The New Playboy Bachelor Pad

We like our apartment," Hugh Hefner wrote in Playboy's inaugural issue. "We plan on spending most of our time inside." Half a century later we still find ourselves dedicated to the pursuit of indoor sport. Little wonder that Playboy has always considered the proper bachelor pad to be a critical component in achieving the good life. In May 1962 we published plans for the original Playboy Town House, which Hef initially intended to build as his home in Chicago. (He canceled construction when he found the Playboy Mansion.) When we decided to update the concept for the new millennium, we knew only one man could do the job justice: Frank Gehry, the most accomplished and best-known architect since Frank Lloyd Wright.

A native of Canada who moved to Los Angeles when he was 17, Gehry made his mark as an iconoclast who used chain link, plywood and corrugated metal to create what he called "cheapskate architecture" that defied modernist conventions of form and material. But it was the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain—a titanium monument to fluidity and grace—that announced Gehry's arrival as a master in 1997; he's been the world's most indemand architect ever since. By all accounts Gehry is the perfect choice to build a hedonistic pleasure dome. "There are no gloomy Gehry buildings," wrote architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable. "Delight breaks through constantly."

Gehry accepted our challenge to design the ultimate abode for the single urban male. We told him to disregard traditional constraints of budget; our only request was that it be a truly livable space. Working from Gehry's drawings and sketches, members of his design team created the models on these pages. This is no pie-in-the-sky design; the pragmatic Gehry fully expects his Playboy bachelor pad to become a reality.

[Q] Playboy: What were you hoping to accomplish here?

[A] Gehry: I thought about the tradition of the Playboy pad and the lifestyle embodied by the magazine, and we tried to work from that. The goal was to find a physical manifestation of those ideals. Now we hope to actually build it.

[Q] Playboy: What's the idea behind these designs?

[A] Gehry: We started with a loft building. The pad is on several floors and also on the roof. Each floor is pretty large, and each one has been designed as a single room, so one floor is the library, one is the lounge, one is the bedroom. That's how it's organized.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think is the most interesting feature?

[A] Gehry: It has a big elevator, like a freight elevator, only it's a living room. When you come in and the elevator is on the ground floor, it connects with the lounge. You can hang out in the bar. If you go up to dine, you bring half the living room with you and it connects to the dining area. It also goes up to the third-floor library and the bathing space.

[Q] Playboy: And what's upstairs?

[A] Gehry: The top floor is the bedroom. There's a pool on the roof. When you're in bed, you look at the glass on the bottom of the pool. My sons did sexy murals for the walls. The whole place is colorful and has a lot of soft forms. If I were a bachelor and bought one of those loft spaces, this could really work, because they make elevators that big, like the elevator at the Whitney Museum in New York, which holds 30 people. You'd have that big platform, and then it would be a room, and it would keep going up.

[Q] Playboy: You'd have the elevator repairman in every week.

[A] Gehry: Oh, no, they're not that complicated—they work on a piston, like a lift in a garage. It would make for an interesting place. I think a big TV would go in the elevator so you'd have a big liquid-screen DVD thing on any floor. I'm excited about this town house. I think it would work for anyone, not just bachelors. It would be quite reasonable to do.

[Q] Playboy: How is a bachelor pad different from other abodes?

[A] Gehry: Well, I really couldn't tell you. I haven't been a bachelor since the 1970s.

[Q] Playboy: What shaped your attitude toward urban design?

[A] Gehry: Modern architecture denies decoration. So how do you humanize a building without resorting to 19th century decoration? I looked for clues in the city. One clue was that buildings under construction look better—warmer, friendlier—than they do when they're closed up. Then, the sense of movement is part of the urban character. It's a kinetic thing. I started trying to use those ideas.

[Q] Playboy: What's up with you and those fish?

[A] Gehry: I started using fish motifs because when everybody began making postmodern stuff, I was angry. The Greek temples are anthropomorphic. One day in a talk I said, "Damn it, if you're going back to be inspired by man through the Greek temples, why not go back further? If you want to go back in time, go back to fish, 300 million years before man." I just blurted it out, but then I started drawing fish in my sketchbook. And it became an obsession. Every time I'd get a chance, I'd start doing these funny fish. You had a sense of movement from the tail.

[Q] Playboy: What's your favorite city?

[A] Gehry: I guess Paris, because I lived there for a year. Lately I've been excited about Lisbon. It's an amazing place.

