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TROPICAL

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DESIGN

When my colleague, emily tyra, lent me a copy of architect and interior designer Angie Lane’s book, "Midwest Modern Manifesto," I felt I’d had a gauntlet thrown down before me. In her book (excerpted in this issue) Lane offers an equation for the four design elements that she believes make up a Midwest Modern interior. (I won’t be a spoiler, so read on to find out what they are.)

But Lane’s book got my mind wandering outside of interiors: Is there a definitive Midwest Modern architectural style? And if so, how would one define it? Apparently my inner reflection rattled the gods of architecture— and maybe even the king of them all, Frank Lloyd Wright. Seriously, was it serendipity that as I pondered the question, information about a home designed by Aris Georges, a graduate of Taliesin School of Architecture (founded by Wright) and who was a senior fellow at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, landed in my email? That lead turned into this issue’s story, “Little Modern House in the Big Woods.”

In the process of writing about this lovely jewel of a home, I had the opportunity to pick Georges’ brain on the subject of Midwest Modern architecture, which began with the Prairie School in Chicago—those long, low homes that accentuate the flat prairie landscape around them and eschewed the popular ornate Classical Revival Style with its European roots. Prairie School architecture was completely new and all American, and Wright was its leader. And as Georges further explained to me: “What bridges those early years to contemporary expressions of Midwest Modern is the distillation of his ideas in the Usonian designs of the 1930s, where he further eliminated the complexity of the Prairie School, and set the course for the minimalist, integral and exquisitely livable spaces that have influenced generations of architects since.”

But as Wright’s work would demonstrate later, there was more going on than just a style: there was an ethos based on organic materials and sitecontextual design. And this is where Wright’s designs, and those of his disciples, differed from the other Modernism of the mid-to-late last century. By other Modernism I mean the flat-roofed, monochromatic steel-and-glass boxes characterized by the International Style of architecture, later simply known as Modern architecture. Like Wright, those architects detested the ornamentation of the Gilded Age. But that was where the comparison ended. The style was more about the style, and not so much about blending into the site. Wright hated it.

Over the decades, as sustainability issues have unfurled, Wright’s ethos is more crucial than ever, and we are blessed in the Midwest to have its earliest imprint. Cue the drum roll while I introduce the third story in this issue, “Cabin Spirit.” While this home is not Modern by any conventional terms, it is definitely a flag-bearer for the Wright ethos with its use of honest organic materials, transparency to the outdoors and its careful siting that assured it blended into its beautifully wooded lakeside property. Wright pioneered all of those principles.

So, does a quintessential Midwest Modern architecture still exist? I’m pretty sure Wright wouldn’t have answered it exactly this way, but I will: You betcha!

Lissa@traversemagazine.com