Both houses rely on timber (plywood for the older house, Douglas fir for the new one). Although the two wings of the new residence are large (10,000 square feet in total), in comparison to the old house (4,000 square feet), the main wing of the new house is only 1,000 square feet bigger than its predecessor. In fact, the modest dimensions of the family room and the master bedroom are exactly the same as in the older building.

Just as Gehry had played with unusual materials and forms for the early renovation, Sam wanted to test his ideas about sustainability for the new project. The house is heated or cooled primarily by radiant floors (fed by nine geothermal wells), ventilation, and shading. These can be supplemented by gravity walls—cavities in the walls that contain vertical pipes for cool or warm water, and an airspace. Solar panels and solar water heaters cover the guest wings’ roofs. Gehry confesses that they are still fine-tuning the system: “It was a tricky experiment and is not yet perfect.”

Oriented to the northeast and northwest of the entrance foyer, and facing the street, are the dining room and living room, both dominated by heavy, intertwined timber beams that contrast dramatically with large expanses of glass. Gehry marvels at the intricacy of what he describes as “the beams’ connections to connections.” Every room enjoys magnificent views across the garden to the Santa Monica Canyon, but the two men wanted the views to vary. Thus the dining room is slightly elevated, with vistas that stretch to the ocean, while the living room sinks gently into the site for a more intimate outlook, toward Pacific Palisades. Both spaces have 20-foot-high ceilings, and doors that open to the garden. Accessed by an elevator and stairs, the second level contains a master suite. Gehry envisioned the interior balconies on this level, which overlook the ground floor and the ocean, as sites where musicians could play to the rooms below.

One specific request was for rooms that the Gehrys could inhabit at different times of the day. In contrast to the soaring living and dining rooms, cozy reading nooks at the east and west on the two levels catch rays of the rising and setting sun. A small study west of the ground-level family room provides an additional intimate space.

Creating the house was a family affair beyond having Sam as the design partner and designer of the furniture: his wife, Joyce, created all the carpets, and Berta chose the kitchen’s colorful Granada-tile floor. Further personalizing the home are Gehry’s famous fish lamps, which hang from the dining room ceiling, and numerous artworks, most of which were gifts from artist friends and from the Gehrys’ older son, Alejo, a painter.

A 60-foot lap pool separates the North House from the smaller South House, which contains two guest rooms and a suite for longer-term visitors, a changing room, a gym, and a large concert room (another request from Frank and Berta). Gehry calls the patio between the two structures the “entertainment plaza”; it too has a stunning view of the ocean. (Landscape architect Laurie Olin added to the existing sweetgum trees—a species Gehry favors for its deep red leaves in autumn—and also chose Chinese cinnamon trees for their golden blossoms, while Spanish lavender, California lilac, and mission olive trees bring a profusion of color to the front.) The senior Gehry has already hosted performances in the concert room, one by members of Daniel Barenboim’s West- Eastern Divan Orchestra, the second by musicians from the Colburn School in Los Angeles, for which the architect is designing a new building. They hope to have other musicians—possibly jazz—come and stay at the pavilion.

The angled, gabled roof, clad in a metal that glows almost pink at dusk, and the tilted skylights are unmistakably Gehry. Such resemblances are not unusual in architect father-son collaborations. To I.M. Pei and his two sons, Chien Chung and Li Chung; to Eliel and Eero Saarinen; to César and Rafael Pelli, we can now add Frank and Sam Gehry.