RYAN HAMRICKArchitecture Porfolio

2015

IMAGES PROVIDED BY SHREEVE IMAGING

BACHMAN WILSON HOUSE RESEARCH STUDIO For Crystal Bridges Museum of American ArtBentonville, AR Fall 2014

BACHMAN-WILSON RESEARCH STUDIOBentonville, Arkansas

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR recieved the incredible gift of a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian home in 2014. The house, in drastic need of relocation from New Jersey for preservation purposes, was disas-sembled and is being reconstructed on the museum grounds. The museum educational director commisioned the studio to create an exhibit of physical models, architectural drawings, and informational didactic pieces to inform the museum-going public about the architectural significance of Wright and his Usonian projects.

The Crystal Bridges Museum of Ameri-can Art in Bentonville, AR received the incredible gift of the Bachman-Wilson House, a Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian home, in 2014. The house, which was in drastic need of relocation from New Jersey for preservation purposes, was disassembled and is beingreconstructed on the museum grounds. The museum educational director commisioned this studio to create an exhibit of physical models,architectural drawings, andinformational didactic pieces to inform the museum-going public about the architectural significance of Wight and his Usonian projects.

In 1954, Abraham and Gloria Bachman Wilson commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design their new house after a visit to Wright’s Shavin house, then under construction in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Gloria’s brother Marvin had served as a field supervisor while in Wright’s employ.

The house was built on a site selected by the Bachman Wilsons along the Raritan River in Millstone, New Jersey, and was financed with a $25,000 loan from Gloria Bachman Wilson’s father. After Abe and Gloria’s separation, Gloria Bachman Wilson continued to live in the house with their daughter until 1968.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin, the son of Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher, and William Carey Wright, a musician and preacher. The Wright family moved several times, eventually settling in Madison, Wisconsin, when Frank was 12 years old. At age 18, Frank took up engineering studies at the University of Wisconsin, while also working for the Dean of the engineering school. Frank soon left the University after determining that engineering studies did not best serve his interests. He moved to Chicago, and, with the drafting skills he had developed in engineering school, began working in the office of John Lyman Silsbee, a locally prominent architect. Working in the Silsbee office affirmed Frank’s desire to pursue a career in architecture.

After a year in the Silsbee office, Wright secured a position with Louis Sullivan, a recognized and highly regarded Chicago architect. Greatly influenced and fully occupied by Sullivan’s work, he nonetheless sought after-hours private commissions, or ‘moonlight’ work, in order to establish his own clients. This moonlight work resulted in Wright’s dismissal from Sullivan’s office, though the two would have a strained but continuing friendship until the latter’s death in 1924.

In 1889, at age 22, Wright married Catherine Tobin, and the two moved into the house Wright had designed for them in Oak Park, a suburb to the west of downtown Chicago. With his departure from Sullivan’s office in 1893, Wright formally established his architectural practice in this house.

Wright’s work was recognizable from the start, drawing inspiration from many sources, including then-current trends, his experiences at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, and especially from his observations of nature. Referred to as being in the ‘Prairie’ style, Wright sought in his work to create a distinctly American architecture. Like the flat grassy prairie landscape, Wright’s Prairie style houses emphasizedhorizontality, and included broad, low-pitched roofs sheltering long strips of windows, in stark contrast to the verticality of the then-prevailing Victorian style.

With increasing success, Wright began what would become a tumultuous career, well chronicled by the popular press both for his design work and for his personal exploits. In 1909, Wright ran off with the wife of a client and moved to Germany, subsequently exposing his work to an international audience. Returning to the States in 1913, Wright began building a new home and studio on the land of his ancestors in Spring Green, Wisconsin. He named it ‘Taliesin’, Welsh for ‘shining brow.’ The house burned twice, first with a substantial loss of life in 1914, and then again less tragically in 1925.

The following years would bring both continued triumph and loss. Wright, heavily influenced by Japanese sources since the Columbian Exposition, traveled to Tokyo in 1915, where he had received a commission from the Emperor to begin design work on the Imperial Hotel. A tremendously prolific period began, halted only by the economic Depression of the 1930’s. In order to generate income during this period, Wright engaged in teaching and writing, and, with his third wife, founded the Taliesin Fellowship, a camp-like quasi-school and design office, in which participants paid tuition for the privilege of working in Wright’s studio.

In the mid-1930’s, nearing 70 years old, Wright designed his most celebrated work: The Kaufmann House, known as ‘Falling Water’, in the countryside near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His career re-energized, Wright subsequently designed increasingly high-profile projects, such as New York City’s Guggenheim Museum. During this period, Wright also designed nearly sixty houses of moderate cost that he referred to as ‘Usonian’ houses. The Bachman Wilson House of 1954 is a late example of the Usonian houses designed by Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959, just short of his 92nd birthday, having designed more than one thousand buildings in his career. Wright left behind a legacy of American architecture, deriving its form and its energy from the organic and simple forms of nature as he observed it. Wright said, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Wright believed in the ability of design – his design – to improve American housing. Though himself a believer in the strength of rugged American individualism, he appreciated and promoted the sort of neighborly relationships possible in small communities. An idealist, he also sought to bring neighbors together in communities that would mix social classes and levels of income, in order to avoid the sort of order he had observed in ordinary American life, which he felt tended to isolate people from one another.

Wright, speaking of house design, stated early in his career that, "A process of elimination is a necessity now. To get rid of the load of meaningless things that choke the modern home, to get rid of them by teaching the teachable that many things that are considered necessities now are really not so."

Wright was deeply affected by the prairie landscape of the Illinois plains, and especially by the lands of his ancestral Wisconsin. In remembrance of these influential lands, Wright referred to his early house designs as ‘Prairie’ houses. Wright’s Prairie houses were designed as places that would promote family gathering, and typically included a heavy, low pitched, sheltering roof, and a large, centrally located fireplace hearth. The houses enclosed spaces that were long and low, and utilized building materials that would emphasize the horizontality inspired by the prairie.

Architects Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, beginning an extensive thirteen-year restoration and renovation, purchased the house in 1988. A subsequent visit to the house by Abe Wilson after the Taranti-no’s work convinced him of their devotion to the preservation and historical value of the house.

Fay Jones first enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1938. Interrupted by the onset of World War 2, he later resumed his studies, enrolling in the Department of Architecture, and graduating in 1950. Jones then moved to Houston to continue his studies at Rice University. Jones had first encountered Frank Lloyd Wright a year earlier, when both were in Houston attending the annual convention of the American Institute of Architects. At that convention, Wright received the American Institute of Architects’ highest award, the Gold Medal.In 1951, Jones accepted a teaching job at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught until 1953. That year, Jones wrote to Wright, seeking work. Wright had established a kind of school associated with his practice that he called the ‘Taliesin Fellowship.’ The Fellowship was conducted at Wright’s two offices, one in Spring Green, Wisconsin (‘Taliesin East’), and one in Scottsdale, Arizona (‘Taliesin West’). Those working at the Fellowship were treated as students, and as such paid tuition to Wright, rather than receiving a salary, in exchange for room, board, and work experience with their famous master. Wright invited Jones to visit his studio at Taliesin West in mid-1953. The visit was successful by all accounts, and the follow-ing summer, Jones was invited to join the Fellowship at Taliesin East. With his wife and young children in tow, Jones moved to Spring Green to join the Fellowship, during which he was schooled in the architectural principles promoted by Wright. Jones returned to Fayetteville in 1954, where he joined the faculty at the architecture school, and also began his professional practice, always reinterpreting and extending the ideas put forth by Frank Lloyd Wright. During Jones’ career, he designed many buildings of note,including several innovative houses, as well as the famous Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in 1980. Jones remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1990, when he was awarded the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects in recognition of his distinguished design career, the same medal he had witnessed Wright receiving in Houston in 1949.

Frank Lloyd Wright was passionately interested in the expression of the individual. Troubled, however, by American cities, which he believed were congested, unhealthy places, he devised his own plan for a spacious city of the future, and he gave it a new name – ‘Usonia,’ a term borrowed and adapted from the American author James Duff Law. The term Usonia was meant to distinguish the United States from the rest of the Americas; persons and things from Usonia were known as ‘Usonians.’

Beginning during the period of the Great Depression, Wright designed a series of small houses meant to be affordable to – and even buildable by - the average home buyer. He called them ‘Usonian Houses.’ From 1936 until his death in 1959, Wright designed many Usonian houses. The Bachman Wilson is an excellent example of a late period Usonian house.

For Wright, the Usonian House promoted a connection to nature, while maintaining a high standard of design. Wright tried as much as possible to simplify and systematize the design process. He often employed a grid pattern in order to organize functions when planning his Usonian houses, applying the grid in a graphic manner to the floor plan of the house first, organizing the spaces according to the chosen grid, and then expanding the grid three-dimensionally to help order the volumes of space within the house.

Wright had a fascination for geometric forms that came from his childhood. He would observe the order of natural forms such as plants, crystals and rock formations. Throughout Wright’s long career, he pursued an interest in new ways of thinking about how people inhabit their spaces. This life-long pursuit was fostered, in some part, by his exposure to the educational toy blocks given to him as a child by his mother. The blocks, called ‘Froebel Blocks,’ are still produced today. Furthermore, Wright’s visits to Japan early in his career reinforced his ideas about the grid as an organizational tool after his experiences with ‘tatami’ floor mats, a traditional Japanese method of spatial organization also based upon a grid.

In his Usonian architecture, Wright sought to ‘weave’ spaces together, often blurring the limits of individual spaces, allowing them to overlap. As a design tool, the grid aided this overlap, and usually established a balanced, asymmetrical composition of spaces. Applying a grid as a design tool also provided a means by which every element of the building could be coordinated into a whole, an idea rooted in nature, as Wright believed.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,

WOULD YOU DESIGN A HOUSE FOR US?

Abe Wilson to Frank Lloyd WrightAugust 17, 1953

COMMISSIONING WRIGHT

Abraham Wilson and Gloria Bachman Wilson approached Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house for them and their daughter in Millstone, New Jersey in 1953. Their budget: $20,000

APPROACHING WRIGHT

Gloria Wilson’s brother, Marvin Bachman, was an apprentice to Wright at the Shavin House. Marvin died while in Wright’s employ and before the commission of his sister’s home. Abe and Gloria Wilson thought that by connecting their name to Wright’s late apprentice (Gloria’s brother), he would be more likely to take on the project. The project thus became not the Wilson house but the Bachman Wilson house.

MY DEAR WILSONS,

I SUPPOSE I AM STILL HERE TO TRY TO DO HOUSES FOR SUCH AS YOU.

Frank Lloyd Wright to Abe WilsonAugust 29, 1953

USONIA

Searching for an architecture that was representative of his vision of America, Wright seized upon the name Usonian for his new house designs: Usonia, derived from an acronym for United States of North America. Wright designed the Usonioan houses to be uniquely responsive to their location, and thus in harmony with nature.

