Usonian Architecture

Usonian architecture is a residential style developed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright from the late 1930s through the 1950s, built around his goal of designing modest, genuinely affordable single family houses for the ordinary American middle class rather than the wealthy clients his earlier career had mostly served. Wright coined the term Usonian himself as a label for this vision of a distinctly American domestic architecture, and his Herbert Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin, completed in 1937, is generally regarded as the first true Usonian house. The style is marked by single story, often L shaped plans built low and close to the ground with flat or gently sloped roofs carried on deep overhanging eaves, an open plan living and dining space, and construction economies such as a concrete slab foundation with built in radiant floor heating and carports rather than enclosed garages, a term Wright is credited with coining. Usonian houses extended the principles of Wright's own organic architecture, keeping construction costs down through simplified building methods and standardized modular planning while still tying each house closely to the character of its particular site.