The usonian house: the democracy of space

Abstract

The Usonian period is often claimed as a departure from Wright's earlier career, a new start. To what extent however was this period a new beginning? and can the variety of houses built after 1935 be considered as a single group? Although there were a wide variety of houses built during the Usonian period - variety in terms of expense, size, site and program - there was a unifying concept which, although expressed in many ways, bound these houses as a single group. This essay finds the binding concept of Democracy expressed by the Usonian module, a unit system developed by Wright. Using such a module, Wright had the freedom to manipulate space, to play with it, to liberate it from the confines of orthogonal axes, from the grid and from symmetry. This essay will show that such a liberation of space defined democratic relationships between (Usonian)inhabitant, house and site, allowing them to be more intimate, more dynamic.