Exhibition Catalog - Lawrence Technological University

Lawrence Technological University
Frank Lloyd Wright
AFFLECK
HOUSE
70th Anniversary Exhibition

Exhibition Catalog April 20-24, 2011

Introduction
The 70th construction anniversary of the Affl eck House offers an ideal opportunity to celebrate
the genius of Frank Lloyd Wright and the commitment of the College of Architecture
and Design at Lawrence Technological University to preserve its legacy. The Affl eck House
provides our students with an environment in which to study in a “living laboratory” of mid-
20th century architecture by an American master. Our students are inspired to produce artistic
and technical projects, some of which are included in this catalog with many more in
the exhibition. Since the Affl eck family has entrusted their house to us, College of Architecture
and Design faculty, staff, and students have tirelessly contributed their time and talents
toward the house’s care. It is with great pleasure that I present this catalog and exhibition in
commemoration of the Affl eck House construction that has inspired exceptional student work
and dedicated college efforts.
i
Glen LeRoy
Dean, FAIA, FAICP, College of Architecture and Design
Lawrence Technological University
Lawrence Technological University
21000 West Ten Mile Road
Southfi eld, MI 48075
Acknowledgments:
This work is the production of the College of Architecture and Design (CoAD) at Lawrence
Technological University. Gretchen Maricak, editor and layout; Michelle Overley, graphic
design, layout, and production; Anne Adamus, editor; Nik Prucnal, editor & layout. Joe
Oberhauser and the Architecture Computing Resource Center (ACRC), printing. The CoAD
Affl eck 70th Anniversary committee members: William Allen, Michelle Belt, George Charbeneau,
Daniel Faoro, Jin Feng, Dr. Dale A Gyure, Gretchen Maricak, Brian Raymond, Steve
Rost, Gretchen Rudy, Jolanta Skorupka, and Jim Stevens. Adrianne Aluzzo, the Architecture
Resource Center, and Joe Oberhauser, ACRC, assisted in research for graphic production.
Deans Glen LeRoy, Ralph Nelson, and Joe Veryser provided support and oversight.
@ 2011 Lawrence Technological University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission from Lawrence Technological
University. The editor has attempted to trace and acknowledge all sources of images
used in this booklet and apologizes for any errors or ommisions.

Contents
Introduction from the Dean..................................................................................................................i
Acknowledgments..............................................................................................................................i
History of FLW Affl eck House by Dr. Dale Allen Gyure..........................................................................1
Taliesin Blueprint Drawings..................................................................................................................29
Taliesin Model and Drawings.............................................................................................................30
Interior Design Study, Professor Jin Feng, Shawn Calvin.................................................................35
Exterior Lamp Replica, Brian Raymond with Jason Westhouse.....................................................43
Affl eck End Table Replica, by Brian Raymond with Jason Westhouse .......................................45
Student Work
Assistant Professor Jim Stevens with Lesa Rosmarek - Digital Fabrication.........................47
Professor Steven Rost - Photography.....................................................................................49
Professor Gretchen Maricak - Visual Communication 2......................................................53
Professor William Allen - Allied Design.....................................................................................59
Assistant Professor Janice Means - Affl eck Applied Study..................................................73
Assistant Professor Michelle Belt - Furniture and Millwork.....................................................85
Professor Steven Rost - Sculpture............................................................................................88
Assistant Professor Jolanta Skorupka - Visual Communication 1, Independent Study.......90
Assistant Professor Jolanta Skorupka - Visual Communication 1..........................................95
Faculty Gallery
Professor Gretchen Maricak.................................................................................................107
Professor Steven Rost.............................................................................................................109

1
History of Frank Lloyd
Wright’s Affleck House
Dr. Dale Allen Gyure
Tucked away on a wooded knoll less than 100
yards from a major eight-lane thoroughfare leading
through Detroit’s northwest suburbs, the Gregor and
Elizabeth Affleck house is a hidden gem from Frank
Lloyd Wright’s early Usonian house period. The home
captures everything that was best about Wright’s
“organic” approach to architecture, and it served
the Afflecks well for over three decades. Its history
and design can tell us much about Wright’s architectural
philosophy and the Afflecks’ unique tastes.
The Afflecks
The story of the house begins with Gregor Sidney Affleck,
who was born in Chicago in 1893 and raised
in Wisconsin. Little is known of his early life. His father’s
family was from Muscoda, Wisconsin, about
twenty miles west of Frank Lloyd Wright’s home
territory. Gregor recalled that as a boy he lived in
Spring Green, Wisconsin, across the river from where
Wright’s family owned land and where Wright would
build his own home “Taliesin.” Gregor “often visited
the Hillside Home School” run by Wright’s aunts Jane
and Ellen Lloyd-Jones, and he knew the Lloyd-Jones
family (from Wright’s mother’s side). 1 A cousin of
Gregor’s father was said to have worked at Taliesin
as a secretary. Whether or not young Gregor had
any other exposure to Wright is unknown.
After graduating from Muscoda High School, Gregor
enrolled at the University of Wisconsin to study chemical
engineering. He joined the Navy ROTC program
and the Chemical Engineer’s Society. Upon receiving
his bachelor’s degree in 1918, Gregor briefly attended
the Stevens Institute of Technology in New
Jersey before heading to France at the end of World
War I as an ensign in the Engineering Bureau of the
Naval Reserve. 2 Then he drifted for a short period,
briefly working for the Union Dye and Chemical Corporation
in Kingsport, Tennessee and the French Battery
Company of Madison, Wisconsin. 3 Eventually,
like many other young professionals at the time, he
was drawn to Detroit and the burgeoning automobile
industry. By the early 1920s Gregor was working
as a metallurgist for the Dodge Corporation in Detroit.
A University of Wisconsin alumni magazine listed
him as being “in charge of the physical testing laboratory
of the Dodge Motor Co.” at the time.4 While
there he met and fell in love with Elizabeth Besterci,
a secretary for the Michigan Central Railroad who
originally came from east central Pennsylvania. They
were married on September 14, 1923; Gregor had
just turned thirty and Elizabeth was almost twenty-two.
Photograph by Harvey Croze

Gregor, who once described himself as a “total survival
of the Protestant work ethic,” became a successful
chemical engineer.5 He obtained a number
of patents, including one in Canada for a process
for cleaning paint spray booths and another in the
United States for a method for recovering residual
coating materials from the walls and air of spray
chambers. He would later establish and operate
the Colloidal Paint Products Company in Detroit, a
chemical business for auto products and cosmetics.
These endeavors earned Gregor a healthy income;
as he later admitted, he had “discovered how to
make money.” 6 In his spare time he pursued an interest
in photography. Elizabeth enjoyed gardening
and sewing and stayed at home to raise their son,
Gregor Peter Affleck, born in 1925. By the late thirties
the couple had purchased a Colonial Revival-styled
home in Pleasant Ridge in the Detroit suburbs.
2
Photograph by Anon.
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1940
When the Afflecks first contacted Frank Lloyd Wright
about designing a house in 1939, the architect was
enjoying a professional renaissance at the ripe age
of seventy-two. After extremely rough years in the
late twenties and early thirties, things had begun
to change for Wright in 1932. The Depression and
changing tastes in architecture had hit him hard. In
the previous six years he had been able to construct
only seven projects, and two of those were for himself
and one for a cousin. An important architectural
exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York,
which gave birth to the phrase “International Style,”
depicted Wright as a “half-modern” architect and
an “individualist” whose inventive period had long
passed. He had taken to writing and lecturing to support
himself, while many believed him to have retired
– or worse. “I have been reading my obituaries to a
considerable extent over the past year or two, and
think, with Mark Twain, the reports of my death greatly
exaggerated,” Wright once wrote. 7
But in 1932 a series of events occurred which would
stimulate Wright’s architectural renewal. First, Wright
founded the Taliesin Fellowship at Spring Green, Wisconsin,
to train young architects in his philosophy of
organic architecture and to provide a steady means
of income through tuition payments. Despite the
hard times Wright retained a certain amount of respect
in the architectural world and had no trouble
attracting students. The Taliesin Fellowship proved to
be a key factor in the revitalization of Wright’s career
by providing him with an inspiring atmosphere, similar
to his Oak Park, Illinois, office in the early 1900s, where
many of the Prairie School architects trained.
Drawing by Taliesin, Photographs by Anon.
Wright further established himself in the public eye with
two books in 1932. The first was An Autobiography,
which has been perceptively described as “a difficult,

