Gainsburg House

Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright, designed the low-slung Gainsburg House in 1946 in the spirit of his father’s Usonian House prototypes of the 1930s.

Like those houses, the Gainsburg House was planned close to the land on a triangular grid and constructed with modest materials. The new owners sought to reverse years of insensitive alterations while including a new kitchen, dining and family rooms, updated bathrooms, lighting and finishes, with accommodation for contemporary art display. We introduced a new color palette to distinguish the contemporary work while complementing the original palette of redwood and concrete block. Interestingly, we discovered during demolition that the house originally contained a polychromatic palette and two of Wright’s original colors for the interior were almost identical to the colors selected for the renovation.

In factoring the programmatic issues of light, space and scale together, hue and tone became extremely important, both in the need for exterior and interior colors to harmonize and in creating a distinctive identity for the interior spaces of this home. Wright painted each room a distinctive color. In the renovation, a different color was introduced on individual wall planes within each space to add a subtle rhythm to the interior. Millwork was originally predominantly redwood, with some walnut grain plastic laminate. In the renovation, walnut cabinetry was introduced to clearly yet subtly distinguish the new work from Wright’s original building fabric.

The house was conceived as one area within an overall site geometry and the exterior can be seen from all interior angles and spaces. Our new palette compliments the original finishes and reinforces the existing geometry, enhancing a rhythm that moves throughout the house and engages the landscape in a continuous spatial composition.