Beyond Bilbao: Frank Gehry's Hidden Genius in Transforming Ordinary Spaces

Frank Gehry, who passed away at 96, is often remembered for his flashy, titanium-clad masterpieces like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. This iconic project transformed a Spanish industrial port into a global destination and made Gehry a household name. However, focusing solely on these megaprojects misses one of his most crucial achievements: his ability to turn existing, ordinary buildings into humane and delightful spaces.

Gehry's legacy includes high-profile works like Walt Disney Concert Hall, but his true genius shines in adaptive reuse projects scattered around Los Angeles. These reveal a thoughtful, even humble approach to space, bearing the imprint of Southern California informality. As Gehry once told his biographer, he found the rigid perfectionism of modernists like Mies van der Rohe suffocating, preferring spaces where you could "throw your clothes on a chair."

One of his most visible remodeling projects is his own home in Santa Monica, redesigned in 1978. He transformed a pink Dutch Colonial Revival bungalow into a wild experiment, stripping the interior to expose wooden joists and extending the kitchen over the driveway with asphalt flooring. Wrapped in corrugated metal with strategically placed windows, the house became a "kinetic lightshow," as Gehry described it, filled with daylight and framed views of mature trees.

Gehry extended the Santa Monica kitchen over a driveway, leaving the asphalt as flooring. (Frank O. Gehry / Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles)

While the architecture world adored it, neighbors were less enthusiastic—one compared it to "a Tijuana sausage factory." Yet, the fuss over its form overlooked the experience of living within, where Gehry created an open, light-filled space that felt alive and informal.

Gehry also applied this subtle touch to cultural hubs in Los Angeles. In the late 1970s, he expanded Gemini G.E.L., a printmaking studio on Melrose Avenue, adding architectural flourishes like a tilted skylight that made ascending stairs feel like entering a geometric abstraction. Similarly, his renovation of an old warehouse and police garage into the first home of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) in 1984 left the industrial guts intact, creating a rugged, unfussy space that merged with its urban context.

This building, now called the Geffen Contemporary, has proven ideal for exhibitions like "Monuments," which critiques white-supremacist aesthetics with decommissioned Confederate monuments. Its industrial interiors avoid romanticization, embodying Gehry's early projects that were "rough around the edges."

In 2021, Gehry completed the Beckmen YOLA Center, a permanent home for the Los Angeles Philharmonic's youth orchestra in Inglewood. Carved out of a modernist bank building that had been a Burger King, it features flexible rehearsal spaces, cozy plywood nooks, and abundant sunshine. Gehry noted, "It's not a precious building, but it's precious in what it does."

This project marked a full-circle moment for Gehry, returning to his roots as a designer who found the extraordinary in the mundane. Unlike the ego-driven starchitect projects, the Beckmen Center reflects a welcoming, transformative space for young musicians, remaking a fast-food site into a hub of art and community. Great legacies, as Gehry showed, can be built on such humble foundations.