By Bud Dietrich, AIA
As the 19th century waned and the 20th century was dawning, a group of architects and designers in the Upper Midwest banded together to form the Prairie School. An entirely new approach to domestic design, the Prairie School featured a new language. Rooms made of four walls and small holes for windows were replaced with cantilevered roofs, floating planes, bands of windows and open corners to create spaces that would be all open and light and bright.
The most famous of the Prairie School architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, designer of such iconic houses as Robie, Willits, Coonley, Martin and more, Wright's designs served as the basis for the International Style and today's modernism. A line can be easily drawn from Wright to Mies to the best of today's modern aesthetic.
Let's take a look at this enduring style and see how it continues to influence domestic design in our time.
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