Frank Gehry, Danziger Studio and Residence, Los Angeles, 1964-65

In Domus 1020, January 2018, the article “Frank Gehry. Danziger Studio and Residence” presents archival photos and drawings of the building that triggered the first index of American architect’s international recognition. Read here an excerpt of the text by Jean-Luis Cohen, with a selection of sketches by Frank Gehry, Carlos Diniz and Greg Walsh.

(...) Gehry recalls: “So I met with Louis and Greg Walsh was with me and we worked on a studio. He wanted to live there and then have a studio. He was going to hire an assistant – he was expanding his office. He wanted a library.”(1) On a busy corner of Melrose Avenue, in a neighbourhood where printers and other businesses of the graphic trades abounded, Danziger’s idea was thus to build a 1,000-square-foot studio along with the 1,600-square-foot townhouse, contained in a single building. The first sketches reflect this unitary principle. Walsh affirms that “the big epiphany for me was when we pulled the two elements apart. For the first time we had two pieces on a single site.” (2)

(...) The almost endless search for convincing clusters of volumes reveals the interest Gehry already had “in the idea of connection, of putting pieces together”. In 1984, he considered this attitude as being “in a way very similar to what I am still doing, 20 years later. I suppose we have only one idea in our lives.”(3) A vast number of versions were thrown on paper, and some more rendered perspectives were drawn by the gifted Carlos Diniz, who also happened to be a friend of Danziger. (...)