U.S. architects. The Goldberg family changed its
name to Gehry and moved to California when
Gehry was seventeen years of age. His highly unusual
forms are commonly referred to as deconstructivist
or deconstructionist, although Gehry himself re-
jected such classifications. Many of his later commis-
sions were for public buildings and museums, but
a guest house he designed in 1987 for clients in
Wayzata, Minnesota, gives a taste of his iconoclastic
style. The living room was the center of the building,
with three rooms and a fireplace alcove extending
from the corners as separate structures. Each room
was a different shape and of a different material, in-
cluding sheet metal, galvanized metal, coated ply-
wood, brick, and stone veneer.
Another prominent U.S. architect, Robert Ven-
turi, had a varied career, from designing the Sains-
bury Wing of the National Gallery in London, En-
gland, to designing home furnishings. Two award-
winning houses designed by his firm, Venturi, Rauch
& Scott Brown, are prime examples of homes that
not only responded to the needs of the clients but
also were sensitive to the surrounding environment.
The Coxe/Hayden house and studio, situated on
a large tract of land on Block Island in Rhode Island,
was actually two separate houses, adjacent to each
other and similar in style. The larger house con-
tained the kitchen, living and dining rooms, master
bedroom and bath, and a writing studio. The smaller
house had guest quarters above the large garage and
workshop. Both were in an updated version of the
style typical of many of the area’s nineteenth century
buildings, and their gray exteriors blended with the
nearby salt pond and boulders that lined the prop-The Eighties in America Architecture 65
The Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, was one of the most recognizable architectural achievements of the 1980’s.(© Ar-
nold C [Buchanan-Hermit])