Usonian Homes were Frank Lloyd Wright's take on affordable single family housing. Omitting the superfluous basement and attic, paring trim to a minimum, combining the kitchen with the living space, constructed of concrete block, and even designed to be built by the homeowner, they were perfectly modern.
They still look good.
Wright envisioned them enabling a suburban landscape built upon the expanded use of personal motor vehicles. The designs may have influenced Walter Gropius, famed Bauhaus director and architect, who relocated to America as the Bauhaus was closed by the Nazi government, in his design of the American ranch house. Wright was right about automobiles until now, but his use of passive solar in the designs is sustainable today.
Beginning in 1936, in a poor economy, about 50 were built, including the Gordon House, designed in 1957, two years before Wright's death, and completed in 1964. The home was moved to the Oregon Garden, near Silverton, when new owners of its prime Willamette River-fronting lot proposed demolishing it. Today it is open to the public for a small fee.
I have seen a Usonian House, though not this one. They are a little woolly around the edges with curved molding put to unexpected modern use as in the Heywood-Wakefield designs which bridge the streamline movement to the international movement of the Bauhaus' Mies. But I'd live in one insulated to current practice in a minute.
Tonight Larry Wooden, writer and historian will speak of the house, Wright and the Usonian movement. Wooden is author of a new book about the house and its restoration, "The Gordon House: A Moving Experience".
It's so apropos that the presentation is organized by Design Within Reach as part of their Designs on Portland series. Design Within Reach www.dwr.com. Northwest Everett and 12th Doors 6PM, talk 6:30 Free