INTERIOR DESIGN

Expressive of new ideas of domestic living space, Wright’s Usonian houses were small, but spacious feeling. Open living spaces and large expanses of glass allowed for interiors that seemed to blend into the adjoining exterior landscape. Wright designed built-in furniture for many of the spaces in the Usonian houses, thus making furnishings and architecture merge into a single expression.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,

YOU HAVE MADE US AS HAPPY AS IT IS POSSIBLE FOR TWO PEOPLE TO BE.

Abe Wilson to Frank Lloyd WrightSeptember 3, 1953

STRUCTURE

The Bachman Wilson house is a structural hybrid composed of concrete block, steel beams, and wood. Unlike conventional light wood framing, Wright created solid wood walls by sandwiching a plywood core with Philippine mahogany boards.

THE USONIAN GRID

Wright often employed a grid pattern in order to organize functions when planning his Usonian houses. The grid allowed for clear and efficient assembly, rationalized placement of spaces, and afforded a connection to nature by extending into the surrounding landscape.

GUGGENHEIM EXHIBIT

Although Wright designed many houses for high-income clients, he was also concerned with affordable housing. During the Great Depression, Wright’s desire to create affordable housing utilizing his principles of American architecture found fruition in the Usonian house.

BACHMAN WILSONS VISIT USONIA

In 1953, the nascent Guggenheim Museum in New York City curated a retrospective of Wright’s work. Wright designed the exhibition pavilion, as well as an adjacent full-scale model Usonian house. The Bachman Wilsons visited the exhibition and were inspired by Wright’s vision.

SHAVIN HOUSE

The Bachman Wilsons decided to commission Wright to build their home after visiting the Shavin House, designed by Wright in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

TWO-STORY USONIAN

Most Usonian houses were single story, organized in an ‘L’ shaped plan. The Bachman Wilson house is unusual; it is a two-story house, compact, and organized in a linear manner.

IMPERIAL HOTEL

Abe Wilson first encountered Frank LloydWright’s work in 1945 while visiting the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan, designed by Wright in 1919. Later, Abe and Gloria would travel extensively, touring several Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes.

BROADACRE CITY

Wright’s Usonian houses are derived in part from his plan for the city of the future, which he called Broadacre City, a new vision for living laid out in a sub-divided four-mile square grid. He sought to decentralize population and minimize separation between housing and agriculture. Contrastly to the typical overcrowded industrialized city, Wright designed Broadacre City to be a self sustaining, green, spacious city for three thousand people.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

Built with a loan from his mentor, architectLouis Sullivan, in exchange for an extended employment contract, Wright designed this house for his family and, eventually, for hisindependent practice, introducing many features that would become trademarks of the ‘Prairie’ style: a strong sheltering roof, an emphasis on horizontality, and a centrallylocated fireplace hearth.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1902

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

1889-1905

When finished with the selected house, the user can then click anywhere on the screen to be released from the selection. To view the next houses, the user has to slide the slider over to the next house and repeat the process.

The timeline has been altered to fit a 40 inch diagonal television screen. Five houses will be shown per screen, totaling to 20 houses.

The slider indicates the years shown for the five houses represented. It follows the geometry of the grid.

When a house is selected, a red band will appear on top of the selection.

Then the exterior picture will flip over to an interior view of the selected house. A short description will also appear alongside the picture, providing insight to the design aspect and history.

The unselected houses will fade to a lower opacity when they are not selected.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1902

ROBIE HOUSE

Oak Park, Illinois

1889

1 2 3 4

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2.

3.

4.

In 1954, Abraham and Gloria Bachman Wilson commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design their new house after a visit to Wright’s Shavin house, then under construction in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Gloria’s brother Marvin had served as a field supervisor while in Wright’s employ.

The house was built on a site selected by the Bachman Wilsons along the Raritan River in Millstone, New Jersey, and was financed with a $25,000 loan from Gloria Bachman Wilson’s father. After Abe and Gloria’s separation, Gloria Bachman Wilson continued to live in the house with their daughter until 1968.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin, the son of Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher, and William Carey Wright, a musician and preacher. The Wright family moved several times, eventually settling in Madison, Wisconsin, when Frank was 12 years old. At age 18, Frank took up engineering studies at the University of Wisconsin, while also working for the Dean of the engineering school. Frank soon left the University after determining that engineering studies did not best serve his interests. He moved to Chicago, and, with the drafting skills he had developed in engineering school, began working in the office of John Lyman Silsbee, a locally prominent architect. Working in the Silsbee office affirmed Frank’s desire to pursue a career in architecture.

After a year in the Silsbee office, Wright secured a position with Louis Sullivan, a recognized and highly regarded Chicago architect. Greatly influenced and fully occupied by Sullivan’s work, he nonetheless sought after-hours private commissions, or ‘moonlight’ work, in order to establish his own clients. This moonlight work resulted in Wright’s dismissal from Sullivan’s office, though the two would have a strained but continuing friendship until the latter’s death in 1924.

In 1889, at age 22, Wright married Catherine Tobin, and the two moved into the house Wright had designed for them in Oak Park, a suburb to the west of downtown Chicago. With his departure from Sullivan’s office in 1893, Wright formally established his architectural practice in this house.

Wright’s work was recognizable from the start, drawing inspiration from many sources, including then-current trends, his experiences at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, and especially from his observations of nature. Referred to as being in the ‘Prairie’ style, Wright sought in his work to create a distinctly American architecture. Like the flat grassy prairie landscape, Wright’s Prairie style houses emphasizedhorizontality, and included broad, low-pitched roofs sheltering long strips of windows, in stark contrast to the verticality of the then-prevailing Victorian style.

With increasing success, Wright began what would become a tumultuous career, well chronicled by the popular press both for his design work and for his personal exploits. In 1909, Wright ran off with the wife of a client and moved to Germany, subsequently exposing his work to an international audience. Returning to the States in 1913, Wright began building a new home and studio on the land of his ancestors in Spring Green, Wisconsin. He named it ‘Taliesin’, Welsh for ‘shining brow.’ The house burned twice, first with a substantial loss of life in 1914, and then again less tragically in 1925.

The following years would bring both continued triumph and loss. Wright, heavily influenced by Japanese sources since the Columbian Exposition, traveled to Tokyo in 1915, where he had received a commission from the Emperor to begin design work on the Imperial Hotel. A tremendously prolific period began, halted only by the economic Depression of the 1930’s. In order to generate income during this period, Wright engaged in teaching and writing, and, with his third wife, founded the Taliesin Fellowship, a camp-like quasi-school and design office, in which participants paid tuition for the privilege of working in Wright’s studio.

In the mid-1930’s, nearing 70 years old, Wright designed his most celebrated work: The Kaufmann House, known as ‘Falling Water’, in the countryside near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His career re-energized, Wright subsequently designed increasingly high-profile projects, such as New York City’s Guggenheim Museum. During this period, Wright also designed nearly sixty houses of moderate cost that he referred to as ‘Usonian’ houses. The Bachman Wilson House of 1954 is a late example of the Usonian houses designed by Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959, just short of his 92nd birthday, having designed more than one thousand buildings in his career. Wright left behind a legacy of American architecture, deriving its form and its energy from the organic and simple forms of nature as he observed it. Wright said, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Wright believed in the ability of design – his design – to improve American housing. Though himself a believer in the strength of rugged American individualism, he appreciated and promoted the sort of neighborly relationships possible in small communities. An idealist, he also sought to bring neighbors together in communities that would mix social classes and levels of income, in order to avoid the sort of order he had observed in ordinary American life, which he felt tended to isolate people from one another.

Wright, speaking of house design, stated early in his career that, "A process of elimination is a necessity now. To get rid of the load of meaningless things that choke the modern home, to get rid of them by teaching the teachable that many things that are considered necessities now are really not so."

Wright was deeply affected by the prairie landscape of the Illinois plains, and especially by the lands of his ancestral Wisconsin. In remembrance of these influential lands, Wright referred to his early house designs as ‘Prairie’ houses. Wright’s Prairie houses were designed as places that would promote family gathering, and typically included a heavy, low pitched, sheltering roof, and a large, centrally located fireplace hearth. The houses enclosed spaces that were long and low, and utilized building materials that would emphasize the horizontality inspired by the prairie.

Architects Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, beginning an extensive thirteen-year restoration and renovation, purchased the house in 1988. A subsequent visit to the house by Abe Wilson after the Taranti-no’s work convinced him of their devotion to the preservation and historical value of the house.

Fay Jones first enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1938. Interrupted by the onset of World War 2, he later resumed his studies, enrolling in the Department of Architecture, and graduating in 1950. Jones then moved to Houston to continue his studies at Rice University. Jones had first encountered Frank Lloyd Wright a year earlier, when both were in Houston attending the annual convention of the American Institute of Architects. At that convention, Wright received the American Institute of Architects’ highest award, the Gold Medal.In 1951, Jones accepted a teaching job at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught until 1953. That year, Jones wrote to Wright, seeking work. Wright had established a kind of school associated with his practice that he called the ‘Taliesin Fellowship.’ The Fellowship was conducted at Wright’s two offices, one in Spring Green, Wisconsin (‘Taliesin East’), and one in Scottsdale, Arizona (‘Taliesin West’). Those working at the Fellowship were treated as students, and as such paid tuition to Wright, rather than receiving a salary, in exchange for room, board, and work experience with their famous master. Wright invited Jones to visit his studio at Taliesin West in mid-1953. The visit was successful by all accounts, and the follow-ing summer, Jones was invited to join the Fellowship at Taliesin East. With his wife and young children in tow, Jones moved to Spring Green to join the Fellowship, during which he was schooled in the architectural principles promoted by Wright. Jones returned to Fayetteville in 1954, where he joined the faculty at the architecture school, and also began his professional practice, always reinterpreting and extending the ideas put forth by Frank Lloyd Wright. During Jones’ career, he designed many buildings of note,including several innovative houses, as well as the famous Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in 1980. Jones remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1990, when he was awarded the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects in recognition of his distinguished design career, the same medal he had witnessed Wright receiving in Houston in 1949.

Frank Lloyd Wright was passionately interested in the expression of the individual. Troubled, however, by American cities, which he believed were congested, unhealthy places, he devised his own plan for a spacious city of the future, and he gave it a new name – ‘Usonia,’ a term borrowed and adapted from the American author James Duff Law. The term Usonia was meant to distinguish the United States from the rest of the Americas; persons and things from Usonia were known as ‘Usonians.’

Beginning during the period of the Great Depression, Wright designed a series of small houses meant to be affordable to – and even buildable by - the average home buyer. He called them ‘Usonian Houses.’ From 1936 until his death in 1959, Wright designed many Usonian houses. The Bachman Wilson is an excellent example of a late period Usonian house.

For Wright, the Usonian House promoted a connection to nature, while maintaining a high standard of design. Wright tried as much as possible to simplify and systematize the design process. He often employed a grid pattern in order to organize functions when planning his Usonian houses, applying the grid in a graphic manner to the floor plan of the house first, organizing the spaces according to the chosen grid, and then expanding the grid three-dimensionally to help order the volumes of space within the house.

