. I am looking at the light on the floor, running my hands on the tiles of the counter, wanting to bake bread. I look up at that angled cube and see the chain link cage outside. I look back to the dining room and see the corner of the kitchen disappear into the tilted window. The cabinets roll. I pull one out, push it back in. I turn to walk up the stairs. Heidegger extends his ideas about “what stands forth” when he begins to speak about the void of the jug. The jug is not merely its exterior shape or its placement on the table, but also its empty interior. This is the origin of its capacity to pour and to hold. With Gehry’s house, its materials, its sources and its environment can contribute to its houseness, but somehow they remain secondary. The empty spaces of the house define it much more than the shell that has received so much attention. To Heidegger, the jug’s void holds by taking what is poured in.15 Gehry’s house houses by admitting its inhabitants, by containing them in a particular way. According to Heidegger, this containing or holding, as he calls it, comes in two forms: taking and keeping.16 It is dependent on what he terms the “outpouring”, for “to pour from the jug is to give” and its nature is revealed in “the poured gift.”17 In terms of Gehry’s house, it is at once publicity agent, architectural experiment and permanent responsibility for Gehry. But it is also a place to sit, to eat, to sleep, the think. It is none of the other things before it is these. If the house is understood to take and to keep, what exactly does this mean? Who or what is taken? What is kept? A seemingly obscure sentence of Heidegger’s begins to answer these questions. He writes “the spring stays on in the water of the gift.”18 In other words, if the jug contains water, it also contains the spring from which it was drawn. The water in the jug always refers to its sources. If wine is in the jug, Dionysus and the grape are there too. Gehry’s house takes and keeps him in that it contains all of the fields of reference for him. This is not to say that the house can be read as an expression of Gehry; the house is not legible as him or as his intentions. Rather, it takes and keeps him in that it is the place of the majority of his lived, human movements. Day to day, it records the path of his life. And as it does, he responds to its accomodations and its failures to accomodate. He is the maker and the ego of his own dwelling, but he is also the most basic reason for its continued existence. It tells him something about himself as an architect, maybe even as a neighbor, but it tells him more about his humanity. The carpeted master bedroom. A veritable construction display in the latticed window wall and the ceiling. But there is a finished lattice wall, too, and those comforting white frames for doors, and a frumpy couch with toys on it, and a frilly bedspread draped over a king-sized bed with four neatly stacked pillows. They both like to sleep with two pillows. I sit on the bed and face the TV. The wall beyond it supports a crooked calendar, family photos, a robe. The carpet is soft beneath my feet. Heidegger demonstrates how the jug that holds water and wine holds more than the spring and the grape, but also holds the sky and the earth.19 Because of this it becomes the site of a world. In water is the reflection of the sky, in wine, the fruit of the earth. If the sky and earth are to be found in the jug, then so is the world which exists between them. And this in-between world includes humans, who, biblically, are made of earth and water by a god who inhabits the sky. As the bible says, “but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground.”20 Take Heidegger’s sky and earth to Gehry’s house, and the house and its inhabitants are conjoined. The house becomes the physical composite of earth and sky. It is steel and wood and glass (earth), reflection of ideas, intention and person (sky). It also contains both earth and sky in the form of Gehry's person. The house is the place of his reflected identity. Bathroom break. How odd! A window for a medicine cabinet. I should be looking out. But I am, not at myself but at my reflected image. A louvered window reminds me of my grandmother, so does the vase of flowers. But she wouldn’t like that window-medicine cabinet thing. Nope, not even fully painted! Heidegger writes: “the gift of the pouring out is drink for mortals. It quenches their thirst. It refreshes their leisure. It enlivens their conviviality. But the jug’s gift is at times also given for consecration...the outpouring is the libation poured out for the immortal gods. The gift of the outpouring as libation is the authentic gift.”21 Gehry’s house satisfies a human need for shelter. It is a place of rest and relaxation (Heidegger’s leisure) and a place within a community (Heidegger’s conviviality.) But its ultimate gift is not so specific--its “libation...for the immortal gods” is its contribution to the character of all houses--its likeness to or difference from them. In form, Gehry’s house aims away from the idea of a home--a place of family gathering. In function, it accomodates the requirements of home. The way that it looks minimizes its apparent offerings of leisure and conviviality. This may be why there are those who can only speak about it as art, as art with form and no function. But its function remains under its artistry. What will be best copied over time is not to be found in their shapes, but in what they provide. Let me return, momentarily, to Heidegger’s ideas about nearness and distance. Heidegger says that nearness effectually preserves farness, or, “death is the shelter of being.”22 In everything far there is something near, or while far is the opposite of near, it is dependent upon near for its definition. The relationship between the original bungalow and Gehry’s addition is important in the context of this idea. The house within the house is dead as it originally was--the addition obscures and changes it. But it does not allow the addition to eliminate its importance. Its signs are visible behind the tilted cube of the North elevation (fig. 2), in the kitchen whose floor is the old driveway, in the bedspread and the furniture in the bedroom. No matter how architecturally experimental Gehry’s design, it cannot help but admit the items of domesticity which lend comfort rather than surprise. The outdoor deck, a sculpture garden for metal mesh. I am in the neighborhood, looking out at it, but screened behind this batting cage. The fenced , bumpy railing won’t allow me to run my hands over it and feel its changing slope. I cannot reach the fencing beyond that is taller than I am. I go to stand above that tilted cube, through the gateway, and look down at the kitchen. I don’t really want to get a chair to sit here. No, this is a temporary place. Heidegger writes that “thinging is the nearing of world...the nearing of nearness is the true and sole dimension of the mirror-play of the world.”23 I would argue that one of the reasons Gehry’s house has garnered such attention is because it show us something of ourselves. It shows us the unity and disunity possible between house and inhabitant, but it insists that we recognize that relationship in a gesture that is at once daring and self-centered in its context. If we compare Gehry’s domicile to our own, we imagine living daily with an off-axis kitchen window, the unfinished, un-neighborly front lawn, the constant statement. And we wonder whether, or how, we could live in it. This is the kind of thinking that makes us understand the house as a house. As Heidegger indicates, in order to grasp the house as a house we must step back from the thinking that merely represents or explains “to the thinking that responds and recalls.”24 This is the thinking of experience and intuition, of memory and subjective response. And this thinking does not occur in the realm of appearance. The Gehry house is most like a thing to Gehry himself, for as Heidegger insists, “men alone, as mortals, by dwelling attain to the world as world.”25 It is unfortunate that he has not expressed what he really knows about it, or, perhaps no one really ever speaks of the intimacies between self and home any place other than the imagination. I go back down the stairs and exit to the backyard four times. It is impossible not to try all four doors. There is cactus, and exposed foundation, more plywood and a garage. Oh, that’s the bungalow’s garage, poking its nose beyond this strange, encircling, corrugated steel wall. And there’s a window in the wall--if I look out, who will look in? I poke my head through and there’s a picket fence, as surprising as the non-structural supports which pretend to hold up the wall. I can’t resist climbing through the window to the sidewalk. From there, I can watch the house continue to announce itself on its corner as I move away from it. Notes 1 I am interested primarily in Gehry’s first design. While the house
addition itself has been recently renovated, this renovation does not
dramatically change the character of the original one. |