evealing, inaccurate, but compelling book” about
Wright’s life and philosophy. 8 An Autobiography was
reviewed and praised in many leading journals. The
second book, The Disappearing City, was Wright’s tirade
against urbanization; it contained his first discussion
of Broadacre City, the agrarian utopia that he
intended as the replacement for the modern city.
3
In the next five years, Wright reemerged on the national
architectural scene with such renowned designs
as the Kaufmann “Fallingwater” House (1935),
the Jacobs House (1936), the Johnson Wax Administration
Building (1936), and his second home, Taliesin
West (1937). His star shone brighter than ever, and
more commissions began to arrive at Taliesin. Wright
appeared on the cover of Time in January, 1938,
and in nearly thirty articles during that year, from
such popular fare as Life and The New Yorker to a remarkable
special issue of Architectural Forum (also in
January) devoted entirely to his architecture. 9 And
the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened an
exhibition on Fallingwater in January, the first time
that institution ever held a major one-building exhibit
on a living architect. Wright would continue to work
on a seemingly endless stream of compositions until
his death in 1959 at the age of ninety-one.
Usonian Houses
The major project of the last two decades of Frank
Lloyd Wright’s life was the creation and promotion
of “Usonian” houses. Wright conceived the Usonian
project as an extension of the principles first developed
in his Prairie-style houses of the 1900s-1910s.
“Usonia” was a word coined by Wright to represent
“The United States of America” – inspired by his perception
that the moniker “America” was too vague,
arguably including countries beyond the U.S.A. His
intention was to build on the basic elements of the
Prairie houses – natural materials, harmony with nature,
open plans, and a uniquely American idiom
– by utilizing mass production technology to produce
affordable single-family housing for all socioeconomic
classes. The Usonians would achieve their
inexpensiveness through prefabricated parts, paring
the house down to basics, and using a new method
for constructing walls. Conceived as an antidote to
the social and economic realities of the Great Depression,
eighteen Usonian houses were built between
1939 and 1941; the Usonian program eventually
produced over 100 houses before Wright’s death
in 1959.
Wright was not alone in turning to mass production as
a means to stimulate housing construction during the
Depression. Although prefabricated housing dates
back to the nineteenth century, conditions in Europe
after World War I, and around the world in the thirties,
drove architects of all persuasions to tackle the
challenge of designing cost-efficient houses, leading
Photograph by Balthazar Korab

some to experiment with unusual materials and factory
procedures. Many realized that industrial practices
like the use of standardized parts, preassembled
pieces, and simple construction systems could
significantly reduce costs. Wright was actually an
early proponent of a type of prefabrication with his
American System-Built houses of the 1910s. For Wright
and others involved with such explorations, the most
important issue was how to maintain quality, to keep
the homes from becoming cheap, repetitious minimalist
boxes. 10
4
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Wright found a solution with the Usonians. Although
the Usonian houses would come in a variety of
shapes and sizes over the years, they all shared common
features. First of all, they were placed directly
on the ground. Wright did not believe in basements,
and preferred to rest his houses – even back in the
Prairie School days – on a concrete slab. For the Usonians
he employed the slab not only as a base for
the house, but also as the bed for a radiant heating
system. Pipes enclosed in the concrete circulated
hot water; the pipes transferred their heat to
the surrounding concrete, which warmed the air at
floor level, which in turn radiated upward through
the house. As a result, the Usonians did not require air
ducts, radiators, or dropped ceilings since the entire
system was contained within the floor. Wright did not
invent the ancient practice of radiant heating but
did popularize it as a low-cost alternative to forced
air systems.
Wright also abhorred garages. Like basements, he
felt they accumulated unnecessary clutter and
could be avoided. So he designed the Usonians with
carports instead of garages. Flat roofs, which could
be built with less difficulty than standard pitched
roofs, eliminated the need for “ugly” gutters, and
emphasized the horizontal appearance that Wright
favored. The Usonian houses were planned using a
grid system which allowed contractors working without
supervision from Taliesin to easily construct the
house and imposed an order and uniformity on the
whole. These decisions, along with the rejection of
the basement, led to a house that was simpler to
build. And simplicity was the key to the Usonians –
not just in design and construction, but also in the occupants’
anticipated lifestyle. “That house must be
a new pattern for more simplified and, at the same
time, more gracious living; necessarily new, but suitable
to living conditions as they might so well be in
this country we live in today,” Wright announced in
1943. 11
One of Wright’s most unique Usonian innovations
came in the form of a new type of wall. He invented
a sandwiched panel wall consisting of identical
board and batten siding on the interior and exterior
enclosing a core of plywood covered by tar paper.

5
The modular wall sections could be prefabricated
offsite and raised into place. Along with these panels,
Wright discarded the traditional stud-wall frame.
In the Usonians the weight of the roof instead rested
on the sandwich walls, masonry (usually brick) end
walls, and a masonry core at the center of the house
containing the fireplace, kitchen, and utility room.
Because the walls were relatively weak most Usonians
were limited to one story in height, but Wright
believed this to be a way to inject informality into
these largely middle class houses, as well as helping
to integrate the structure into the surrounding
landscape. These sandwich walls contained no air
cavities, so no wiring or piping could be run through
them, as Wright felt them unnecessary because of
the in-floor heating system.
In keeping with the overall simplicity of the Usonian
project, the houses required few materials beyond
the concrete slab floor, wood, brick, and glass.
These materials, Wright felt, needed very little maintenance,
unlike the plaster, paint, and wallpaper
of traditional houses. And the Usonians’ floor plans
further revealed Wright’s desire to simplify as well as
his recognition of social changes in American family
life occurring by the 1930s. Economic necessities
of the Great Depression and changing social mores
led American families to seek greater informality and
casualness in their lives. According to historian John
Sergeant, “In America immediately after the war the
new house was changing for three reasons: (1) there
emerged a freer attitude toward children; (2) there
was a new woman’s role with more activity outside
the home; and (3) with a proliferation of external functions,
less time was spent in the home.” 12 In response
to the increasing amount of servant-less families and
the emerging trend toward informality, Wright created
houses more tailored to the demands of contemporary
wife/mother roles. Most prominently, he
abolished formal dining rooms in favor of alcoves
with dining tables, which were located next to the
kitchen – which he now called the “workspace” – in
order to minimize the distance between the places
for preparing and eating meals. He also collapsed
together the dining and living areas. This essentially
merged three rooms into one (counting the kitchen),
continuing the process of opening interior space by
breaking down boundaries that he had begun with
the Prairie School houses.
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Usonian houses were “zoned” into public and private
sections, and this can be read in their form and configuration.
Many of these houses used an “L” shaped
plan, or some variation, which placed the living/dining
room in one wing, the bedrooms along a singleloaded
corridor in the other wing, and the utility areas
like the workspace and bathroom in the hinge
between the two wings. This arrangement shielded
the house’s private rooms from non-family visitors.