Wright had a fascination for geometric forms that came from his childhood. He would observe the order of natural forms such as plants, crystals and rock formations. Throughout Wright’s long career, he pursued an interest in new ways of thinking about how people inhabit their spaces. This life-long pursuit was fostered, in some part, by his exposure to the educational toy blocks given to him as a child by his mother. The blocks, called ‘Froebel Blocks,’ are still produced today. Furthermore, Wright’s visits to Japan early in his career reinforced his ideas about the grid as an organizational tool after his experiences with ‘tatami’ floor mats, a traditional Japanese method of spatial organization also based upon a grid.

In his Usonian architecture, Wright sought to ‘weave’ spaces together, often blurring the limits of individual spaces, allowing them to overlap. As a design tool, the grid aided this overlap, and usually established a balanced, asymmetrical composition of spaces. Applying a grid as a design tool also provided a means by which every element of the building could be coordinated into a whole, an idea rooted in nature, as Wright believed.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,

WOULD YOU DESIGN A HOUSE FOR US?

Abe Wilson to Frank Lloyd WrightAugust 17, 1953

COMMISSIONING WRIGHT

Abraham Wilson and Gloria Bachman Wilson approached Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house for them and their daughter in Millstone, New Jersey in 1953. Their budget: $20,000

APPROACHING WRIGHT

Gloria Wilson’s brother, Marvin Bachman, was an apprentice to Wright at the Shavin House. Marvin died while in Wright’s employ and before the commission of his sister’s home. Abe and Gloria Wilson thought that by connecting their name to Wright’s late apprentice (Gloria’s brother), he would be more likely to take on the project. The project thus became not the Wilson house but the Bachman Wilson house.

MY DEAR WILSONS,

I SUPPOSE I AM STILL HERE TO TRY TO DO HOUSES FOR SUCH AS YOU.

Frank Lloyd Wright to Abe WilsonAugust 29, 1953

USONIA

Searching for an architecture that was representative of his vision of America, Wright seized upon the name Usonian for his new house designs: Usonia, derived from an acronym for United States of North America. Wright designed the Usonioan houses to be uniquely responsive to their location, and thus in harmony with nature.

INTERIOR DESIGN

Expressive of new ideas of domestic living space, Wright’s Usonian houses were small, but spacious feeling. Open living spaces and large expanses of glass allowed for interiors that seemed to blend into the adjoining exterior landscape. Wright designed built-in furniture for many of the spaces in the Usonian houses, thus making furnishings and architecture merge into a single expression.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,

YOU HAVE MADE US AS HAPPY AS IT IS POSSIBLE FOR TWO PEOPLE TO BE.

Abe Wilson to Frank Lloyd WrightSeptember 3, 1953

STRUCTURE

The Bachman Wilson house is a structural hybrid composed of concrete block, steel beams, and wood. Unlike conventional light wood framing, Wright created solid wood walls by sandwiching a plywood core with Philippine mahogany boards.

THE USONIAN GRID

Wright often employed a grid pattern in order to organize functions when planning his Usonian houses. The grid allowed for clear and efficient assembly, rationalized placement of spaces, and afforded a connection to nature by extending into the surrounding landscape.

GUGGENHEIM EXHIBIT

Although Wright designed many houses for high-income clients, he was also concerned with affordable housing. During the Great Depression, Wright’s desire to create affordable housing utilizing his principles of American architecture found fruition in the Usonian house.

BACHMAN WILSONS VISIT USONIA

In 1953, the nascent Guggenheim Museum in New York City curated a retrospective of Wright’s work. Wright designed the exhibition pavilion, as well as an adjacent full-scale model Usonian house. The Bachman Wilsons visited the exhibition and were inspired by Wright’s vision.

SHAVIN HOUSE

The Bachman Wilsons decided to commission Wright to build their home after visiting the Shavin House, designed by Wright in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

TWO-STORY USONIAN

Most Usonian houses were single story, organized in an ‘L’ shaped plan. The Bachman Wilson house is unusual; it is a two-story house, compact, and organized in a linear manner.

IMPERIAL HOTEL

Abe Wilson first encountered Frank LloydWright’s work in 1945 while visiting the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan, designed by Wright in 1919. Later, Abe and Gloria would travel extensively, touring several Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes.

BROADACRE CITY

Wright’s Usonian houses are derived in part from his plan for the city of the future, which he called Broadacre City, a new vision for living laid out in a sub-divided four-mile square grid. He sought to decentralize population and minimize separation between housing and agriculture. Contrastly to the typical overcrowded industrialized city, Wright designed Broadacre City to be a self sustaining, green, spacious city for three thousand people.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

Built with a loan from his mentor, architectLouis Sullivan, in exchange for an extended employment contract, Wright designed this house for his family and, eventually, for hisindependent practice, introducing many features that would become trademarks of the ‘Prairie’ style: a strong sheltering roof, an emphasis on horizontality, and a centrallylocated fireplace hearth.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1902

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

1889-1905

When finished with the selected house, the user can then click anywhere on the screen to be released from the selection. To view the next houses, the user has to slide the slider over to the next house and repeat the process.

The timeline has been altered to fit a 40 inch diagonal television screen. Five houses will be shown per screen, totaling to 20 houses.

The slider indicates the years shown for the five houses represented. It follows the geometry of the grid.

When a house is selected, a red band will appear on top of the selection.

Then the exterior picture will flip over to an interior view of the selected house. A short description will also appear alongside the picture, providing insight to the design aspect and history.

The unselected houses will fade to a lower opacity when they are not selected.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1902

ROBIE HOUSE

Oak Park, Illinois

1889

1 2 3 4

1.

2.

3.

4.

Zimmerman HouseManchester, NH1950

Palmer HouseAnn Arbor, MI1950

Jacobs HouseMadison, WI1937

In 1954, Abraham and Gloria Bachman Wilson commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design their new house after a visit to Wright’s Shavin house, then under construction in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Gloria’s brother Marvin had served as a field supervisor while in Wright’s employ.

The house was built on a site selected by the Bachman Wilsons along the Raritan River in Millstone, New Jersey, and was financed with a $25,000 loan from Gloria Bachman Wilson’s father. After Abe and Gloria’s separation, Gloria Bachman Wilson continued to live in the house with their daughter until 1968.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin, the son of Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher, and William Carey Wright, a musician and preacher. The Wright family moved several times, eventually settling in Madison, Wisconsin, when Frank was 12 years old. At age 18, Frank took up engineering studies at the University of Wisconsin, while also working for the Dean of the engineering school. Frank soon left the University after determining that engineering studies did not best serve his interests. He moved to Chicago, and, with the drafting skills he had developed in engineering school, began working in the office of John Lyman Silsbee, a locally prominent architect. Working in the Silsbee office affirmed Frank’s desire to pursue a career in architecture.

After a year in the Silsbee office, Wright secured a position with Louis Sullivan, a recognized and highly regarded Chicago architect. Greatly influenced and fully occupied by Sullivan’s work, he nonetheless sought after-hours private commissions, or ‘moonlight’ work, in order to establish his own clients. This moonlight work resulted in Wright’s dismissal from Sullivan’s office, though the two would have a strained but continuing friendship until the latter’s death in 1924.

In 1889, at age 22, Wright married Catherine Tobin, and the two moved into the house Wright had designed for them in Oak Park, a suburb to the west of downtown Chicago. With his departure from Sullivan’s office in 1893, Wright formally established his architectural practice in this house.

Wright’s work was recognizable from the start, drawing inspiration from many sources, including then-current trends, his experiences at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, and especially from his observations of nature. Referred to as being in the ‘Prairie’ style, Wright sought in his work to create a distinctly American architecture. Like the flat grassy prairie landscape, Wright’s Prairie style houses emphasizedhorizontality, and included broad, low-pitched roofs sheltering long strips of windows, in stark contrast to the verticality of the then-prevailing Victorian style.

With increasing success, Wright began what would become a tumultuous career, well chronicled by the popular press both for his design work and for his personal exploits. In 1909, Wright ran off with the wife of a client and moved to Germany, subsequently exposing his work to an international audience. Returning to the States in 1913, Wright began building a new home and studio on the land of his ancestors in Spring Green, Wisconsin. He named it ‘Taliesin’, Welsh for ‘shining brow.’ The house burned twice, first with a substantial loss of life in 1914, and then again less tragically in 1925.

The following years would bring both continued triumph and loss. Wright, heavily influenced by Japanese sources since the Columbian Exposition, traveled to Tokyo in 1915, where he had received a commission from the Emperor to begin design work on the Imperial Hotel. A tremendously prolific period began, halted only by the economic Depression of the 1930’s. In order to generate income during this period, Wright engaged in teaching and writing, and, with his third wife, founded the Taliesin Fellowship, a camp-like quasi-school and design office, in which participants paid tuition for the privilege of working in Wright’s studio.

In the mid-1930’s, nearing 70 years old, Wright designed his most celebrated work: The Kaufmann House, known as ‘Falling Water’, in the countryside near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His career re-energized, Wright subsequently designed increasingly high-profile projects, such as New York City’s Guggenheim Museum. During this period, Wright also designed nearly sixty houses of moderate cost that he referred to as ‘Usonian’ houses. The Bachman Wilson House of 1954 is a late example of the Usonian houses designed by Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959, just short of his 92nd birthday, having designed more than one thousand buildings in his career. Wright left behind a legacy of American architecture, deriving its form and its energy from the organic and simple forms of nature as he observed it. Wright said, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Wright believed in the ability of design – his design – to improve American housing. Though himself a believer in the strength of rugged American individualism, he appreciated and promoted the sort of neighborly relationships possible in small communities. An idealist, he also sought to bring neighbors together in communities that would mix social classes and levels of income, in order to avoid the sort of order he had observed in ordinary American life, which he felt tended to isolate people from one another.

Wright, speaking of house design, stated early in his career that, "A process of elimination is a necessity now. To get rid of the load of meaningless things that choke the modern home, to get rid of them by teaching the teachable that many things that are considered necessities now are really not so."

Wright was deeply affected by the prairie landscape of the Illinois plains, and especially by the lands of his ancestral Wisconsin. In remembrance of these influential lands, Wright referred to his early house designs as ‘Prairie’ houses. Wright’s Prairie houses were designed as places that would promote family gathering, and typically included a heavy, low pitched, sheltering roof, and a large, centrally located fireplace hearth. The houses enclosed spaces that were long and low, and utilized building materials that would emphasize the horizontality inspired by the prairie.

Architects Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, beginning an extensive thirteen-year restoration and renovation, purchased the house in 1988. A subsequent visit to the house by Abe Wilson after the Taranti-no’s work convinced him of their devotion to the preservation and historical value of the house.

