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A sculptural home just outside of Los Angeles designed by late architect Frank Gehry just sold for $2.45 million without ever officially hitting the market. It’s the first time the Sirmai-Peterson House, as it’s known, has traded hands since the Pritzker Prize–winning architect—who died in December at age 96—completed it nearly 40 years ago. A nearby resident apparently caught wind of the property’s impending entrance to the market and swooped in with an offer, which the owner accepted.
Cameron Carothers
Gehry designed the home as a series of abstracted structures around a central courtyard.
The seller was Mark Peterson, who, along with his late wife, Barbara Sirmai, commissioned Gehry and then-partner Greg Walsh to design the striking concrete residence in the early 1980s. Located in Thousand Oaks, the resulting two-bedroom home is organized as a cluster of distinct structures set around a central courtyard. Each pavilion has its own dedicated use, with gathering spaces in the largest one and bedrooms split off.
Gehry opted to give the retreat an uncommon entrance, putting the front door at the end of a bridge-like pathway flanked on one side by a water feature that recalls a moat. For the material palette, he kept it simple: just stucco, concrete block, and galvanized steel on the outside, with Douglas fir used prominently inside along with slate floors.
Cameron Carothers
The soaring interiors feature slate floors and Douglas fir ceiling beams.
In 1996, designer Brian Murphy added a guest house to the 2.3-acre grounds. Together, the structures total more than 4,500 square feet.
After creating this home, Gehry would go on to design some of the world’s most well-known postmodernist structures, among them the Guggenheim Bilbao in 1997 and L.A.’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in 2003.
The agents behind the sale were Brian Linder and Rick Grahn of Compass.
Geoffrey Montes is an associate editor at ELLE Decor with a serious love for all things real estate and design. Before that, he worked at Architectural Digest, Galerie, and Preservation magazines, covering everything from jaw-dropping listings to world-famous architects and design events like Salone del Mobile and Homo Faber.