Photograph by Harvey Croze
Wright also saw the plan as cost effective because
it could center all of the plumbing and most of the
masonry into the utility core at the house’s center.
Finally, the Usonians exemplified Wright’s longstanding
dedication to an architecture that existed
in harmony with nature. One of his most cherished
principles, fully implemented in the Usonians, was
that a building should seem to be of the land rather
than on it. His houses emerged from the slope of a hill
rather than sitting on top of it, which was the traditional
method. He utilized wood as much as possible,
inside and out, to evoke continuity with the natural
landscape. He oriented the houses so that the living
room faced southeast to guarantee abundant
sunlight throughout the year. “Proper orientation of
the house, then, is the first condition of the lighting of
the house,” he once wrote. “The sun is the great luminary
of all life. It should serve as such in the building
of the house.” 13 To capture the sun’s rays, Wright’s living
rooms featured floor-to-ceiling French doors that
opened to a patio or balcony and dissolved the barrier
between the interior and exterior. The doors also
served as a shield against the elements while preserving
views to the surrounding landscape. When
opened, they emphasized the union between manmade
object and its setting.
The house’s relation with the natural landscape was
crucial, not just for the sylvan atmosphere and picturesque
views such a sensitive siting might provide, but
also for Wright’s endeavor to change Americans’ living
habits. He drew no distinction between the inside
of the house and the outside, and felt both were united
in one continuous designed space. According to
Wright, “In integral architecture the room-space itself
must come through. . . We have no longer an outside
and an inside as two separate things. Now the outside
may come inside, and the inside may and does
go outside. They are of each other.” 14 Eliminating
physical and psychological boundaries in this manner
facilitated the occupants’ close relationship with
nature.
Another design element Wright employed to link
people to the natural world involved the rejection of
mechanical climate controls. As mentioned above,
Wright used radiant heating from the floor rather than
forced air systems in the Usonians; he also designed
them without air conditioning. Wright believed artificially
controlled climates removed humans one more
step from direct contact with nature. “To me air conditioning
is a dangerous circumstance. . . I think it is far
better to go with the natural climate than to try to fix
a special artificial climate of your own,” wrote Wright.
“Climate means something to man. It means something
in relation to one’s life in it.” 15 The houses all featured
wall openings, such as French doors, windows,
and clerestories, on all sides of the house, allowing
6

cross-ventilation. Combined with sensitive siting and
abundant natural growth around the houses, these
features allowed Usonian occupants to keep comfortable
even on the hottest summer days.
7
Initial Contact
How the Afflecks came to desire a Frank Lloyd Wright
home is open to speculation. The couple visited
Taliesin as early as 1924, according to Gregor’s recollections,
and both he and Elizabeth were impressed.
But it was not until sometime in the late 1930s that
Gregor and Elizabeth Affleck apparently encountered
some drawings or photographs of Wright’s Fallingwater
house in Pennsylvania, and were intrigued.
They proposed to contact Wright to see if he would
design a house for them. In September 1939, they
made another trip to Taliesin.
The Afflecks were the perfect kind of clients for Wright.
He particularly attracted younger and progressively
minded couples who had strong opinions, an interest
in nature, and a disdain for the more formalized living
conditions of earlier generations. 16 Gregor seems to
have been the driving force behind the Afflecks’ decision.
Their daughter, Mary Ann, later described her
father as a “rather eccentric” man who wanted an
“unusual home,” while her mother was remembered
as having “more conventional tastes.” 17 In contrast
to Gregor’s enthusiasm over the possibility of owning
a Wright-designed home, evidence indicates Elizabeth
was hesitant. “We may have some diffuculty
[sic] with Mrs. Affleck but so far as I am concerned,”
Gregor told Wright, “you can be as inventive as you
have a mind to be.” 18
During the Taliesin visit in 1939, Wright told the Afflecks
to begin by buying some property in the country –
“one or two acres of land, something with a little
character to it, something nobody else can do anything
with,” and preferably near some water. 19 The
Afflecks then searched for almost a year before finding
what they thought was the perfect place in the
“wilds” of Bloomfield Hills, just north of Birmingham
and the famous Cranbrook properties and about
twenty miles northwest of downtown Detroit. The site
was just over two acres in size and heavily-wooded,
with a small slope running down to a ravine containing
a pond between the house and Woodward
Avenue, the extension of Detroit’s main thoroughfare
that connected the city with Pontiac. The land
dropped approximately twenty-five feet from the
hillside where the house would be built to the water
below. Gregor later described the lot as “a little valley
completely covered with tall trees and with no
level land at all.” 20
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Photograph by Anon.
On May 30, 1940, Gregor sent a letter to Wright officially
asking him to design their home. Wright’s response
to Affleck’s initial photographs and sketches

of the proposed location was positive. “You certainly
have made good and given us the kind of
opportunity we like,” he wrote. 21 Almost three
weeks later Gregor forwarded a list of the couple’s
extensive requirements for their house:
The equivalent of three bed rooms and maids quarters,
(one maid).
A large living room with large fireplace.
8
Utility room for laundry and possible use as a laboratory
or work shop.
Fruit cellar or cold storage room.
Two bath rooms.
Photograph by Harvey Croze
There are only three persons in our family, our son is
15, and in a couple years there will only be two.
We do not wish to limit you too much in designing
the home but we both like stone and glass (the
laminated stone which is not native of Michigan,
laid in the same manner of that at Fallingwater,
Bear Run, Penn.)
We like dishes and books and want ample space
for these.
Woodward is a busy thoroughfare and we believe
the house should be far back on the lot.
We hope that the lot can be left in a natural condition
as much as possible.
We like the idea of a “car port” rather than a garage.
Possibly, we may some day add a swiming [sic]
pool, as the land lends itself to this.
The road around the property is private, and there is
an easement of 20 feet from all lot lines.
We would like to have the cost held to approximately
8,000 dollars.
We also like your ideas regarding the relation of
house and garden, but the porch or terrace would
need to be screaned [sic] because the section is
quite wild.
We can discuss details when we see you. 22
Later, in a 1946 article on the Affleck house in the
journal Progressive Architecture, the Afflecks summarized
and augmented this original list, claiming

they told Wright, “We don’t like attics; we don’t like
basements, and we don’t like furniture,” and asked
him for “a house with a lot of windows, a large fireplace,
a carport instead of a garage, room enough
for three people to live in but large enough for six to
sleep in.” 23
9
Bloomfield Hills in 1940
Bloomfield Hills was a very small and new community
in 1940, but it was already gaining a reputation
around metropolitan Detroit as a desirable residential
location for wealthy automobile executives and
other professionals. Affleck described it as “not a
cheap neighborhood” with many “Old English”
houses costing more than $50,000. 24 While Bloomfield
Township had been incorporated in 1827, the
town of Bloomfield Hills had only recently been incorporated
in 1932. The 1940 U.S. census listed its
sparse population at 1,281. 25 There really was no
town center or shopping district; nearby Birmingham,
with over 11,000 inhabitants, fulfilled those
needs. The cultural center of Bloomfield Hills was
the Cranbrook campus, a wooded 315-acre oasis
consisting of three schools and nearly thirty buildings,
courtyards, and pools designed by Finnish architect
Eliel Saarinen. 26 Curiosity later would bring many artist
and architect visitors from Cranbrook, many of
whom became friendly with the Afflecks, including
Saarinen and sculptor Carl Milles. 27
Wright’s Design
Wright’s typical working method by the 1930s involved
designing from a distance. He rarely visited
the site for one of his houses more than once, and in
many cases he never visited at all, working instead
from photographs and topographic maps supplied
by the client. This was the process he used with the
Afflecks. Wright did not see the property before creating
the house. He began making drawings in July
1940. From the beginning he conceived the project
as a Usonian house, albeit a slightly more elaborate
version. The drawings envisioned a structure of almost
2,400 square feet in an L-shape, with the longer
leg anchored into the hillside and the shorter leg a
boldly cantilevered living room/dining room/terrace
hanging over the ravine. As Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer has
pointed out, Wright situated the house “diagonally
to the contour lines to take full advantage of the
sloping terrain in its woodland setting.” 28 The picturesque
siting and dramatic cantilever responded
to Gregor’s desire to have Wright devise something
special, indicated by a letter sent just before the first
drawings were produced. “Bloomfield is considered
an ART centre and now we have an opportunity to
show what art in architecture really is and fortunately
there will be no chance to compare it with any
other house,” boasted Gregor. 29
Taliesin Drawing
Taliesin Drawing