Fay Jones first enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1938. Interrupted by the onset of World War 2, he later resumed his studies, enrolling in the Department of Architecture, and graduating in 1950. Jones then moved to Houston to continue his studies at Rice University. Jones had first encountered Frank Lloyd Wright a year earlier, when both were in Houston attending the annual convention of the American Institute of Architects. At that convention, Wright received the American Institute of Architects’ highest award, the Gold Medal.In 1951, Jones accepted a teaching job at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught until 1953. That year, Jones wrote to Wright, seeking work. Wright had established a kind of school associated with his practice that he called the ‘Taliesin Fellowship.’ The Fellowship was conducted at Wright’s two offices, one in Spring Green, Wisconsin (‘Taliesin East’), and one in Scottsdale, Arizona (‘Taliesin West’). Those working at the Fellowship were treated as students, and as such paid tuition to Wright, rather than receiving a salary, in exchange for room, board, and work experience with their famous master. Wright invited Jones to visit his studio at Taliesin West in mid-1953. The visit was successful by all accounts, and the follow-ing summer, Jones was invited to join the Fellowship at Taliesin East. With his wife and young children in tow, Jones moved to Spring Green to join the Fellowship, during which he was schooled in the architectural principles promoted by Wright. Jones returned to Fayetteville in 1954, where he joined the faculty at the architecture school, and also began his professional practice, always reinterpreting and extending the ideas put forth by Frank Lloyd Wright. During Jones’ career, he designed many buildings of note,including several innovative houses, as well as the famous Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in 1980. Jones remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1990, when he was awarded the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects in recognition of his distinguished design career, the same medal he had witnessed Wright receiving in Houston in 1949.

Frank Lloyd Wright was passionately interested in the expression of the individual. Troubled, however, by American cities, which he believed were congested, unhealthy places, he devised his own plan for a spacious city of the future, and he gave it a new name – ‘Usonia,’ a term borrowed and adapted from the American author James Duff Law. The term Usonia was meant to distinguish the United States from the rest of the Americas; persons and things from Usonia were known as ‘Usonians.’

Beginning during the period of the Great Depression, Wright designed a series of small houses meant to be affordable to – and even buildable by - the average home buyer. He called them ‘Usonian Houses.’ From 1936 until his death in 1959, Wright designed many Usonian houses. The Bachman Wilson is an excellent example of a late period Usonian house.

For Wright, the Usonian House promoted a connection to nature, while maintaining a high standard of design. Wright tried as much as possible to simplify and systematize the design process. He often employed a grid pattern in order to organize functions when planning his Usonian houses, applying the grid in a graphic manner to the floor plan of the house first, organizing the spaces according to the chosen grid, and then expanding the grid three-dimensionally to help order the volumes of space within the house.

Wright had a fascination for geometric forms that came from his childhood. He would observe the order of natural forms such as plants, crystals and rock formations. Throughout Wright’s long career, he pursued an interest in new ways of thinking about how people inhabit their spaces. This life-long pursuit was fostered, in some part, by his exposure to the educational toy blocks given to him as a child by his mother. The blocks, called ‘Froebel Blocks,’ are still produced today. Furthermore, Wright’s visits to Japan early in his career reinforced his ideas about the grid as an organizational tool after his experiences with ‘tatami’ floor mats, a traditional Japanese method of spatial organization also based upon a grid.

In his Usonian architecture, Wright sought to ‘weave’ spaces together, often blurring the limits of individual spaces, allowing them to overlap. As a design tool, the grid aided this overlap, and usually established a balanced, asymmetrical composition of spaces. Applying a grid as a design tool also provided a means by which every element of the building could be coordinated into a whole, an idea rooted in nature, as Wright believed.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,

WOULD YOU DESIGN A HOUSE FOR US?

Abe Wilson to Frank Lloyd WrightAugust 17, 1953

COMMISSIONING WRIGHT

Abraham Wilson and Gloria Bachman Wilson approached Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house for them and their daughter in Millstone, New Jersey in 1953. Their budget: $20,000

APPROACHING WRIGHT

Gloria Wilson’s brother, Marvin Bachman, was an apprentice to Wright at the Shavin House. Marvin died while in Wright’s employ and before the commission of his sister’s home. Abe and Gloria Wilson thought that by connecting their name to Wright’s late apprentice (Gloria’s brother), he would be more likely to take on the project. The project thus became not the Wilson house but the Bachman Wilson house.

MY DEAR WILSONS,

I SUPPOSE I AM STILL HERE TO TRY TO DO HOUSES FOR SUCH AS YOU.

Frank Lloyd Wright to Abe WilsonAugust 29, 1953

USONIA

Searching for an architecture that was representative of his vision of America, Wright seized upon the name Usonian for his new house designs: Usonia, derived from an acronym for United States of North America. Wright designed the Usonioan houses to be uniquely responsive to their location, and thus in harmony with nature.

INTERIOR DESIGN

Expressive of new ideas of domestic living space, Wright’s Usonian houses were small, but spacious feeling. Open living spaces and large expanses of glass allowed for interiors that seemed to blend into the adjoining exterior landscape. Wright designed built-in furniture for many of the spaces in the Usonian houses, thus making furnishings and architecture merge into a single expression.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,

YOU HAVE MADE US AS HAPPY AS IT IS POSSIBLE FOR TWO PEOPLE TO BE.

Abe Wilson to Frank Lloyd WrightSeptember 3, 1953

STRUCTURE

The Bachman Wilson house is a structural hybrid composed of concrete block, steel beams, and wood. Unlike conventional light wood framing, Wright created solid wood walls by sandwiching a plywood core with Philippine mahogany boards.

THE USONIAN GRID

Wright often employed a grid pattern in order to organize functions when planning his Usonian houses. The grid allowed for clear and efficient assembly, rationalized placement of spaces, and afforded a connection to nature by extending into the surrounding landscape.

GUGGENHEIM EXHIBIT

Although Wright designed many houses for high-income clients, he was also concerned with affordable housing. During the Great Depression, Wright’s desire to create affordable housing utilizing his principles of American architecture found fruition in the Usonian house.

BACHMAN WILSONS VISIT USONIA

In 1953, the nascent Guggenheim Museum in New York City curated a retrospective of Wright’s work. Wright designed the exhibition pavilion, as well as an adjacent full-scale model Usonian house. The Bachman Wilsons visited the exhibition and were inspired by Wright’s vision.

SHAVIN HOUSE

The Bachman Wilsons decided to commission Wright to build their home after visiting the Shavin House, designed by Wright in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

TWO-STORY USONIAN

Most Usonian houses were single story, organized in an ‘L’ shaped plan. The Bachman Wilson house is unusual; it is a two-story house, compact, and organized in a linear manner.

IMPERIAL HOTEL

Abe Wilson first encountered Frank LloydWright’s work in 1945 while visiting the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan, designed by Wright in 1919. Later, Abe and Gloria would travel extensively, touring several Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes.

BROADACRE CITY

Wright’s Usonian houses are derived in part from his plan for the city of the future, which he called Broadacre City, a new vision for living laid out in a sub-divided four-mile square grid. He sought to decentralize population and minimize separation between housing and agriculture. Contrastly to the typical overcrowded industrialized city, Wright designed Broadacre City to be a self sustaining, green, spacious city for three thousand people.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

Built with a loan from his mentor, architectLouis Sullivan, in exchange for an extended employment contract, Wright designed this house for his family and, eventually, for hisindependent practice, introducing many features that would become trademarks of the ‘Prairie’ style: a strong sheltering roof, an emphasis on horizontality, and a centrallylocated fireplace hearth.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1902

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

1889-1905

When finished with the selected house, the user can then click anywhere on the screen to be released from the selection. To view the next houses, the user has to slide the slider over to the next house and repeat the process.

The timeline has been altered to fit a 40 inch diagonal television screen. Five houses will be shown per screen, totaling to 20 houses.

The slider indicates the years shown for the five houses represented. It follows the geometry of the grid.

When a house is selected, a red band will appear on top of the selection.

Then the exterior picture will flip over to an interior view of the selected house. A short description will also appear alongside the picture, providing insight to the design aspect and history.

The unselected houses will fade to a lower opacity when they are not selected.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1902

ROBIE HOUSE

Oak Park, Illinois

1889

1 2 3 4

1.

2.

3.

4.

In 1954, Abraham and Gloria Bachman Wilson commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design their new house after a visit to Wright’s Shavin house, then under construction in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Gloria’s brother Marvin had served as a field supervisor while in Wright’s employ.

The house was built on a site selected by the Bachman Wilsons along the Raritan River in Millstone, New Jersey, and was financed with a $25,000 loan from Gloria Bachman Wilson’s father. After Abe and Gloria’s separation, Gloria Bachman Wilson continued to live in the house with their daughter until 1968.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin, the son of Anna Lloyd Jones, a teacher, and William Carey Wright, a musician and preacher. The Wright family moved several times, eventually settling in Madison, Wisconsin, when Frank was 12 years old. At age 18, Frank took up engineering studies at the University of Wisconsin, while also working for the Dean of the engineering school. Frank soon left the University after determining that engineering studies did not best serve his interests. He moved to Chicago, and, with the drafting skills he had developed in engineering school, began working in the office of John Lyman Silsbee, a locally prominent architect. Working in the Silsbee office affirmed Frank’s desire to pursue a career in architecture.

After a year in the Silsbee office, Wright secured a position with Louis Sullivan, a recognized and highly regarded Chicago architect. Greatly influenced and fully occupied by Sullivan’s work, he nonetheless sought after-hours private commissions, or ‘moonlight’ work, in order to establish his own clients. This moonlight work resulted in Wright’s dismissal from Sullivan’s office, though the two would have a strained but continuing friendship until the latter’s death in 1924.

In 1889, at age 22, Wright married Catherine Tobin, and the two moved into the house Wright had designed for them in Oak Park, a suburb to the west of downtown Chicago. With his departure from Sullivan’s office in 1893, Wright formally established his architectural practice in this house.

Wright’s work was recognizable from the start, drawing inspiration from many sources, including then-current trends, his experiences at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893, and especially from his observations of nature. Referred to as being in the ‘Prairie’ style, Wright sought in his work to create a distinctly American architecture. Like the flat grassy prairie landscape, Wright’s Prairie style houses emphasizedhorizontality, and included broad, low-pitched roofs sheltering long strips of windows, in stark contrast to the verticality of the then-prevailing Victorian style.

With increasing success, Wright began what would become a tumultuous career, well chronicled by the popular press both for his design work and for his personal exploits. In 1909, Wright ran off with the wife of a client and moved to Germany, subsequently exposing his work to an international audience. Returning to the States in 1913, Wright began building a new home and studio on the land of his ancestors in Spring Green, Wisconsin. He named it ‘Taliesin’, Welsh for ‘shining brow.’ The house burned twice, first with a substantial loss of life in 1914, and then again less tragically in 1925.

