Frank Gehry designed house taking shape in Atherton

We’d heard that a home designed by architect Frank Gehry was being built on Camino por los Arboles in Atherton and wandered over to take a look.

We were lucky enough to encounter a couple who live in the neighborhood who’ve watched it take shape the past three years and even had a chance meeting with the famed architect. They told us that a woman was going to live in the front house with her daughter and grandchildren in an adjacent house in the rear (not pictured).

This is a property that one can spend some time staring at with its many distinguishing features. Those features proved challenging for Tekla Structures who called it “one of our most challenging projects in a very long time.”

“The architect on this house was the well-known Frank Gehry and he does not like anything straight or square,” said a posting the company’s website.  “This alone makes any steel detailer work extra hard in trying to manipulate steel into those intriguing shapes and forms required to maintain the design.  The structural engineers on this project also had their hands full.  Throughout the project, we had weekly BIM coordination meetings with the owner, architect and structural engineers to go over unique connections and situations occurring as we modeled the steel.”

Gehry designed two of Facebook’s buildings, MPK20 which opened in 2015, and MPK21 which followed in 2018.

Photo by Robb Most (c) 2021