Pursuant to his usual method, Wright planned the
house on a grid. The four-foot-square modules used
to arrange the spaces and visible in plan drawings
are inscribed in the concrete floor. What cannot immediately
be seen is that the module also organized
the house vertically. Wright used grids to impart order
on a house in plan and elevation and to assure that
the parts bore a relationship to each other – in this
case, a proportional relationship governed by the
module.
10
Photograph by Balthazar Korab
The Pew House, Wisconsin. Photograph from http://farm4.
static.fl ickr.com/3589/3602796344_44656dc9c9.jpg
The Affleck house was to be a special type of Usonian
with two stories and a terrace; in fact, it belonged
to a family of houses that Wright originated in 1932
with the first (and unbuilt) scheme for the Malcolm
Willey house in Minneapolis. In that important design
Wright created a floor plan with a second-floor living
room intended to take advantage of views of
the surrounding landscape. Wright imagined a balcony
extending from the living room, bounded by a
parapet wall made of overlapping wooden boards.
While not a Usonian house in the true sense, the first
Willey house project introduced many of the core
concepts adapted to later houses.
In 1938, the year before the Afflecks’ request, Wright
embarked on a series of designs for Usonians with
balconies attached to elevated living rooms. One
was a house for John and Ruth Pew near Madison,
Wisconsin. The Pews owned a hillside lot on the shore
of Lake Mendota very similar to the one purchased
by the Afflecks in Bloomfield Hills. Wright decided to
take advantage of the landscape and the view and
resurrected the balcony from the first Willey scheme,
complete with lapped board parapet walls. The
Pew house showed Wright’s propensity for using the
ground to serve as the catalyst for a building’s design.
Wright described his approach in a book published
just two years before meeting the Afflecks:
With the purpose or motive of the building we are to
build well in mind, as of course it must be, and proceeding
from generals to particulars, as “from-withinoutward”
must do, what consideration comes first?
The ground, doesn’t it? The nature of the site, of the
soil and of the climate comes first. Next, what materials
are available in the circumstances…?
We start with the ground…
Why should the building try to belong to the ground
instead of being content with some box-like fixture
perched upon the rock or stuck into the soil, where it
stands out as mere artifice…?
The answer is found in the deal stated in the abstract
dictum, “Form and function are one.” We must begin
upon our structure with that.

The ground already has form. Why not begin to give
at once by accepting that? Why not give by accepting
the gifts of nature?...
Is the ground a parcel of prairie, square and flat?
11
Is the ground sunny or the shaded slope of some hill,
high or low, bare or wooded, triangular or square?
Has the site features, trees, rocks, stream, or a visible
trend of some kind? Has it some fault or a special virtue,
or several?
In any and every case the character of the site is the
beginning of the building that aspires to architecture.
And this is true whatever the site or the building
may be. 30
Gregor Affleck was aware of the Pew house, probably
as a result of Wright’s showing him the project
during a visit to Taliesin. In fact Wright may have
proposed a similar design for the Bloomfield Hills site,
judging by a letter Gregor sent to Wright in June 1940
which indicated that “the house you are building
on Mendota Drive at Madison would be quite suitable
for our lot.” 31 Wright continued to explore the
second-floor balcony in houses for George Sturges
(1939, Brentwood Heights, California) and Lloyd Lewis
(1939, Libertyville, Illinois).
Design Changes
The existing correspondence in the Frank Lloyd
Wright Archives tells the story of a very smooth design
process for the Affleck house. There are no recorded
disagreements between client and architect. Only a
few design aspects were even altered from the original
conception. For example, what appears to be
the earliest floor plan does not include closets in the
two smaller bedrooms. Affleck wrote to Wright specifically
requesting wardrobes in these rooms, as well
as suggesting they be widened (and, consequently,
the entire bedroom wing of the house) by two feet.
Affleck also rejected the first version of the basement
utility room, claiming it was too small for his intended
use.
In the initial drawings, Wright imagined an axis that
led from the main entry through the loggia space
and straight out another door to a “garden,” with
the stairs down to the garden aligned with the axis.
In later versions, and as built, the stairs were shifted
perpendicular to this axis to run parallel with the bulk
of the house, and the single door out to the garden
became a wall of French doors like those separating
the living room from the outdoor terrace. Wright also
modified the loggia from the original conception.
The first drawings show a more formal space, with a
large, square opening in its center and a short spur
Photograph by Harvey Croze

wall separating it from the single entry to the garden.
The opening housed a “light well” (called a
“lantern” by Affleck) centered over a small pool
at ground level, with operable windows that could
open to allow cool air to circulate vertically from
below the house; this was a smaller-scale version
of an element he first used at Fallingwater. Perhaps
realizing that the square light well impeded
circulation through the loggia, or influenced by Affleck’s
suggestion to move or eliminate it, Wright
changed it to a rectangular shape and pushed
it off to the side, while also removing the spur wall
screening the garden entry. These gestures made
the space asymmetrical but opened it to better
circulation patterns.
12
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Another alteration to the original plans during the
design phase dealt with the relationship between
the house’s public and private areas. The first plan
seems to show no elevation difference between
public wing and bedroom wing, while later drawings
– and the house as built – depict the private
bedroom wing a half-story higher than the loggia.
All of the early floor plans and most other drawings
also showed the loggia as a separate room,
capable of being closed off from the rest of the
house. No doors, however, were ever installed,
and instead the loggia serves as an intermediate
space for passing through rather than a room
onto itself. 32
Possibly the most important modification to the
original concept – and certainly the one with the
biggest financial impact – concerned the nature
of the materials. As cited above, as part of their
“requirements” list the couple asked for “the laminated
stone which is not native of Michigan, laid
in the same manner of that at Fallingwater.” 33 In
early August 1940, after Wright had sent the Afflecks
his first drawings, they still favored stone
walls but a conflict seems to have arisen between
Gregor and Elizabeth. “Mrs. Affleck still thinks that
she likes stone,” Gregor wrote to Wright. “Personally,
I like brick and also the money that could
be saved by using it.” 34 Wright’s response was
equivocal. The series of elevation and perspective
drawings made by Wright and his apprentices
in the summer of 1940 include some that clearly
anticipate stone walls and others where the material
could be either stone or brick. In September
Gregor continued to mention stone but at some
point afterward the decision was made to switch
to brick. Although the house was eventually constructed
with brick walls, two aspects of the proposed
stone design survived. The first was a rough
stone retaining wall along the hillside that bowed
out from the northeast corner of the carport to the
entry drive. The second was more subtle. Gregor
had added a handwritten message to a letter

13
to Wright in September 1940, suggesting a mark on
one of the stones in the form of an abstracted “G”
and “A” superimposed – much like Wright’s official
signature mark, as Affleck pointed out. 35 The final
choice of brick over stone rendered this suggestion
moot, but in the house there are small windows in the
bathrooms and in the clerestory at the north end of
the living room containing a design that some see as
the abstracted initials but in a different form. Gregor
began using stationery with this pattern as early as
November 1941. It may be that Wright liked Gregor’s
idea of a personal mark and found a way to incorporate
it despite the decision not to use stone walls
in the house.
The walls were not the only surfaces to undergo revisions
during the design phase. It appears that the
living room floor was originally to be wooden, as revealed
by a letter from Harold Turner to Wright in early
1941 which claims, “You suggested to the Afflecks
last fall to change the wood flooring in the front part
of the building to concrete slab flooring.” 36 This implies
that early in the design process the house was
going to vary from the typical Usonian by eliminating
the concrete slab – with its radiant heating system
– in the living room. Whether the Afflecks or Wright
proposed the wooden floor is unknown. Gregor responded
to Turner’s suggestion with his usual deference
to Wright, stating that he would prefer a solid
concrete floor but would follow Wright’s desires. 37 In
the end a concrete slab was employed.
Construction
With the drawings for the proposed house completed,
the next step was to fi nd a competent contractor
who could deal with Wright’s unique designs.
Gregor fi rst suggested a longtime acquaintance
named C. Lloyd Rix. 38 He eventually settled on a
builder who had apparently had trouble executing
Wright’s proposal. Gregor was exasperated; he
later claimed, “The plans were ready in the summer
of 1940 but I fumbled around with a builder who
could not read the plans. Mrs. A. could read them
and her only experience was reading the plans for
a dress.” 39 Wright then recommended a trusted
hand. Harold Turner was a Danish-born cabinetmaker
with no building experience who had made
the transition into larger construction when Wright
hired him to oversee the erection of the Hanna
House (1936) in Palo Alto, California. He subsequently
became one of Wright’s favorites, working on fi ve
other Wright-designed houses by that time, including
the Goetsch-Winkler House (1939) in Okemos,
Michigan. Turner’s work was characterized by fi ne
craftsmanship, executed despite the unique and
exacting specifi cations of Wright’s designs. While
working on the Affl eck house, Turner also directed
the construction of Wright’s house for Carlton and
Margaret Wall (1941) in nearby Plymouth, Michigan.
Photograph by Gregor Affl eck