[Q] Playboy: What's your favorite North American city?

[A] Gehry: Chicago. Architecturally, it's the most interesting city. I like the new Soldier Field. It's great.

[Q] Playboy: What would you like to design that you haven't yet designed?

[A] Gehry: I haven't done a skyscraper, that big phallic thing. Everybody wants to have the world's biggest erection.

[Q] Playboy: Is it true that you turn down nine out of 10 job offers?

[A] Gehry: No. We can only do so much, and I'm trying to keep the office at a certain size. After Bilbao we were asked to do a lot of Bilbaos. You know, "Come and save my city." That kind of stuff is so intellectually uninteresting. They don't know why they want it, they just want it. I don't want clients who bend over and say, "Here's all the money you want. Just do whatever you want." I want a tough client with a tough budget who's willing to explore with us and do something special.

[Q] Playboy: How does it feel to go from being a rebel to being part of the establishment?

[A] Gehry: Gee, I don't think of myself that way. Luckily, my success came very late, when I was in my 60s and 70s, so I don't trust it all. I'm always insecure as I approach a new project. I think it's a healthy insecurity.

[Q] Playboy: Fifty years ago architects had a utopian vision for urban life. Why have they moved away from that?

[A] Gehry: Because you can't do it. Our cities are a product of democracy, and they're chaotic because of that. We have to think incrementally. In other words, you have a sphere of influence that's only one or two blocks, and you try to make those blocks the best you can. To try to build a Rockefeller Center or an Albany Mall is antithetical to the time we're in. That kind of megalomania is from the 19th century.

[Q] Playboy: Why is commercial architecture in the U.S. so boring today?

[A] Gehry: Because the people building it aren't sophisticated. They're just dull.

[Q] Playboy: Which animal is the best architect?

[A] Gehry: The beaver.

[Q] Playboy: What's the biggest cliché about you?

[A] Gehry: That I just crumple up a piece of paper or sketch something on a cocktail napkin and it becomes a building. I design my buildings from the inside out. They're not sculptures.

Pads Gone Wild A look at some of recent history's most famous—and infamous—bachelor domains

Voulez-Vous Coucher Avec Moi?

Bachelor: Fashion designer Pierre Cardin. Pad: Palais Bulles (Bubble Palace), his villa near Cannes, France. The Jetsons-esque pad was built in the 1970s. Every room is round, resembling a bubble—even the windows are circular. Winding staircases and semispherical pools keep pushing the sensuous theme. Closer: The round (of course) bed, big enough for four people—or two people and a lot of toys.

JFK and Marilyn slept here

Bachelor: Rat Pack movie star Peter Lawford. Pad: 625 Palisades Beach Road in Santa Monica, California, where JFK and RFK were rumored to enjoy trysts with Marilyn Monroe and others. Boasting a martini bar, it became so synonymous with sex that "Peter Lawford's beach house" is a euphemism (as in "We're dating, but I still haven't been to Peter Lawford's beach house"). Closer: A swanky beachside pool that looks out on the Pacific.

Motion of the Ocean

Bachelor: P. Diddy. Pad:Southern Cross III, a $25 million, 181-foot yacht anchored in France. It features seven cabins, several bars (Cristal for everyone!) and 13 staffers. Ladies who've made waves on board: Diddy's sometime girlfriend Kim Porter and dozens of Ibiza beach bunnies. Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher have also yachted with Diddy. Closer: The hydraulically operated heliport for impromptu landings.

Pyramid scammer

Bachelor: Wilt Chamberlain, who boasted of scoring with more than 20,000 women. Pad: A 7,000-squarefoot estate in Bel Air, California, where Chamberlain kicked it for nearly 30 years. Built in 1971, the house is almost entirely triangular—including the billiard room and the seven-foot-deep hot tub. A bedside button fills it up. Closer: The mirrored bedroom ceiling, which retracts to reveal the heavens.

A hard Uday's night

Bachelor: Saddam Hussein's son Uday, who never let being a deranged tyrant interfere with his rep as a ladies' man. Pad: A mansion in Dad's palace compound, featuring a ladies' house, a gym and a zoo. Class-act extras included paintings of nude women, $1 million worth of liquor, six bags of heroin, Cuban cigars and the charred $100 bills used to light them. Closer: Mood-setting statues of couples engaged in foreplay.