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[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

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11/27/2004
What this country needs is a good five-thousand dollar house!

That is what Herbert & Katherine Jacobs said to Frank Lloyd Wright in 
1937. Wright said “Would you really want a five-thousand dollar house? 
Most people want a ten-thousand dollar house for five-thousand dollars". 
What developed was a low cost custom home designed for the average man.

This was the first of Wright’s famed “Unsonian” designs, a dwelling “of 
and for” the United States. Its in-floor heating, sandwich walls, 
carport, and corner windows influenced residential architecture around 
America and led the Royal Institute of British Architecture to declare 
it one of the twenty most important buildings of the twentieth century.

In each of these designs Wright expressed his principles of organic 
architecture. All of the houses were built of readily available 
materials left as unadorned as possible. Each design was site-specific 
to take advantage of the view and terrain. The typical Usonian floor 
plan included small entryways, narrow passages, large central fireplaces 
and floor-to-ceiling windows. The designs were tailored to each 
individual client.

“We can never make the living room big enough, the fireplace important 
enough, or the sense of relationship between exterior, interior and 
environment close enough, or get enough of these good things I’ve just 
mentioned. A Usonian house is always hungry for the ground, lives by it, 
becoming an integral feature of it.”

This house was an architectural gem---with walls of French Doors to 
bring outdoors inside---nothing is as cheap as outdoor space---it's free.