The following years would bring both continued triumph and loss. Wright, heavily influenced by Japanese sources since the Columbian Exposition, traveled to Tokyo in 1915, where he had received a commission from the Emperor to begin design work on the Imperial Hotel. A tremendously prolific period began, halted only by the economic Depression of the 1930’s. In order to generate income during this period, Wright engaged in teaching and writing, and, with his third wife, founded the Taliesin Fellowship, a camp-like quasi-school and design office, in which participants paid tuition for the privilege of working in Wright’s studio.

In the mid-1930’s, nearing 70 years old, Wright designed his most celebrated work: The Kaufmann House, known as ‘Falling Water’, in the countryside near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His career re-energized, Wright subsequently designed increasingly high-profile projects, such as New York City’s Guggenheim Museum. During this period, Wright also designed nearly sixty houses of moderate cost that he referred to as ‘Usonian’ houses. The Bachman Wilson House of 1954 is a late example of the Usonian houses designed by Wright.

Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959, just short of his 92nd birthday, having designed more than one thousand buildings in his career. Wright left behind a legacy of American architecture, deriving its form and its energy from the organic and simple forms of nature as he observed it. Wright said, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

Wright believed in the ability of design – his design – to improve American housing. Though himself a believer in the strength of rugged American individualism, he appreciated and promoted the sort of neighborly relationships possible in small communities. An idealist, he also sought to bring neighbors together in communities that would mix social classes and levels of income, in order to avoid the sort of order he had observed in ordinary American life, which he felt tended to isolate people from one another.

Wright, speaking of house design, stated early in his career that, "A process of elimination is a necessity now. To get rid of the load of meaningless things that choke the modern home, to get rid of them by teaching the teachable that many things that are considered necessities now are really not so."

Wright was deeply affected by the prairie landscape of the Illinois plains, and especially by the lands of his ancestral Wisconsin. In remembrance of these influential lands, Wright referred to his early house designs as ‘Prairie’ houses. Wright’s Prairie houses were designed as places that would promote family gathering, and typically included a heavy, low pitched, sheltering roof, and a large, centrally located fireplace hearth. The houses enclosed spaces that were long and low, and utilized building materials that would emphasize the horizontality inspired by the prairie.

Architects Lawrence and Sharon Tarantino, beginning an extensive thirteen-year restoration and renovation, purchased the house in 1988. A subsequent visit to the house by Abe Wilson after the Taranti-no’s work convinced him of their devotion to the preservation and historical value of the house.

Fay Jones first enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville in 1938. Interrupted by the onset of World War 2, he later resumed his studies, enrolling in the Department of Architecture, and graduating in 1950. Jones then moved to Houston to continue his studies at Rice University. Jones had first encountered Frank Lloyd Wright a year earlier, when both were in Houston attending the annual convention of the American Institute of Architects. At that convention, Wright received the American Institute of Architects’ highest award, the Gold Medal.In 1951, Jones accepted a teaching job at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught until 1953. That year, Jones wrote to Wright, seeking work. Wright had established a kind of school associated with his practice that he called the ‘Taliesin Fellowship.’ The Fellowship was conducted at Wright’s two offices, one in Spring Green, Wisconsin (‘Taliesin East’), and one in Scottsdale, Arizona (‘Taliesin West’). Those working at the Fellowship were treated as students, and as such paid tuition to Wright, rather than receiving a salary, in exchange for room, board, and work experience with their famous master. Wright invited Jones to visit his studio at Taliesin West in mid-1953. The visit was successful by all accounts, and the follow-ing summer, Jones was invited to join the Fellowship at Taliesin East. With his wife and young children in tow, Jones moved to Spring Green to join the Fellowship, during which he was schooled in the architectural principles promoted by Wright. Jones returned to Fayetteville in 1954, where he joined the faculty at the architecture school, and also began his professional practice, always reinterpreting and extending the ideas put forth by Frank Lloyd Wright. During Jones’ career, he designed many buildings of note,including several innovative houses, as well as the famous Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in 1980. Jones remained on the faculty until his retirement in 1990, when he was awarded the Gold Medal from the American Institute of Architects in recognition of his distinguished design career, the same medal he had witnessed Wright receiving in Houston in 1949.

Frank Lloyd Wright was passionately interested in the expression of the individual. Troubled, however, by American cities, which he believed were congested, unhealthy places, he devised his own plan for a spacious city of the future, and he gave it a new name – ‘Usonia,’ a term borrowed and adapted from the American author James Duff Law. The term Usonia was meant to distinguish the United States from the rest of the Americas; persons and things from Usonia were known as ‘Usonians.’

Beginning during the period of the Great Depression, Wright designed a series of small houses meant to be affordable to – and even buildable by - the average home buyer. He called them ‘Usonian Houses.’ From 1936 until his death in 1959, Wright designed many Usonian houses. The Bachman Wilson is an excellent example of a late period Usonian house.

For Wright, the Usonian House promoted a connection to nature, while maintaining a high standard of design. Wright tried as much as possible to simplify and systematize the design process. He often employed a grid pattern in order to organize functions when planning his Usonian houses, applying the grid in a graphic manner to the floor plan of the house first, organizing the spaces according to the chosen grid, and then expanding the grid three-dimensionally to help order the volumes of space within the house.

Wright had a fascination for geometric forms that came from his childhood. He would observe the order of natural forms such as plants, crystals and rock formations. Throughout Wright’s long career, he pursued an interest in new ways of thinking about how people inhabit their spaces. This life-long pursuit was fostered, in some part, by his exposure to the educational toy blocks given to him as a child by his mother. The blocks, called ‘Froebel Blocks,’ are still produced today. Furthermore, Wright’s visits to Japan early in his career reinforced his ideas about the grid as an organizational tool after his experiences with ‘tatami’ floor mats, a traditional Japanese method of spatial organization also based upon a grid.

In his Usonian architecture, Wright sought to ‘weave’ spaces together, often blurring the limits of individual spaces, allowing them to overlap. As a design tool, the grid aided this overlap, and usually established a balanced, asymmetrical composition of spaces. Applying a grid as a design tool also provided a means by which every element of the building could be coordinated into a whole, an idea rooted in nature, as Wright believed.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,

WOULD YOU DESIGN A HOUSE FOR US?

Abe Wilson to Frank Lloyd WrightAugust 17, 1953

COMMISSIONING WRIGHT

Abraham Wilson and Gloria Bachman Wilson approached Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house for them and their daughter in Millstone, New Jersey in 1953. Their budget: $20,000

APPROACHING WRIGHT

Gloria Wilson’s brother, Marvin Bachman, was an apprentice to Wright at the Shavin House. Marvin died while in Wright’s employ and before the commission of his sister’s home. Abe and Gloria Wilson thought that by connecting their name to Wright’s late apprentice (Gloria’s brother), he would be more likely to take on the project. The project thus became not the Wilson house but the Bachman Wilson house.

MY DEAR WILSONS,

I SUPPOSE I AM STILL HERE TO TRY TO DO HOUSES FOR SUCH AS YOU.

Frank Lloyd Wright to Abe WilsonAugust 29, 1953

USONIA

Searching for an architecture that was representative of his vision of America, Wright seized upon the name Usonian for his new house designs: Usonia, derived from an acronym for United States of North America. Wright designed the Usonioan houses to be uniquely responsive to their location, and thus in harmony with nature.

INTERIOR DESIGN

Expressive of new ideas of domestic living space, Wright’s Usonian houses were small, but spacious feeling. Open living spaces and large expanses of glass allowed for interiors that seemed to blend into the adjoining exterior landscape. Wright designed built-in furniture for many of the spaces in the Usonian houses, thus making furnishings and architecture merge into a single expression.

DEAR MR. WRIGHT,

YOU HAVE MADE US AS HAPPY AS IT IS POSSIBLE FOR TWO PEOPLE TO BE.

Abe Wilson to Frank Lloyd WrightSeptember 3, 1953

STRUCTURE

The Bachman Wilson house is a structural hybrid composed of concrete block, steel beams, and wood. Unlike conventional light wood framing, Wright created solid wood walls by sandwiching a plywood core with Philippine mahogany boards.

THE USONIAN GRID

Wright often employed a grid pattern in order to organize functions when planning his Usonian houses. The grid allowed for clear and efficient assembly, rationalized placement of spaces, and afforded a connection to nature by extending into the surrounding landscape.

GUGGENHEIM EXHIBIT

Although Wright designed many houses for high-income clients, he was also concerned with affordable housing. During the Great Depression, Wright’s desire to create affordable housing utilizing his principles of American architecture found fruition in the Usonian house.

BACHMAN WILSONS VISIT USONIA

In 1953, the nascent Guggenheim Museum in New York City curated a retrospective of Wright’s work. Wright designed the exhibition pavilion, as well as an adjacent full-scale model Usonian house. The Bachman Wilsons visited the exhibition and were inspired by Wright’s vision.

SHAVIN HOUSE

The Bachman Wilsons decided to commission Wright to build their home after visiting the Shavin House, designed by Wright in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

TWO-STORY USONIAN

Most Usonian houses were single story, organized in an ‘L’ shaped plan. The Bachman Wilson house is unusual; it is a two-story house, compact, and organized in a linear manner.

IMPERIAL HOTEL

Abe Wilson first encountered Frank LloydWright’s work in 1945 while visiting the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan, designed by Wright in 1919. Later, Abe and Gloria would travel extensively, touring several Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes.

BROADACRE CITY

Wright’s Usonian houses are derived in part from his plan for the city of the future, which he called Broadacre City, a new vision for living laid out in a sub-divided four-mile square grid. He sought to decentralize population and minimize separation between housing and agriculture. Contrastly to the typical overcrowded industrialized city, Wright designed Broadacre City to be a self sustaining, green, spacious city for three thousand people.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

Built with a loan from his mentor, architectLouis Sullivan, in exchange for an extended employment contract, Wright designed this house for his family and, eventually, for hisindependent practice, introducing many features that would become trademarks of the ‘Prairie’ style: a strong sheltering roof, an emphasis on horizontality, and a centrallylocated fireplace hearth.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1905

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1902

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

1889-1905

When finished with the selected house, the user can then click anywhere on the screen to be released from the selection. To view the next houses, the user has to slide the slider over to the next house and repeat the process.

The timeline has been altered to fit a 40 inch diagonal television screen. Five houses will be shown per screen, totaling to 20 houses.

The slider indicates the years shown for the five houses represented. It follows the geometry of the grid.

When a house is selected, a red band will appear on top of the selection.

Then the exterior picture will flip over to an interior view of the selected house. A short description will also appear alongside the picture, providing insight to the design aspect and history.

The unselected houses will fade to a lower opacity when they are not selected.

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSESpringfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIOOak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

1889-1902

ROBIE HOUSE

Oak Park, Illinois

1889

1 2 3 4

1.

2.

3.

4.

