Trinity

One of the things that I want to remember is that it has been a privilege to watch this house get built. It is interesting that although we had visited the Pope-Leighey house and taken pictures and paced out the dimensions, we and our builder, really just have been flying by the seats of our pants. And it has been fun to see that with further reading, it has adhered to alot of the tenets of Wright's philosophy.

In The Natural House Wright talks about all the possibilities when one uses concrete, steel and glass. Although this house is structurally different from the original, it looks the similar. Much like two computers look alike at first, but then you see one is an Apple and one a PC.

We sat in beach chairs in the great room yesterday on our concrete floor, gazing at the steel beams that support the cantilever carport, windows and trellises while a gentle breeze lifted our hair through the windows where the glass will let nature come inside the house.

It's different, and yet it is concrete, steel and glass...

Pat putting in some sweat equity...cleaning sawdust.

We are not alone...whoahahhaha

We are not the first, nor will we be the last to decide to go back to the future and build a usuonian house. When we went for our second visit to the Pope-Leighey house in Alexandria Va, we were the only ones on tour and asked if we could really take our time. The docent knew exactly what we were up to and said, "sure, lots of people bring tape measures."

I don't think we were that organized. I had an old grocery list and pencil stub and Pat paced out the rooms while I wrote down the dimensions. You can buy a floor plan for any of the unbuilt Frank Lloyd Wrights houses from his foundation, but that will cost you a pretty penny, plus, then you have to abide by their rules and regs and they will have an advisor come out to tell you how it should all go down.

You can go on ebay and buy FLW plans to modify and/or just build.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Usonian-Style-home-by-F-L-Wright-architectural-plans_W0QQitemZ140344717622QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPlans_Blueprints_Guides?hash=item20ad327136&_trksid=p4634.c0.m14.l1262?refid=store#ht_2704wt_935

However, we knew we wanted to take the basic plan and modify it enough that we didn't want to do that. We had already designed our country home and built that without any problems...even after the dog ate the plans on the second day of framing.

A family out in Ohio designed and built their own usonian.

http://usonianredhouse.com/construction.html

This house, while it really looks like it could have been designed by FLW wasn't.

What these Ohioans did, and what we are attempting to do is bring that sense of FLW style back with modern materials- so our roof won't leak.

The inside furniture looks really like FLW's but I didn't like that style, and in his book, The Natural House, FLW discusses how difficult it was for him to design a comfortable chair. Indeed, he and Mamah Cheney had mission style chairs for their use at Taliesin.

The chair above is from TARGET.

The dogs of war

"It is desperately cold...a damp clammy cold that almost never amounts to freezing or frost, but it is harder to keep warm than anywhere else I have been, unless Italy."

So writes Frank Lloyd Wright in his book, The Natural House. He was actually writing about Tokyo, Japan, but that description just suits our weather today and what is forecast for the rest of the week. A damp, clammy cold... Welcome to the south.

And we have started our annual bickering. Pat turns up the thermostat because it is cold as hell when the rains and wind blow (and I always think of Hell as cold-absence of God and all that) and almost immediately, I race over to turn it down because I get so "stuffy."

Wright's answer to this conundrum is what he calls "gravity heat," or what is more commonly referred to as radiant heat. He became a believer during his stint in Japan whilst building The Imperial Hotel. Froze to death until he was introduced into what his hosts referred to as "Korean Room," which had heated floors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Hotel,_Tokyo#The_Imperial_Hotel

Heat- that physics bound commodity- MUST rise. Therefore, if the floors are warm you've won the major part of the battle in making your house comfortable. Right now, we don't have radiant heat. The house was freezing, Pat kicked in the furnace and now I'm stuffy.

The dogs of war have been let loose.

A correction

I have been reading THE NATURAL HOUSE by Frank Lloyd Wright. In it, he attributes the word USONIA to Samuel Butler. Mr. Butler, a pithy soul, to say the least has many interesting quotes. For your reading enjoyment and as a literate interlude until we get our concrete floor poured which was delayed due to rains, I am inserting this link to some of them.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/samuel_butler_4.html

My favorite one is "Death is only a larger kind of going abroad."

Mr. Butler also wrote THE WAY OF ALL FLESH, which is on my bookshelf awaiting my reading enjoyment.