Photograph by Harvey Croze
Photograph by Harvey Croze
After fi nishing the Affl eck and Wall houses Turner
built a residence for himself in Bloomfi eld Hills. He
later became a “designer-builder,” creating and
constructing Wrightian-styled houses for numerous
clients in the suburbs north of Detroit.
By December 1940, Gregor had enlisted Turner’s
help, paying him by the month. Technically
Turner was not the Affl ecks’ contractor, only the
supervisor, overseeing the work of individual contractors
for the heating, plumbing, and roof. The
structure rose rather swiftly when the building
season returned the following spring. Gregor later
reported that groundbreaking for his house took
place on May 1, 1941. By mid-July, Turner reported
to Wright that the house was “rapidly taking
form”: the brick layers would be fi nished within
a week, the fl oors were 60 percent done, and a
roof over the living room was completed. 40 The
family moved in some time in October, and construction
on the house was fi nished by the end
of 1941. By all accounts Gregor was very satisfi ed
except for one aspect – he felt the carport was
too small. The remaining correspondence from
the project shows that he complained about the
carport in December, shortly after the house was
completed, and again the next April. There is no
indication, however, that the carport was ever altered
beyond its original dimensions.
The house immediately proved to be a curiosity
among members of the Detroit region’s art and
architectural communities. Gregor reported that
soon after construction began architects started
visiting on a weekly basis. Later, when the house
was fi nished, the stream of callers grew deeper.
According to Gregor, “Weekends were a nightmare.
Just like rolling a snowball each person
brought a friend who immediately came back
with two more.” 41 And this continued for the entire
time the Affl ecks lived in the house.
The House as Built
The Affleck house as conceived by Wright exhibited
all the trademarks of his domestic architecture
as they had been developed in the first
decade and a half of the twentieth century – in
the so-called “Prairie Style” houses – and would
be further elaborated in the Usonian works. First
and foremost, Wright attempted to harmonize the
house with the land. Since the early 1900s, Wright
had emphasized the nexus between building and
setting as crucial. “A building should appear to
grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize
with its surroundings if Nature is manifest the,”
he wrote in 1908. 42 Like his other works on sloping
sites, the Affleck house emerges from the hillside
rather than sitting atop its crown.
14

15
Approach
The Affleck house, like Wright’s other Usonians, turns
its back to the public, offering a mostly windowless
brick wall to arriving visitors. This tendency exhibits
Wright’s view of the home as a safe haven for the
family where privacy is paramount. From the outside,
particularly for those visitors approaching the house
from Woodward Avenue up the driveway, nothing
can be seen of the interior. The living area is elevated
from the ground and hidden behind the terrace’s
parapet wall and a large brick buttress. As the visitor
moves closer to the house, curving toward its north
side, he or she is greeted by a somewhat formidable
structure of largely brick walls; the only visible windows
are small clerestories along the private wing
just below the extended eave. This austere façade
is countered on the other side of the house, away
from the driveway and facing what was once a forest,
where prominent windows indicate the locations
of bedrooms and loggia, and the open glass-filled
terrace overlooks the ravine. Once inside, however,
the house seems extremely open to light and the
outdoors. The living room’s French doors, as well as
those in the loggia, dematerialize the sense of enclosure.
The house’s appearance is distinctly horizontal in
keeping with Wright’s belief that the horizontal line of
the ground plane, reflected in a building, reinforced
the building’s symbolic connection to its location.
Describing the Usonian house idea in the early 1940s,
Wright claimed that the Usonian “extends itself in the
flat parallel to the ground. It will be a companion to
the horizon.” 43 This horizontal emphasis can be seen
in the extended, overhanging flat roofs of the house
and carport, the lapped boards of cypress wood
siding, the cantilevered terrace extending off the living
room, the clerestory windows that run along the
public face of the house, and even in the brickwork
of the masonry sections, where the horizontal joints
between the bricks were raked to a greater-thanaverage
depth while the vertical joints were built
up with mortar until they were flush with the wall’s
surface – per Wright’s command. Natural materials
were of course highlighted: except for the glass windows,
viewers of the house see only brick and wood.
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Materials
Inside and out, most walls consist of twelve-inch cypress
boards laid vertically, with each successive
course lapping the previous one. These sandwich
walls contain a three-quarter-inch plywood core
and no rigid framework. Because the boards are
lapped, none of the vertical wood surfaces are
straight – some taper to the top while others narrow
at the bottom. Whether intentional or not, this means
the profiles of the wooden walls – including doors –
echo the sloping hillside that supports the house. All

of the corners are mitered, which is a difficult task
in itself but extremely arduous when combined
with inclined walls. They are a testament to Harold
Turner’s precise craftsmanship.
Entry
The house’s entry is unobtrusive, tucked beneath a
low-hanging carport roof barely six-and-a-half feet
high, and flanked by a plain brick wall and vertical
slit window. Wright partially relieved the sense
of compression by punching a skylight through the
roof just in front of the doorway, but the overall effect
is still cramped. Upon entering the house one
first passes through a small foyer, which extends
the constricted height of the carport, before stepping
into the loggia where the space dramatically
opens up to two stories.
16
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Loggia
The interior arrangement similarly reveals typical
Wrightian gestures. The house consists of three major
areas: public – where guests might be allowed; intermediate
(the loggia) – to serve as a transition between
outside and indoors as well as between the
two other areas of the house; and private, consisting
of three bedrooms and two bathrooms. These
three zones are distinguished by their size, shape,
and relationship to each other.
The loggia is a light-filled wonder. Its skylit ceiling allows
views of the sky and clouds above, just as a wall
of French doors on the south side offers a prospect
of the hillside and wooded surroundings and a bank
of windows in the west wall exposes a view into the
upper part of the first bedroom. A third feature, the
“light well,” dominates the room at floor level. It consists
of windows set flush with the floor, surrounded
by a short wall of lapped boards that mimics the
wooden walls found throughout the house. When
opened, the windows offer a view to a small reflecting
pool below, and allow cool air to circulate up
and through the main rooms. Elizabeth called the
light well “an organic air conditioning unit.” 44 The
light well is integrated into the wall and turns the corner
from the loggia into the living room, visually connecting
the two rooms. The short walls around the
opening also screen the circulation path from the
closets and restroom along the loggia’s north side.
Photograph by Balthazar Korab
The loggia also demonstrates Wright’s effort to unify
interiors and exteriors. It is the most transparent room
in the house, with a wall and ceiling that present
only a minimal barrier. Wright employed a trellis
outside the loggia to enhance this connection. The
trellis over the rear entry to the loggia is an extension
of the skylights inside, using the same pattern
of framed openings, which serves to extend space
beyond the walls of the house and blur the distinction
between inside and outside.