1935

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSE

Springfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIO

Oak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

ROBIE HOUSE

TALIESIN (Taliesin East)

Spring Green, Wisconsin

1911

Chicago, Illinois

1909

FREEMAN HOUSE

Los Angeles, California

1922

BROAD ACRE CITY JACOBS HOUSE

Madison, Wisconsin

1936

KAUFMAN HOUSE

Mill Run, Pennsylvania

1936

PALMER HOUSE

Ann Arbor, Michigan

1950

Millstone, New Jersey

1954

Manchester, New Hampshire

1950

ZIMMERMAN HOUSE TALIESIN WEST

Scottsdale, Arizona

1937-1959

Built with a loan from his mentor, architectLouis Sullivan, in exchange for an extended employment contract, Wright designed this house for his family and, eventually, for hisindependent practice, introducing many features that would become trademarks of the ‘Prairie’ style: a strong sheltering roof, an emphasis on horizontality, and a centrallylocated fireplace hearth.

Here, Wright chose warm colored materialsand utilized geometric patterns derived from nature. Notable are the stained glass windows, designed to resemble an abstract depiction of sumac plants. The entrance leads to a reception hall, a tall, spacious space, uncommon in Wright’s work; he usually favored horizontality over verticality.

Suggestive of lavish living, the Willits house was nonetheless constructed economically. Instead of stone or brick, Wright finished the exterior with stucco mixed with sand. Exterior wood trim was used extensively along edges and around windows in order to create a linear emphasis. Tall windows in the living room visually connected interior and exterior spaces.

A classic example of Wright’s Prairie style, Wright used long, thin ‘Roman’ bricks, detailing them to emphasize their horizontality. The interplay between the horizontal and vertical elements of this house is particularly notable.

Wright built his new home and studio, which he named ‘Taliesin,’ upon his return to the United States from Europe. Here, Wright was able to express his architecture’s continuity with nature. Taliesin burned twice, first with tragic loss of life, and then again in 1925. Rebuilt both times, Taliesin’s design portrayed the evolution of Wright’s design thought during this period.

Here, Wright experimented with custom concrete blocks, called ‘Textile Blocks’ for the manner by which they were ‘woven’ together during construction. Wright described the grid utilized to guide the planning of this house as “…a three-dimensional field…through which solid elements of the building are slid and located…”

Wright’s proposal for the new American city rejected the traditional centralized city, believing the modern city would be dispersed, and experienced by the automobile. Dependent upon then-conventional ideas of the proliferation of the ‘ideal’ American family, many aspects of Broad Acre City have become commonplace in the American suburban landscape.

Considered to be the first built Usonian house, the Jacobs House was planned using a two-foot by four-foot rectangular grid. For design purposes, the two-by-four grid was extended into the landscape, strengthening the relationship between the exterior and the interior spaces.

Audaciously located atop a waterfall, this house was designed as a weekend home. The house was anchored to the landscape by a stone mass, from which extended smooth surfaced, horizontally cantilevered balconies out over the water. A study in contrasts, the house is considered one of the most important residential designs of the twentieth century.

Planned utilizing a triangular grid pattern, Wright designed the Palmer as a series of intricate geometric spaces. The living room opened to a terrace and the landscape beyond, all sheltered by a bold cantilevered roof. Included in the landscaping was a Japanese garden.

Wright again utilized a grid pattern as a design aid. The front façade, open and glassy, contrasted with the rear façade facing the street, designed to be solid and private. The Zimmerman house included Wright’s geometrically inspired upper windows. Many aspects of the Zimmerman house anticipated the design for the Bachman Wilson house.

Wright’s desert home was his final residence, and housed the Taliesin Fellowship, initially in winter, and eventually year-round. Built on an 800-acre site with magnificent mountain views, Wright utilized locally sourced materials, combining colorful rocks and sand dug from the site to create the dramatic of walls of the compound.

This was one of Wright’s earliest attempts to redefine the American home. Formal along the street side, but much more relaxed and expressive on the garden side, the Winslow house was planned traditionally on the interior; the centrally located fireplace hearth anchored the living spaces.

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

Wright’s design for “A Fireproof House

Home Journal in April 1907. One of Wright’s earliest designs for a moderately priced house, it was more compact than his custom designs, and designed to be easily constructed. Eleven examples of the Fireproof House were built around the mid-west.

This Prairie style house exhibited deep, low pitched sheltering roofs, and a strong emphasis on horizontality. The interior was composed of five primary spaces arranged around a central living space. Many features of this house were visually extend-ed out into the landscape, uniting interior and exterior into a single expression.

LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL HOUSE

Mason City, Iowa

1908

BOGK HOUSE

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

1916

Early sketches of this house depicted a ‘modern’ flat roof; the final version was pitched. Wright designed simple stained glass patterns for this house; the large concrete ornamental panel above the second story windows depicted a geometric pattern reminiscent of Mayan themes.

SCHWARTZ HOUSE

Two Rivers, Wisconsin

1939

Visual interest was developed in the Schwartz house by contrasting of the horizontal and vertical elements, as may be observed in many of Wright projects. The ‘sun terrace’ is unique to this house and was sheltered by a prominent roof structure that provided exceptional views.

POPE-LEIGHEY HOUSE

Richmond, Virginia

1940

Built from Tidewater red cypress planks, brick, and glass, Wright’s Usonian principles were utilized here to create continuity of space from the interior to the exterior and beyond. Innovations in this house included a radiant floor heating system created by embedding hot water pipes in the concrete floor slab. The floors were painted Wright’s signature color, Cherokee Red.

SHAVIN HOUSE

Chattanooga, Tennessee

1952

Located at the top of a hill, with spectacular views of the Tennessee River and mountains beyond, Wright’s design utilized light colored stone and Louisiana cypress. After spending time at the Shavin House, Abe and Gloria Bachman Wilson decided to commission Wright to design their own house in New Jersey.

BACHMAN WILSON HOUSE

1935

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSE

Springfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIO

Oak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

ROBIE HOUSE

TALIESIN (Taliesin East)

Spring Green, Wisconsin

1911

Chicago, Illinois

1909

FREEMAN HOUSE

Los Angeles, California

1922

BROAD ACRE CITY JACOBS HOUSE

Madison, Wisconsin

1936

KAUFMAN HOUSE

Mill Run, Pennsylvania

1936

PALMER HOUSE

Ann Arbor, Michigan

1950

Millstone, New Jersey

1954

Manchester, New Hampshire

1950

ZIMMERMAN HOUSE TALIESIN WEST

Scottsdale, Arizona

1937-1959

Built with a loan from his mentor, architectLouis Sullivan, in exchange for an extended employment contract, Wright designed this house for his family and, eventually, for hisindependent practice, introducing many features that would become trademarks of the ‘Prairie’ style: a strong sheltering roof, an emphasis on horizontality, and a centrallylocated fireplace hearth.

Here, Wright chose warm colored materialsand utilized geometric patterns derived from nature. Notable are the stained glass windows, designed to resemble an abstract depiction of sumac plants. The entrance leads to a reception hall, a tall, spacious space, uncommon in Wright’s work; he usually favored horizontality over verticality.

Suggestive of lavish living, the Willits house was nonetheless constructed economically. Instead of stone or brick, Wright finished the exterior with stucco mixed with sand. Exterior wood trim was used extensively along edges and around windows in order to create a linear emphasis. Tall windows in the living room visually connected interior and exterior spaces.

A classic example of Wright’s Prairie style, Wright used long, thin ‘Roman’ bricks, detailing them to emphasize their horizontality. The interplay between the horizontal and vertical elements of this house is particularly notable.

Wright built his new home and studio, which he named ‘Taliesin,’ upon his return to the United States from Europe. Here, Wright was able to express his architecture’s continuity with nature. Taliesin burned twice, first with tragic loss of life, and then again in 1925. Rebuilt both times, Taliesin’s design portrayed the evolution of Wright’s design thought during this period.

Here, Wright experimented with custom concrete blocks, called ‘Textile Blocks’ for the manner by which they were ‘woven’ together during construction. Wright described the grid utilized to guide the planning of this house as “…a three-dimensional field…through which solid elements of the building are slid and located…”

Wright’s proposal for the new American city rejected the traditional centralized city, believing the modern city would be dispersed, and experienced by the automobile. Dependent upon then-conventional ideas of the proliferation of the ‘ideal’ American family, many aspects of Broad Acre City have become commonplace in the American suburban landscape.

Considered to be the first built Usonian house, the Jacobs House was planned using a two-foot by four-foot rectangular grid. For design purposes, the two-by-four grid was extended into the landscape, strengthening the relationship between the exterior and the interior spaces.

Audaciously located atop a waterfall, this house was designed as a weekend home. The house was anchored to the landscape by a stone mass, from which extended smooth surfaced, horizontally cantilevered balconies out over the water. A study in contrasts, the house is considered one of the most important residential designs of the twentieth century.

Planned utilizing a triangular grid pattern, Wright designed the Palmer as a series of intricate geometric spaces. The living room opened to a terrace and the landscape beyond, all sheltered by a bold cantilevered roof. Included in the landscaping was a Japanese garden.

Wright again utilized a grid pattern as a design aid. The front façade, open and glassy, contrasted with the rear façade facing the street, designed to be solid and private. The Zimmerman house included Wright’s geometrically inspired upper windows. Many aspects of the Zimmerman house anticipated the design for the Bachman Wilson house.

Wright’s desert home was his final residence, and housed the Taliesin Fellowship, initially in winter, and eventually year-round. Built on an 800-acre site with magnificent mountain views, Wright utilized locally sourced materials, combining colorful rocks and sand dug from the site to create the dramatic of walls of the compound.

This was one of Wright’s earliest attempts to redefine the American home. Formal along the street side, but much more relaxed and expressive on the garden side, the Winslow house was planned traditionally on the interior; the centrally located fireplace hearth anchored the living spaces.

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

Wright’s design for “A Fireproof House

Home Journal in April 1907. One of Wright’s earliest designs for a moderately priced house, it was more compact than his custom designs, and designed to be easily constructed. Eleven examples of the Fireproof House were built around the mid-west.

This Prairie style house exhibited deep, low pitched sheltering roofs, and a strong emphasis on horizontality. The interior was composed of five primary spaces arranged around a central living space. Many features of this house were visually extend-ed out into the landscape, uniting interior and exterior into a single expression.

LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL HOUSE

Mason City, Iowa

1908

BOGK HOUSE

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

1916

Early sketches of this house depicted a ‘modern’ flat roof; the final version was pitched. Wright designed simple stained glass patterns for this house; the large concrete ornamental panel above the second story windows depicted a geometric pattern reminiscent of Mayan themes.

SCHWARTZ HOUSE

Two Rivers, Wisconsin

1939

Visual interest was developed in the Schwartz house by contrasting of the horizontal and vertical elements, as may be observed in many of Wright projects. The ‘sun terrace’ is unique to this house and was sheltered by a prominent roof structure that provided exceptional views.

POPE-LEIGHEY HOUSE

Richmond, Virginia

1940

Built from Tidewater red cypress planks, brick, and glass, Wright’s Usonian principles were utilized here to create continuity of space from the interior to the exterior and beyond. Innovations in this house included a radiant floor heating system created by embedding hot water pipes in the concrete floor slab. The floors were painted Wright’s signature color, Cherokee Red.

