Some design seeds.

We are fans of architecture in general, historic and modern. But we do have a special fondness for the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and his Prairie School contemporaries from the early 1900s in Chicago and the Midwest. We have visited and toured many buildings by Wright, William Purcell and George Elmslie, Walter Burley and Marion Mahoney Griffin, William Drummond and Louis Sullivan. Our shelves are filled with too many books about their work, their design principles, philosophies and their lives.

What draws us to this particular body of work? Well, first of all, they designed each project as a unique solution, according to the program, the client, the site, available local natural materials and the latest useful technologies. Unlike the practice of the time, no historic styles were copied or referenced in the creation of these designs. Each project could then be said to have its own unique style. Secondly, they proclaimed nature as their muse (“the original source”), integrated the homes into their sites, worked with nature’s cycles, and employed design strategies such as “prospect and refuge” which appeal to our instinctual preferences as humans. They sought to design "wholistic" works in which each element, from floor plan to the light fixtures, related to each other via a geometric grammar or ”seed” that itself took inspiration from the site. Tour one of Wright’s restored, fully-furnished homes and you are likely to experience a sense of harmony that is the product of this wholistic design approach. In those works, the whole does feel greater than the sum of its parts. Wright talked about this pinnacle of design as achieving “integrity” that results in state of “harmony”, or “repose”.

Continued below.

Taliesin or “Shining Brow”, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie-style home is integrated with its hillside site.

The home’s underlying geometric grammar is visible in patterned window grills

Wright’s Seth Peterson cottage of limestone, wood and glass is integrated into its wooded hillside.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1905 Unity Temple in Oak Park, IL. The geometric design grammar of squares and rectangles is visible at all levels of the building, from exterior volumes and sculptural columns to interior furnishings. Bottom three photos show furniture designed by John in 2010 for the Restoration Shop.

The Prairie-style Arrowroot Collection, designed by John in 2009, was the outgrowth of a project to explore organic principles through the design of a complete work—a home and its furnishings.

Those pioneering architects were on a mission to create a uniquely American architecture that reflected democracy, the landscape, their ideals and the times. They were also after ways to use design to connect a home’s occupants with its site, nature and the continuity of life we are integral to, an idea we are also passionate about. While the Prairie School was relatively short-lived due to a resurgence of historic styles in the 1920s, their goals and design philosophies live on today as a lesser-known division of modern architecture called “organic”. There is so much inspiration for us to chew on going into this project—bookshelves full of it, in fact!

More to come about how “organic“ architecture and principles have impacted the design of our home.