Wingspread

Lazy blogger that I am, I have enlisted my resident architect to provide us with text for this post. He is after all the expert. We are just back from a trip to Wisconsin where we visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Wingspread and a number of other Frank Lloyd Wright houses.

Here's Wingspread from above. We were given an in-depth private tour of Wingspread and left to wander around and take pictures for as long as we wanted.

Here's what the architect who steals my covers has to say about it:

Frank Lloyd Wright was definitely flying high in 1937 when he designed Wingspread, the +/- 14,000 SF home for Herbert Johnson, president of S.C. Johnson & Son.  Only a few years earlier, Wright was largely forgotten by the architecture world - some even thought he had died - his commissions having dried up after the 1915-1923 Imperial Hotel project (see earlier post), the result of personal scandals and society’s tastemakers rejecting the Prairie Style that Wright had championed starting in 1893.

One project had given life to the second great phase of Wright’s career, Fallingwater, the iconic 1935 country house that catapulted him to the cover of Life magazine and world-wide fame.  Over the next two years, he would create the first Usonian house (the Jacob’s residence), his own incredible desert home and studio at Taliesin West, and the stunning headquarters for Johnson Wax in Racine, Wisconsin.  The next 20 years were the most prolific period of his career, with more than 200 of Wright’s designs constructed.

During the construction of the headquarters, Johnson hired Wright to design him a new home on a large tract of land north of Racine.  A ‘zoned’ plan, four wings containing different private functions- master suite, children’s bedrooms, guest bedrooms/garage, and kitchen/service- extend into the landscape from a central 3-story great hall with living, dining, library and music areas spiraling around a chimney mass with five fireplaces.   

Wingspread - Great Hall

Wingspread - Great Hall

While the name Wingspread was derived from this layout, the glass cupola of the house also provided a location for the Johnson children to watch their father do fly-bys piloting his private plane. 

View from cupola

Spiral stairs to cupola

Many of Wright’s projects had wing-like roof or balcony projections seeming to defy gravity, but The Spring Green restaurant actually used steel trusses from the flight deck of a decommissioned aircraft carrier to allow the building to span a small ravine.  It is currently used as the visitor’s center for Wright’s original Wisconsin home, Taliesin, located nearby.    

Spring Green

Fly on over to Sepia Saturday to look at more views on flight.