SHAVIN HOUSE

Chattanooga, Tennessee

1952

Located at the top of a hill, with spectacular views of the Tennessee River and mountains beyond, Wright’s design utilized light colored stone and Louisiana cypress. After spending time at the Shavin House, Abe and Gloria Bachman Wilson decided to commission Wright to design their own house in New Jersey.

BACHMAN WILSON HOUSE

1935

SUSAN LAWRENCE DANA HOUSE

Springfield, Illinois

1902

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOME AND STUDIO

Oak Park, Illinois

1889

WARD W. WILLITS HOUSE

Highland Park, Illinois

1902

MARTIN HOUSE

Buffalo, New York

1905

ROBIE HOUSE

TALIESIN (Taliesin East)

Spring Green, Wisconsin

1911

Chicago, Illinois

1909

FREEMAN HOUSE

Los Angeles, California

1922

BROAD ACRE CITY JACOBS HOUSE

Madison, Wisconsin

1936

KAUFMAN HOUSE

Mill Run, Pennsylvania

1936

PALMER HOUSE

Ann Arbor, Michigan

1950

Millstone, New Jersey

1954

Manchester, New Hampshire

1950

ZIMMERMAN HOUSE TALIESIN WEST

Scottsdale, Arizona

1937-1959

Built with a loan from his mentor, architectLouis Sullivan, in exchange for an extended employment contract, Wright designed this house for his family and, eventually, for hisindependent practice, introducing many features that would become trademarks of the ‘Prairie’ style: a strong sheltering roof, an emphasis on horizontality, and a centrallylocated fireplace hearth.

Here, Wright chose warm colored materialsand utilized geometric patterns derived from nature. Notable are the stained glass windows, designed to resemble an abstract depiction of sumac plants. The entrance leads to a reception hall, a tall, spacious space, uncommon in Wright’s work; he usually favored horizontality over verticality.

Suggestive of lavish living, the Willits house was nonetheless constructed economically. Instead of stone or brick, Wright finished the exterior with stucco mixed with sand. Exterior wood trim was used extensively along edges and around windows in order to create a linear emphasis. Tall windows in the living room visually connected interior and exterior spaces.

A classic example of Wright’s Prairie style, Wright used long, thin ‘Roman’ bricks, detailing them to emphasize their horizontality. The interplay between the horizontal and vertical elements of this house is particularly notable.

Wright built his new home and studio, which he named ‘Taliesin,’ upon his return to the United States from Europe. Here, Wright was able to express his architecture’s continuity with nature. Taliesin burned twice, first with tragic loss of life, and then again in 1925. Rebuilt both times, Taliesin’s design portrayed the evolution of Wright’s design thought during this period.

Here, Wright experimented with custom concrete blocks, called ‘Textile Blocks’ for the manner by which they were ‘woven’ together during construction. Wright described the grid utilized to guide the planning of this house as “…a three-dimensional field…through which solid elements of the building are slid and located…”

Wright’s proposal for the new American city rejected the traditional centralized city, believing the modern city would be dispersed, and experienced by the automobile. Dependent upon then-conventional ideas of the proliferation of the ‘ideal’ American family, many aspects of Broad Acre City have become commonplace in the American suburban landscape.

Considered to be the first built Usonian house, the Jacobs House was planned using a two-foot by four-foot rectangular grid. For design purposes, the two-by-four grid was extended into the landscape, strengthening the relationship between the exterior and the interior spaces.

Audaciously located atop a waterfall, this house was designed as a weekend home. The house was anchored to the landscape by a stone mass, from which extended smooth surfaced, horizontally cantilevered balconies out over the water. A study in contrasts, the house is considered one of the most important residential designs of the twentieth century.

Planned utilizing a triangular grid pattern, Wright designed the Palmer as a series of intricate geometric spaces. The living room opened to a terrace and the landscape beyond, all sheltered by a bold cantilevered roof. Included in the landscaping was a Japanese garden.

Wright again utilized a grid pattern as a design aid. The front façade, open and glassy, contrasted with the rear façade facing the street, designed to be solid and private. The Zimmerman house included Wright’s geometrically inspired upper windows. Many aspects of the Zimmerman house anticipated the design for the Bachman Wilson house.

Wright’s desert home was his final residence, and housed the Taliesin Fellowship, initially in winter, and eventually year-round. Built on an 800-acre site with magnificent mountain views, Wright utilized locally sourced materials, combining colorful rocks and sand dug from the site to create the dramatic of walls of the compound.

This was one of Wright’s earliest attempts to redefine the American home. Formal along the street side, but much more relaxed and expressive on the garden side, the Winslow house was planned traditionally on the interior; the centrally located fireplace hearth anchored the living spaces.

WINSLOW HOUSE

River Forest, Illinois

1894

Wright’s design for “A Fireproof House

Home Journal in April 1907. One of Wright’s earliest designs for a moderately priced house, it was more compact than his custom designs, and designed to be easily constructed. Eleven examples of the Fireproof House were built around the mid-west.

This Prairie style house exhibited deep, low pitched sheltering roofs, and a strong emphasis on horizontality. The interior was composed of five primary spaces arranged around a central living space. Many features of this house were visually extend-ed out into the landscape, uniting interior and exterior into a single expression.

LADIES’ HOME JOURNAL HOUSE

Mason City, Iowa

1908

BOGK HOUSE

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

1916

Early sketches of this house depicted a ‘modern’ flat roof; the final version was pitched. Wright designed simple stained glass patterns for this house; the large concrete ornamental panel above the second story windows depicted a geometric pattern reminiscent of Mayan themes.

SCHWARTZ HOUSE

Two Rivers, Wisconsin

1939

Visual interest was developed in the Schwartz house by contrasting of the horizontal and vertical elements, as may be observed in many of Wright projects. The ‘sun terrace’ is unique to this house and was sheltered by a prominent roof structure that provided exceptional views.

POPE-LEIGHEY HOUSE

Richmond, Virginia

1940

Built from Tidewater red cypress planks, brick, and glass, Wright’s Usonian principles were utilized here to create continuity of space from the interior to the exterior and beyond. Innovations in this house included a radiant floor heating system created by embedding hot water pipes in the concrete floor slab. The floors were painted Wright’s signature color, Cherokee Red.

SHAVIN HOUSE

Chattanooga, Tennessee

1952

Located at the top of a hill, with spectacular views of the Tennessee River and mountains beyond, Wright’s design utilized light colored stone and Louisiana cypress. After spending time at the Shavin House, Abe and Gloria Bachman Wilson decided to commission Wright to design their own house in New Jersey.

BACHMAN WILSON HOUSE

ROBOTIC FABRICATION STUDIOFayetteville, AR

Spring 2015

With the twenty-first century has come a collection of new technologies with the capac-ity to change the way architects work. The design-build shop at the University of Arkansas has begun working the Staubli RX160 robot arm for develop-ing robotic material workflow processes for use in architectural applications. With the site of an old railroad silo foundation along Fayetteville’s expanding bike trail system, the project will serve as a marker to the public for what the school is develop-ing in the adjacent design-build shop. This pavilion is composed of wooden sticks designed with the aid ofparametric softwares and as-sembled with the robot arm, and will be built to visually attract trail-goers and provide shade and a view to theneighboring wetland environ-ment, while informing the pub-lic about the advances in digital design and fabrication being progressed in thearchitecture school.

Robotic Tracking Procedure The light seen here was harnessed from a prolonged ex-posure setting and illustrates the tracking process of the Staubli robot and the fluid and dynamic motion of the gripper arm as it builds a pavilion module..

Taxonomy of Modules

FULLY ASSEMBLED PAVILION

WOOD DECK

STEEL STRUCTURE

PLATE STEEL THRESHOLD

STEEL AND WOOD RAMP

EXISTING SILO FOUNDATION

LEVEL THREE MODULE 0214

MODULE 01LEVEL SIX23

Plan and Section of the pavilion proposal (Looking North)

SOUTH MAIN NATATORIUM AND COMMUNITY CENTER Little Rock, AR

Spring 2013

DAISY L GATSON BATES DR

13th ST

S M

AIN

ST

SCO

TT S

T

The South Main Street area of Little Rock, Arkansas isexperiencing a revitalization movement to enhance thequality of life in downtown. As a part of the south end of what is becoming a “creative corridor”, the natatorium will serve the community in the south side of the district.Sustainably-minded design was a focus of the project, with aquatics being a key design element for the program as well as aesthetics, depicted in the project through the “wave” roof, built to evoke an image of water while dra-matically directing rainfall to collection pools.

LARGE SCALE SPACES

PUBLIC SPACE

SMALL SCALE SPACES

SOUT

H M

AIN

STRE

ETTO

DOW

NTOW

N LIT

TLE R

OCK

TO RESIDENTIAL AREA

GLULAM BEAM

2x12 GLULAM JOISTS @4’ O.C.

STEEL TUBE COLUMN

1” DOUBLE GLAZING

ALUMINUM FRAMING

GALVANIZED STEEL PANELAIR LAYER

MOISTURE BARRIEROSB FURRING

BATT INSULATIONWITH LIGHT GAGUE STEEL FRAMING

8” SIP PANELWITH FINISHED PLYWOOD FACE

WHITE DUROLAST MEMBRANE

SUPPLY DUCT ALONG STRUCTURE2” = 1’ - 0”

SECTION ISOMETRIC1” = 1’ - 0”

BEAM/COLUMN CONNECTION2” = 1’ - 0”

WEST EXTERIOR WALL ASSEMBLY

INTERIOR GALVANIZED STEEL PANELS

BATT INSULATION

OSB FURRING

OSB FURRING

20 GAUGE STEEL FRAMINGWITH 3x8” STEEL TUBE COLUMNS

EXTERIOR GALVANIZED STEEL CLADDINGAND ALUMINUM WINDOW FRAMING

GLULAM BEAM

2x12 GLULAM JOISTS @4’ O.C.

STEEL TUBE COLUMN

1” DOUBLE GLAZING

ALUMINUM FRAMING

GALVANIZED STEEL PANELAIR LAYER

MOISTURE BARRIEROSB FURRING

BATT INSULATIONWITH LIGHT GAGUE STEEL FRAMING

8” SIP PANELWITH FINISHED PLYWOOD FACE

WHITE DUROLAST MEMBRANE

SUPPLY DUCT ALONG STRUCTURE2” = 1’ - 0”

SECTION ISOMETRIC1” = 1’ - 0”

BEAM/COLUMN CONNECTION2” = 1’ - 0”

WEST EXTERIOR WALL ASSEMBLY

INTERIOR GALVANIZED STEEL PANELS

BATT INSULATION

OSB FURRING

OSB FURRING

20 GAUGE STEEL FRAMINGWITH 3x8” STEEL TUBE COLUMNS

EXTERIOR GALVANIZED STEEL CLADDINGAND ALUMINUM WINDOW FRAMING

Photo Courtesy of Seth Spradlin

REVITALIZATION AND REMODELEast St. Louis, ILFall 2011

Photo Courtesy of Seth Spradlin

East St. Louis has been plagued with negative effects of the decline of the industrial age in America. Once a growing manufacturing city, East St. Louis now sits largely in a state of neglect, with few features that make up a strong city. This project aimed to redesign thefourteen square miles of the city from the ground up, retaining the old charater of the place while bringing in new urban life and design. The city was broken into“neighborhoods” to bring together groups of students’ original ideas and integrate them into a cohesive environment.

