Frank Lloyd Wright: Prefab and Built-in

In a recent dwell article, Patrick Sisson discussed Frank Lloyd Wrights work with American System-Built Homes, a company Wright teamed up with to produce houses whose component parts were prefabricated in a factory and assembled on site. Wright had great enthusiasm for factory produced homes writing in 1901 that the machine would free up designers to be more creative and imaginative with design.

Running in parallel with Wrights advocacy of machine produced homes was his advocacy of the home of built in furniture. The all built in home was part of Wrights notion that the home should be a unifying effort incorporating structure, shelter, convenience, grace and style.

For better or worse nowadays the home more and more means a multifamily apartment. A new article in Multifamily Executive discusses a company called Katerra spearheading the move toward off site prefabrication in the multifamily building industry. Wright would be thrilled. I offer a complementary floor plan based on Wrights Usonian 'Tadpole' reflective of

Wrights concern for organization and builtin furniture. The model shown features a builtin table, sofa, bed, desk, and chest of drawers along with the usual complement of kitchen and bathroom cabinetry.