17
Living Room and Terrace
The living room and terrace comprise the public area
and act as the heart of the Affleck house. This combination
of spaces embraces many of Wright’s salient
concepts of domestic architecture, including such
notions as the sanctity of family (symbolized by the
oversized hearth), the fireplace as the spatial locus of
family life, the psychological attraction of prospect/
refuge design, and the essential connection between
nature and architecture. All other spaces in
the Affleck house are secondary.
The living room is a rectangle forty feet long and sixteen
feet wide. It is dominated by two elements: a
continuous row of French doors that extends along
most of the eastern side and part of the southern wall;
and a massive fireplace set off-center in the western
wall. Because of its size, “some people think our fireplace
will never work,” wrote Gregor Affleck. 45 But
they were wrong. Its function, however, was almost
secondary to its symbolic value. For decades Wright
had been utilizing immense living room hearths to signify
family togetherness and harmony – a characteristic
design feature he may have adopted from the
nineteenth century Arts & Crafts movement.
The living room demonstrates another of Wright’s design
characteristics – the use of a diagonal axis. As
historian Neil Levine has demonstrated, Wright utilized
diagonal planning throughout his career as a means
of allowing for a “new sense of freedom, breadth,
and connection to nature” while serving as “the positive
organizing principle of his planning.” 46 Early in his
career Wright began to place doorways or entries in
the corner of a room to give the impression of greater
interior depth. At his own home, Taliesin, in Spring
Green, Wisconsin, Wright introduced the diagonal
axis that extends from one corner of a rectangular
room through the opposite corner in the far wall
and out into the landscape. This manner of imparting
depth to a space – and harmonizing inside and
outside – was emphasized by either partially or fully
glazing the corner where the diagonal axis breaches
the enclosure and continues outdoors. In most of
Wright’s Usonian houses, then, one can stand in front
of the fireplace and look out across the living room
through a transparent corner to see nature. At the
Affleck house this view travels through the corner,
over the terrace, and out to the ravine in front of the
house slightly below treetop level. The vista unites the
structure with its surroundings, giving the impression
that the living room continues outside and into the
trees and sky with only a minimal barrier between.
Wright described this spatial effect in his autobiography,
claiming that the Usonian house “liberates the
occupant in a new spaciousness. A new freedom.” 47
This was part of Wright’s career-long effort to remove
barriers both inside the house and between inside
and outside. “There is a freedom of movement, and
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Photograph by Harvey Croze

Photograph by Harvey Croze
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Photograph by Harvey Croze
a privacy too, afforded by the general arrangement
here that is unknown to the current ‘boxment,’
Wright boasted of the Usonian houses.
“Withal, this Usonian dwelling seems a thing loving
the ground with a new sense of space, light, and
freedom – to which our U.S.A. is entitled.” 48
This vista from the living room, accentuated from
the outdoor terrace, takes advantage of the site’s
unique characteristics and enables the occupants
to view natural surroundings from deep within the
house. And in so doing it may tap into something
rooted in our subconscious minds. One of the most
interesting of Wright’s design techniques is his use
of what has been termed “prospect and refuge.”
Popularized by British geographer Jay Appleton
in the 1970s, prospect and refuge theory relates
to what appears to be an innate human attraction
to places that are secure and hidden (refuge)
while also offering a protected and elevated view
of the surroundings (prospect). The theory postulates
that this attraction evolved on the African savannah
during Homo sapiens’ earliest days, helping
our ancestors survive in a hostile environment. 49
Wright began to experiment with prospect and
refuge in his “Prairie Style” houses and continued
in the Usonians. The Affleck house demonstrates
the concept well. Inside the low-ceilinged living
room, looking out through the transparent wall at
the trees beyond, one gains a sense of safety and
solitude.
Another design element Wright incorporated
into the Affleck house is the principle of compression
and release. Actually an ancient technique,
seen as far back as megalithic tombs of prehistoric
times, compression and release deals with
the viewer’s psychological experience of space.
It involves leading the visitor in sequence from a
small, constricted space to a larger, open one.
The psychological effect of this series of experiences
makes the second, larger space appear even
more spacious. Wright may have learned the
technique from Louis Sullivan, his acknowledged
mentor from the early days of Wright’s career. In
the Affleck house this can be seen at work when
entering through the main door. After walking under
the extremely low carport roof, which imparts
a feeling of compression, and through the entry,
the visitor encounters the loggia, which explodes
to two stories and is full of light. A similar sensation
is conveyed when walking through the living room
– which is dark and enclosed with a rather low ceiling
– and out onto the terrace and thus to a place
without walls or ceilings.
The living room’s northern end was for dining.
Wright attached a row of shelves to the wall for the
Afflecks’ to display their dinnerware, and made a
18

dining corner by locating the dinner table next to
the kitchen. At the opposite end, Wright created a
phonograph cabinet which protruded into the room
perpendicular from the wall. The cabinet formed a
special nook in the living room’s southern end for the
Afflecks’ piano.
19
The terrace extends the living room space out of
doors. It is large – fifty-six feet long, six feet wide next
to the living room and sixteen feet wide at the cantilevered
southern end. Here the Afflecks could enjoy
an unobstructed view of their scenic location. The
terrace extends the full length of the living room and
turns the corner to veer off the house in a dramatic
cantilever which provides the house’s aesthetic highlight.
Wright used cantilevers as a means to energize
his structures, creating terraces, balconies, and roofs
that hover in mid-air with no visible means of support.
Kitchen
Wright began calling kitchens “workspaces” in the
Usonian houses in recognition of the changed social
circumstances that required middle-class women,
more and more, to do their own cooking without
the aid of full- or part-time servants. His designs were
governed by efficiency. The Affleck workspace is
a twelve-foot-by-ten-foot brick-walled room tightly
packed with appliances, counters, and storage
compartments, and a stairway leading down to the
lower level. Wright’s Usonian kitchens were strictly utilitarian
rooms without embellishment and often not
enjoying the same connection to the outside as other
rooms. Their purpose, as at the Affleck house, was
to furnish the necessities for working in a streamlined
space that was directly adjacent to the dining area.
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Bedroom Wing
The third and final zone of the house, containing the
family’s private rooms, is raised a half-level above the
plane of the loggia and largely out of sight. This is a
move Wright made in many of the Usonians to signal
the hierarchy between the public and private zones.
Rectangular in form, and the largest of the house’s
three areas, the private wing features a narrow corridor
or “gallery” along one side, four feet wide and
illuminated by a continuous row of clerestory windows.
As in most Usonians, there are no spaces in the
house devoted strictly to circulation, so even this hallway
is lined with shelves on one side and closets and
drawers on the other.
Three bedrooms and two bathrooms are arranged
in line on one side of the gallery. The bedrooms are
compact, in keeping with Wright’s desire for simplification.
The master bedroom is sixteen-by-twelve feet,
while the secondary bedrooms measure twelve feet
square. All three rooms are entered through a corner
in an attempt to make their relatively small spaces
seem a little larger, and in harmony with Wright’s af-
Photograph by Harvey Croze

finity for diagonal axes. The first bedroom encountered
in the private wing contains a set of windows
that allows a view over the loggia and into the living
room. Between it and the second bedroom is
a skylit bathroom. At the very end of the house is
the master bedroom, which contains its own skylit
bathroom and a specially designed vanity.
Lower Level
The Affleck house is unique in the Usonian world as
one of the few examples with a lower level. Taking
advantage of the hillside location, Wright placed
the utility room, along with a “maid’s room” and
bathroom, beneath the kitchen and living room.
Ironically, the servant’s quarters were never used
as such since the Afflecks’ never employed a
maid. Wright also created a separate “shop” or
workroom for Gregor beneath the loggia – a place
for Affleck to develop photographs and store tools.
20
Photograph by Harvey Croze
Wright turned the opening under the cantilevered
terrace into a rest area, attaching bench seats to
the structural piers and paving a small brick terrace
around the reflecting pool. This space could
be used to escape the heat on summer days, or
perhaps even as another place to contemplate
the site’s natural beauty. In many of the designs
for the house Wright envisioned a small stream running
down the hill, under the terrace, and into the
pond at the ravine’s bottom, so he incorporated a
Japanese-style footbridge and small boulders beneath
the overhang to enhance the stream’s attractiveness.
No existing photographs depict such
a stream, however, and the site today gives no indication
of running water.
An interesting aspect of the Affleck House is the
cramped passageway on the lower level between
the utility room/maid’s room suite and Gregor’s
workroom. Present-day visitors are amazed by its
awkward four-foot height. The origins of this basement
tunnel are shrouded in mystery. It seems
clear that the passage was not part of the original
design since none of the surviving drawings by
Wright and his apprentices show any connection
between these two areas. Thus there is no verified
explanation for its presence. Rumors blame an
unskilled contractor who could not read Wright’s
plans, but that story is suspect given that Harold
Turner, a skilled builder by the time work began on
the house, supervised construction. A more likely
explanation is that some sort of accident occurred
that could not be corrected before the concrete
dried.
Furnishings
In typical fashion, Frank Lloyd Wright designed