MARFA MOTEL Marfa, TXFall 2012

Set in the heart of the Chihuahuan Desert of West Texas, Marfa is home to a few unique attractions: the old famous Starlight and Thunderbird motels, and the chosen setting for Donald Judd’s artwork at his own Chinati Foundation. Placed on the site of the late Starlight Motel, and taking characteristic influence from Judd’s concrete boxes, the new Marfa Motel is sited to allow guests to take in the high desert views, while making a light claim to the expansive landscape with berms to meter the huge distances of the site.

Caserma Renovation Rome, ItalyIn the Flaminia neighbor-hood of Rome is a World War I military barracks sitting idle in the middle of a grow-ing modern cultural center. Surrounded by works such as Hadid’s MAXXI and Piano’s Parco della Musica, the old compound is the community’s next target for architectural and cultural updates. The program proposed by the studio is an “incubator”; a place where young professionals can rent cheap office and living space to start their practice. The scope of the project includes the work and living units, an open marketplace similar to ones found elsewhere in the city, and a gallery to display artists’ works and pieces of military history. Being a historical site, preservation of parts of the original structure, mainly the building massing and the prominent sawtooth roof, was important to recall the site’s past life.

VIA GUIDO RENI

SECTION A

EXTEND PORTICO AND ADD TREES TO CREATE ‘PROMENADE’ TOWARDS THEATER AND VILLA

REDIRECT TRAFFIC TO VIA NEDO NADITO FREE UP VIA GUIDO RENI FOR PEDESTRIANS AND PUBLIC TRANSIT MOVE PARKING TO UNDERGROUND STRUCTURE

RECONSITUTE SPPACE ABOVE AS GREEN PARK SPACENEW METRO LINE C NEAR PALAZZETTO DELLO SPORT

Flaminia CrossingRome, Italy As the first part of the Caserma Renovation project, there was a focus on revitalizing and upgrading the surrounding neighborhood to accommodate the increase in culturalactivity it has been experiencing. With venues by architects such as Piano and Hadid part of more recent additions to a former Olympic neighborhood, there is a need to increase transitcapabilities and more people-friendly access through the street where the most activity is being spurred.

FURNITURE DESIGNSpring 2015

Both the lamp and the table were designed to experiment with the appearance of be-ing unbalanced with an off-center point of gravity, typically not a feature in furniture. The lamp was created with the process of bent lamination, in which the wood is cut into narrow strips, resined, and clamped into curved forms. The table stands on a single slanted leg, with a heavy top and light lower parts.

THE SANCTUARYBentonville, AR2012-2015

On the square of downtown Bentonville sits a brick church dating back to 1905. Around the year 2005, it ceased function as a church and has been bought by local restauranteurs to be con-verted to a stylish restaurant, rooftop bar, and basement speakeasy, combining the classic feel of the old bricks and vaulted ceiling with more modern finishings and additions. The project is currently under construction, needing heavy structural remedies and an overall updating to meet today’s building standards, and is due to be completed by the end of the summer of 2015.

12'—0"

STOR / LOADING

111

6'—4"

12'—0"7'—2"

DISHWASH110

AA

EXIST.COOLER

AA

3 1/2"Conc.Ramp

Cooler Elev110'-9 1/2"

6

FF

RAISED CONC. DOCK 3x3x1/4 EDGE ANGLE

6" DIA. STEEL SAFETY BOLLARD

5

Cooler +3 1/2"

2

disp.

Hand Sink

J

Prep

Sin

k

REF. STRUCT. FOR CONC. FTG.

Cook

6" STUD

CL

MECHANICALACCESS PANELABOVE

GASMETER

Prep

RAM

P UP

30

"

I

DOWN 11R

X A.1

HALL112

STAIR115

KITCHEN109

STORAGE116

AA

exit

Down

5

eq. r

iser

s

4

Pass

-Thr

u

Line of HVA

C Soffit

11

6" STUD

3 1/2"Conc.Ramp

Cooler Elev110'-9 1/2"

disp.

Hand Sink

Cook

MECHANICALACCESS PANELABOVE

EXIST.STAIRS

Dn. 16 R

T.O.C. Elev110'-6"

T.O.C. Elev110'-6"

BA.1

IceChest

exit

MOP114

STAFF WC113

6' TALL WOOD PRIVACYFENCE WITH 3' GATE

T.O.C. Elev110'-6"

G

3

H

ET.O.C. Elev110'-6"

F

Down 5 eq. risers

18" B

anqu

ette

Sta

ff L

ocke

rs

13

14D

12

RAG

MECHANICAL YARD

FD FD

D

86 RESTAURANT SEATING

20 BAR SEATING

DJ

STAIR115

6'—5"4'—7"

exit

6'—7"

3'—8"

4'—7"

3'—8" 8'—0"

6' TALL WOOD PRIVACYFENCE WITH 3' GATE

BC

2Down 5 eq. risers

Down 8 eq. risers

T.O.C. Elev106'-5"

T.O.C. Elev110'-6"

Down

5 e

q. ri

sers

A

ED

5'—0"

7

L M

BRICK PLANTER

DOWN 4 R RAMP UP 7"LandingLanding

A.1A

12'—0"

6'—4"

14'—0"

12'—0"

WOMEN107

7'—2"

2

Hand Sink

EXTEND GREASE TRAP ACCESS PORTS TO T.O. SLAB

REF. STRUCT. FOR CONC. FTG.

4

K

H.C. GRAB BARS

J

Prep

Sin

k

REF. STRUCT. FOR CONC. FTG.

Cook

CL

MECHANICALACCESS PANELABOVE

CLG. HUNG TOILET PARTITIONS TYP.

Prep

RAM

P UP

30

"

DOWN 11R

ENTRY106

5'—0"

N

T.O.C. Elev110'-6"

7

M

exitLanding

BA.1

0' 5' 10' 20'

FIRST FLOOR PLAN

WAITING102

O P

C.1 DC.5C

KITCHEN109

MEN108

WOMEN107

H.C. GRAB BARS

Pass

-Thr

u

8

Line of HVA

C Soffit

11

6" STUD

9

Hand Sink

Cook

MECHANICALACCESS PANELABOVE

T.O.C. Elev110'-6"

CLG. HUNG TOILET PARTITIONS TYP.

IceChest

FD

GAMES

FD

Issued for Design Review 8-8-2013

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FIRST FLOOR PLAN

ENTRY101

design workA R C H I T E C T U R E P L L C

T.O.C. Elev110'-6"

RQ

RESTAURANT PROJECTFOR BRENDA ANDERSON

AN ADAPTIVE REUSE

201 NW "A" STREET

RAISE EXISTINGROUGH THRESHOLD

5"

11A

ED

A-2

86 RESTAURANT SEATING

20 BAR SEATING

6'—5"4'—7"

T.O.C. Elev110'-6"

3'—8"

4'—7"Down 8 eq. risers

Down

5 e

q. ri

sers

A

A-10

R 5'—71 4"

R 103 4

4'—

103

4"

S T

201 NW "A" STREET

L M N

SOUTH ELEVATION

P

O

Issued For Permit 7-31-2013

A-12

R 5'—71 4"

3'—

414"

5'—9"

R 103 4

4'—

103

4"

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AN ADAPTIVE REUSE

RESTAURANT PROJECTFOR BRENDA ANDERSON

201 NW "A" STREET

designA R C H I T E C T U R E P L L C

work

SOUTH ELEVATION

R Q

STAIR DETAILSCALE: 1"=1'-0"

GYP BOARD

2 1/2 20ga. STEEL STUDS @16" O.C.

1x4 1/4" WOOD

CONCRETE/STEEL PAN TREAD12" STEEL CHANNEL

3x3" SQUARE STEEL TUBE

STAINLESS STEEL HANDRAIL WITH BRACKETS

3x3" SQUARE STEEL TUBE

1/2" PLYWOOD SHEATHING

FRP PANEL

3 5/8" 20g.a. C-STUDS @ 16"O.C.

5/8" GYP BOARD

13" EXISTING BRICK

TILE

2 1/2 20ga. STEEL STUDS @16" O.C.

1x4 1/4" WOOD

CONCRETE/STEEL PAN TREAD3x3" SQUARE STEEL TUBE

STAINLESS STEEL HANDRAIL WITH BRACKETS

3x3" SQUARE STEEL TUBE

1/2" PLYWOOD SHEATHING

FRP PANEL

3 5/8" 20g.a. C-STUDS @ 16"O.C.

5/8" GYP BOARD

13" EXISTING BRICK

TILE

KITCHEN / DINING WALL SECTIONSCALE: 3/4"=1'-0"

FRP PANEL

FRP PANEL5/8" GYP BOARD

6" 20ga. STEEL STUDS @ 16" O.C.

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RESTAURANT PROJECTFOR BRENDA ANDERSON

201 NW "A" STREET

designA R C H I T E C T U R E P L L C

work

EXTERIOR WALL SECTION @ KITCHEN

SCALE: 3/4"=1'-0"

3 5/8 16 ga. STEEL C STUDS

1/2" PLYWOOD SHEATHING

FRP PANEL

3 5/8" 20g.a. C-STUDS @ 16"O.C.

5/8" GYP BOARD

12" OWSJ

13" EXISTING BRICK

TILE

SCALE: 3/4"=1'-0"

3 5/8 16 ga. STEEL C STUDS

1/2" PLYWOOD SHEATHING

FRP PANEL

3 5/8" 20g.a. C-STUDS @ 16"O.C.

5/8" GYP BOARD

12" OWSJ

13" EXISTING BRICK

TILE

Tota

l Ris

e 12

6"

10'—

6"

2'—

11"

4'-8

"

STAIR SECTION 2

Up 8 R. @ 7" = 56"

Up 5 R. @ 7"= 35"

2'—

11"

Up 5 R. @ 7"= 35"

Issued For Permit 7-31-2013

A-6

10'—

6"

2'—

11"

4'-8

"

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GRADE

workA R C H I T E C T U R E P L L C

design

201 NW "A" STREET

RESTAURANT PROJECTFOR BRENDA ANDERSON

AN ADAPTIVE REUSE

STAIR SECTION 2

Up 8 R. @ 7"

= 56"

Up 5 R. @ 7"

= 35"

2'—

11"

OLD DOOR SILL

Up 5 R. @ 7"

= 35"