Outside the box
Next time you step into a living room-cum-dining room, you can thank American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The self-confessed genius might have been a bow-tie-wearing egomaniac with short-man syndrome, but there's no denying his role in establishing what we now know as open-plan living.
The year was 1901 and Wright detested the prevailing architectural bent for Victorian-style cottages with strictly defined spaces, which he referred to as 'boxes'. So he devised a dwelling known as the prairie house and in so doing, smashed open the box forever.
Wright drew his first prairie houses for Ladies' Home Journal, in 1901, following an invitation from publisher Edward Bok for architects to contribute designs that could be built at a price readers could afford. Most architects, being a snooty lot, felt Bok's invitation was beneath them. But Wright rose to the challenge, wanting to show that the best-quality housing could be available to the greatest number of people at the lowest cost possible.
The title of Wright's first drawing was A Home in a Prairie Town. Although never built, it was clear from the plans that Wright was onto something, namely the opening up of interior spaces.
The first prairie house to be built was the Ward W. Willits House, in Highland Park, Illinois, in 1902. It had many of the characteristics that were to become associated with the prairie house - symmetrical wings, a horizontal form, a long, low roofline with wide eaves and an open interior pin-wheeling from an enormous central hearth.
From 1905 to 1910, 40 prairie houses were designed by Wright. The homes had one or several stories and a framework of either masonry or timber, with brick, stucco, shingle or stone facing. They were built in forests and in suburbia but architecture critic and author Philip Drew can't think of any built on a prairie.
'The name was supposed to evoke the romance of the West but Wright's clients didn't actually want to live there,' Drew says. 'What Wright did with the prairie house was dissolve the edges of buildings, making them appear larger.
'He brought the landscape inside and used passive solar heating, years before it was commonplace.'
Undoubtedly, the finest was the Robie House (above), built in 1906 at 5757 South Woodlawn, Chicago. Known by locals as The Battleship, because its three levels resembled decks, it was the first in the United States to have a three-car garage. The handcrafted interiors were typically Wright, from the stunning art glass to the bespoke furniture, timber screens, light fittings and rugs.
Prairie houses were to influence architects around the world in a number of ways but the biggest effect was the freeing up of space within the home, allowing one to walk from the kitchen to the living room without bumping into a wall.
Wright was always thinking outside the box.