21
furniture for the Afflecks to match their house. 50 The
pieces were simple and horizontally oriented, fitting
with the house’s design theme. For the living room,
Wright designed a dining table, end tables, and a set
of wooden chairs with upholstered backs and seats;
each chair could be used individually or combined
with others to form a sofa. Other chairs for the house
consisted of a Y-shaped plywood base supporting
an L-shaped seat and back. All of the chairs and
tables were unadorned, emphasizing the nature of
their materials (cypress plywood) to match the rest
of the house.
There is evidence that the Afflecks were not entirely
pleased with their Wright-designed furniture. Ruth
Adler Schnee, a pioneer of mid-century modernist
furniture and interior designs in Michigan who worked
with Minoru Yamasaki and Buckminster Fuller, among
others, recalled being hired by the Afflecks to provide
alternatives. According to Schnee, “the Afflecks
asked me to help them because Frank Lloyd Wright
had designed furniture for them, built into the house.
It was so uncomfortable that they wanted me to
see if I could improve on that.” 51 Historical evidence
confirms that the family owned many pieces of non-
Wright furniture.
In late summer/early fall 1942, Wright designed special
wool rugs for the living room and loggia and Gregor
hired a weaver to fabricate them. They featured a
series of multi-colored diagonals against a backdrop
of vertical lines. But as envisioned, the rugs’ thickness
was problematic since the French doors leading out
to the terrace reached down to within millimeters of
the floor. In an exchange of correspondence in late
1942, Wright suggested trimming the bottom of the
doors to gain the necessary clearance. Photographs
from that time show a more practical solution – the
rugs are moved away from the doors.
At approximately the same time Affleck requested a
“plywood mural” for the loggia. 52 It may be that the
proposal was aimed at Wright’s personal secretary,
Eugene Masselink, a talented artist who designed a
number of plywood screens and murals for Wright
houses in the 1950s. Masselink’s work typically included
dramatic vertical slashes, circles, and triangles in
bright colors; some of these abstract art pieces had
the secondary effect of emphasizing the diagonal
axes that placed such an important role in Wright’s
planning at the Affleck house and elsewhere. The
nature of that item is unclear, and the house shows
no signs of a mural of any type being installed. 53
After construction finished and the family moved
in, Gregor Affleck tabulated the construction costs,
and estimated the total expenditure at approximately
$19,000. This was extremely expensive for the
time, since the average American house cost about
Eugene Masselink Mural, at Grand Rapids Art Museum
http://www.artmuseumgr.org/uploads/assets/masselinkweb.png

$4,000. It also represented a noteworthy departure
from the planning stages, when the Afflecks
informed Wright they “would like to have the cost
held to approximately 8,000 dollars.” 54 Such a significant
overrun was fairly typical of Wright, however,
and in part exposes the uncertainties of dealing
with the Usonians’ special construction requirements.
While the first Usonian house, built in 1936 for
Herbert and Katherine Jacobs in Madison, Wisconsin,
had cost $5,500, most were more expensive
than this. The cost also indicates the Afflecks’ status;
the house should be regarded as a “high end”
Usonian, specially crafted for a wealthy family, and
not a standard model intended for the masses.
22
Photograph by Jessica Aguilar
Photograph by Megan Connor
Subsequent Life and Influence
Wright apparently thought very highly of the Affleck
House. He included a model and two drawings
of the house, which was then under construction,
in a major retrospective of his work entitled,
“Frank Lloyd Wright: American Architect,” at the
Museum of Modern Art in New York. 55 This was significant
because Wright chose the projects himself
and designed the exhibit, including the Affleck
House alongside such famous works as the Robie
house, the Johnson Wax Company, Fallingwater,
and Taliesin. Only sixteen other models were presented.
In a proposed catalog, Wright described
the Affleck house as having a “living room and
terrace thrust boldly over a pool.” 56 The exhibition
ran from November 1940 to January 1941, and
introduced the house within the larger context of
Wright’s oeuvre.
A few years later, the Affleck House played a prominent
role in General Motors’ advertising campaign
for the 1948 Oldsmobile Futurama, one of the car
manufacturer’s first new post war models. The
house appeared in both print and television advertisements
as the architectural counterpart to the
car, embodying the slogan “Futuristic design combines
beauty and utility.” 57 The print ads, depicting
a drawing of the house above a photograph
of the new car, offered the following comparison:
“This home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright represents
the finest of contemporary architecture. Just
as the Futuramic Oldsmobile represents the farthest
advancement in automotive design.” 58
In the first two years after construction on the house
was completed Gregor asked Wright for three additional
components. The first was an area beneath
the elevated terrace for “the storage of tools and
lawn mower, toboggan and such.” 59 This request
arose because of Wright’s antipathy toward garages.
His Usonian homes featured carports only,
which sufficed to protect automobiles from inclement
weather but eliminated crucial storage
space for those items which were inappropriate

to keep inside the house – a problem compounded
by Wright’s aversion to basements. A storage room
accessible only from the outside, which does not appear
on existing drawings, stands next to Gregor’s
workshop but it is not clear if this was a last minute
addition during construction or a later adjustment.
23
In the summer of 1943, Gregor indicated to Wright
that “the space below the house is quite complete
except for something by Carl Milles.” 60 He was referring
to the internationally famous Swedish sculptor
who had been in residence at nearby Cranbrook for
over a decade. Milles specialized in fountains, and his
work typically featured sinuous bronze depictions of
mythological beings. Wright was quite fond of Milles,
describing him as “probably the greatest” contemporary
sculptor and “the power behind the throne at
Cranbrook.” 61 There is no indication, however, that
Milles created any work for the Afflecks.
Gregor also inquired about an outdoor fireplace and
a nursery, the latter necessitated by Elizabeth’s pregnancy.
62 She would give birth to a daughter, named
Mary Ann, on June 8, 1944, Wright’s seventy-seventh
birthday. This query was the first indication that the
Afflecks needed more space. Gregor followed with
two letters to Wright in 1947 and another in 1951,
all claiming that Elizabeth wanted two additional
rooms. 63 During that time the Afflecks even began
to purchase some of the surrounding lots to the north
and west. Then in the early fifties Gregor came right
out and requested a new house to be located on
the recently-purchased properties. Gregor outlined
their requirements for Wright and in the process provided
insight into some of the existing house’s shortcomings.
He asked for “a really large living room,”
a hobby room for Elizabeth, a guest room, a larger
workshop for himself (without a washer and dryer in
it), a more distinct dining area as in Wright’s nearby
Melvyn and Sara Smith house (1946), and a kitchen
that could be accessed without going through the
living room. 64
Wright’s office responded with a set of detailed
drawings for a house in 1952. Named the “Pergola
House,” the residence was to be located on the Afflecks’
property up the hill to the northwest of the first
house. The Pergola House’s dominant theme was the
circle, and there was to be a long colonnade connecting
the house’s interior and exterior, semi circular
walls at all ends, a circular master bedroom, and a
circular outdoor terrace. The scheme was actually a
slightly altered version of an unbuilt house Wright designed
for Gerald Loeb of Redding, Connecticut, in
1944. The Afflecks reviewed Wright’s plans and made
some corrections, including two closets in Mary Ann’s
room, four bathrooms overall, more storage space,
and a well and pump. Gregor’s handwritten note to
the letter – “I am not so good at having sky lights keep
Photograph by Gregor Affl eck
Photograph by Sarah Denoyer

