The Usonian Home

Usonian: Denoting of the United States of North America (U.S.O.N.A). It is used as an alternative to "American," which can refer more broadly to anything from the continents of North or South America. The term establishes a sense of identity unique to the U.S.A.

"Concerning the Usonian House:

Credo:

I believe a house is more a home by being a work of Art.

I believe the man is more a man by being an individual rather than a committee-meeting.

For these two reasons, I believe Democracy (though difficult) is the highest known form of society

I Believe Democracy is the new innate aristocracy our humanity needs.

I believe success in any form consists in making these truths a reality according to ability.

I believe all agencies tending to confuse and frustrate these truths are now continuous and expedient — therefore to be exposed and rejected

I believe truth to be our organic divinity.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

November 1953"

From the 1953 Sixty Years of Living Architecture: The Work of Frank Lloyd Wright Exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Usonian homes were unlike anything designed before. Frank Lloyd Write applied traditional American values of family and democracy to a his own, reimagined, utopian world. One where community was the center point of human life, with the homes promoting human interaction, and where nature and human life were not separated by box-like architecture. Usonian homes were made according to nature and with nature, with the common man in mind.

The Common Man

Frank Lloyd Wright established the Usonian home style following the Great Depression, influenced by the idea of a low cost and practical home. He believed that Americans deserved a restructuring of their space, light, and freedom, which could be provided in the Usonian home. These homes were family centered, each designed with the capability of continued extensions for growing families. For Wright, they symbolized the advancement of America and the common man.

A Democratic Home

Frank Lloyd Wright believed that by providing quality architecture to middle class families, America would overcome mobocracy (or what he deemed "unsophisticated" and "middle-brow" architecture like Georgian homes) and would instead promote democracy (Usonian homes).

Wright "has two words: democracy, which he thinks is a good word; and mobocracy, which he thinks is a bad word...He wanted to be a democratic architect who would educate the American people to an aesthetic greater than the one that they had already achieved. He loathed architecture of the mob which pulled architecture down to the least common denominator"

Source: William Cronon

Plans from The Trier Residence (1953)

Source: Douglas M. Steiner

Interior of the Smith House (1941)

Source: Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research

By stripping down the home to it's most basic and necessary elements, removing the attic, garage, and basement, Usonian homes became one egalitarian unit. The main area of the house was open, including the living room, kitchen (work space), and dining room in one room. The bedrooms extended off this central space in a "tadpole" formation. According to Wright, this arrangement allowed housewives to become the central figures of their households. While the man of the household, or the family, was able to utilize the home to his particular purposes, as a free individual.

The Usonian home is"a home for our people in the spirit in which our Democracy was conceived: the individual integrate and free in an environment of his own, appropriate to his circumstances—a life beautiful as he can make it—with [the housewife], of course" — FLW

Source: Wright, Frank Lloyd. 1953. The Usonian House : Souvenir of the Exhibition, 60 Years of Living Architecture, the Work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Herbert Jacobs House (1936)

Source: Mark Hertzberg

Nature

Frank Lloyd Wright was inspired by the nature and landscape of each home, designing his houses to be in harmony with their surroundings. Each house was be tailor made according to the flow of the land. The large windows, natural light, and even the beds that were just low enough so one woke with the sun, all connected the home owners to the natural environment. Moreover, he used natural materials from surrounding areas to build the homes, allowed access to the outside from every room, and designed flat horizontal roofs which followed the landscape.

For more information on Frank Lloyd Wright's concept of the American home

An entire building might grow up out of conditions as a plant grows up out of soil and yet be free to be itself, to ‘live its own life according to Man’s Nature.’ Dignified as a tree in the midst of nature but a child of the spirit of man.

Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography

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