Photograph by Megan Smith
Photograph by Megan Smith
out water” – suggested further problems with the
existing house. 65 Despite the considerable amount
of work invested in the drawings, the Afflecks never
followed through with construction of the Pergola
House, and no extra rooms were ever added to the
original structure.
The reason for this increased need for space, in addition
to the knowledge gained from living in the
residence for a decade, seemed to have much to
do with unexpected circumstances in the Afflecks’
personal life. When they originally commissioned
the house, the couple told Wright they had “only
three persons in our family, our son is 15, and in a
couple years there will only be two.” 66 So Wright no
doubt designed the house to be used in the long
term by only two people. But shortly after completion,
Mary Ann’s arrival boosted the occupancy
once more to three. And at almost the same
time a tragic event occurred in young Gregor
P.’s life when a chemical explosion nearly blinded
him while a student at Olivet College. Years later,
Gregor P., now in his mid-twenties, was still undergoing
periodic surgeries to remove glass from his eye,
was unable to drive a car, and was living with his
parents. Gregor and Elizabeth therefore conceived
the Pergola House with the knowledge that they still
had a young girl to raise and a semi-incapacitated
young man to house indefinitely.
Despite the temporarily crowded conditions,
Gregor and Elizabeth Affleck loved their house and
spent the rest of their lives in it. But like many Wright
homeowners, enjoyment of their house came at
a price. As an object of curiosity, the house attracted
a constant stream of visitors and trespassers
eager to glimpse Wright’s work. The Afflecks
good-naturedly accepted their role as stewards of
a work of art. In the late 1970s, Gregor P. estimated
that his father’s visitors’ register contained nearly
10,000 names, while Mary Ann recalled the special
circumstances of owning a landmark house: “As
I was growing up that was probably the biggest
drawback; we could never sleep in on Saturday
mornings because of the likelihood that someone
would want to see the bedrooms – and mother insisted
the rooms be spotless. I think we had people
visit from almost every country.” She also claimed
that “mother and dad enjoyed the unusual. . . And
dad liked nothing better than to have his puttering
around interrupted by a visitor who wanted to talk
about the house.” 67 Wright himself came by whenever
he was in town or at Cranbrook and the Afflecks
hosted him on more than one occasion.
Gregor was particularly fond of mentioning his
wife’s regard for the house. Less than a year after
moving in, he related to Wright that “the house has
changed her outlook on life a lot and we even
24

25
have picnics in our living room, using the fireplace as
a grill.” 68 A few years later, Gregor quoted Elizabeth
as saying, “I know that the roof has leaked and the
skylights leak but I would rather live in this house than
any other house in all the world.” 69
Elizabeth Affleck died in 1973 at the age of 71.
Gregor died at 81 the following year. They had lived
in the Wright-designed house for over three decades.
Following their deaths, their children, Gregor
P. and Mary Ann, rented the house to architects for
a few years before giving it to the Lawrence Institute
of Technology (now Lawrence Technological University)
in 1978. At the time, Mary Ann said, “Mother
and dad loved the house... and we want to help LIT
by providing students an historic and creative architectural
example from which to learn.” 70 The school
contemplated continuing its use as a residence, but
that was not done, and the house has been used
ever since for classes, meetings, and fundraising
events. It was placed on Michigan Register of Historic
Places 1978, and the National Register of Historic
Places in 1985.
The Affleck house today remains a testament in
brick, wood, and glass to the fundamental tenets of
Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural philosophy and to
Gregor and Elizabeth Affleck’s confidence in Wright’s
unique vision. Under the stewardship of Lawrence
Technological University, it will continue to expose
visitors to Wright’s genius while serving generations of
architectural students as a model of design that exists
in harmony with its natural surroundings.
Photograph by Megan Smith

Notes
1
Gregor S. Affl eck, “Fact Sheet,” 2 July 1967, Frank Lloyd
Wright Foundation Archives (hereafter “FLWFA”).
2
Affl eck wrote an article entitled, “Training Offi cers for the
Naval Auxiliary,” The Wisconsin Engineer 23, no. 6 (March
1919): 202-205.
3
Ethan W. Schmidt, “Alumni Notes,” The Wisconsin Engineer
23, no. 7 (April 1919): 266; Willard A. Kates, “Alumni Notes,” The
Wisconsin Engineer 24, no. 7 (April 1920): 285.
4
Marriage notice in “Alumni Notes,” The Wisconsin Alumni
Magazine 25, no. 1 (November 1923): 15.
5
John Sergeant, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Houses: The
Case for Organic Architecture (New York: Watson-Guptil Publications,
1984), 70.
6
Ibid., 70.
7
Robert C. Twombly, Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and His Architecture
(New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1987), 205.
8
Ibid., 200.
9
For a listing of the articles, see Robert Lawrence Sweeney,
Frank Lloyd Wright: An Annotated Bibliography (Los Angeles:
Hennessey & Ingalls, 1978).
10
There is an extensive literature on prefabricated housing.
See e.g., Barry Bergdoll and Peter Christensen, eds., Home
Delivery: Fabricating The Modern Dwelling (New York: The
Museum of Modern Art, 2008); Colin Davies, The Prefabricated
Home (London: Reaktion Books, 2005); Dolores Hayden,
Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000
(New York: Vintage Books, 2003).
11
Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (New York: Duell,
Sloan and Pearce, 1943), 489.
12
Sergeant, Wright’s Usonian Houses, 138.
13
Frank Lloyd Wright, “The Natural House (1954),” in Bruce
Brooks Pfeiffer, ed., Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings, Vol.
5, 1949-59 (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, and
The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, 1995), 115.
14
Ibid., 94.
15
Ibid., 120-121. According to historian Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer,
former Taliesin apprentice, “Wright disliked most forms of artifi -
cial air conditioning because he believed them harmful. ‘Just
think what happens to the “old pump” (the heart) when you
come into an icy cold room after being out in the hot sun, or
vice versa.’ The fl ow of natural air was always more desirable,
even if the temperature of that moving air is higher than the
cold blasts from excessive air conditioning.” Yukio Futagawa,
ed, Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph 1924-1936, vol. 5. Text by
Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer (Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita, 1985), 99.
16
On Wright’s clients, see Leonard K. Eaton, Two Chicago
Architects and Their Clients: Frank Lloyd Wright and Howard
Van Doren Shaw (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969).
17
Summary of interview with Mary Ann Affl eck Lutomski,
6 May 1997 (conducted by George M. Goodwin
in Providence, RI), FLWFA.
18
Gregor S. Affl eck to Frank Lloyd Wright, 28 June
1940, A065B02, FLWFA. Affl eck later admitted in correspondence
to a prospective Wright homeowner,
“Mrs. Affl eck, too, did not always want a Wright
house.” Affl eck to Henry R. Hope, 17 June 1943,
A077B05, FLWFA.
19
Gregor S. Affl eck, “Client’s Report,” undated account
enclosed with letter to Progressive Architecture
editor Thomas H. Creighton, 5 August 1946, A090A01,
FLWFA.
20
Ibid.
21
Wright to Affl eck, 1 June 1940, A065A06, FLWFA.
22
Affl eck to Wright, 17 June 1940, A065A09, FLWFA.
23
“House at Bloomfi eld Hills, Michigan,” Progressive
Architecture 27 (October 1946), 67.
24
Affl eck, “Client’s Report,” FLWFA.
25
United States Census, 1940 (www.1940census.net)
(accessed 9 February 2011).
26
On Cranbrook, see Kathryn Eckert, Cranbrook: The
Campus Guide (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press, 2001).
27
Wright and Saarinen maintained a friendly rivalry
for over two decades. The two men fi rst met in 1931
as judges of an international design competition
in Rio de Janeiro. Saarinen invited Wright to speak
at Cranbrook in 1935, and thereafter Wright made
almost yearly trips to see the Saarinens. In his autobiography,
Wright admitted some professional jealousy
over Saarinen’s luck in landing large-scale, well-paying
commissions. “I had always resented Saarinen a
little, regarding him as our most accomplished foreign
eclectic,” Wright wrote. He was “a little jealous too
of [Saarinen’s] easy berth, bestowed by the hand of
American riches, while I had to wait and work and
scrape for mine, the hard way.” Wright, Autobiography,
515.
28
Yukio Futagawa, ed., Frank Lloyd Wright Monograph
1937-1941, vol. 6. Text by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer.
(Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita, 1986), 250.
29
Affl eck to Wright, 28 June 1940, A065B02, FLWFA.
30
Frank Lloyd Wright, “Architecture and Modern Life”
(1937), in Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, ed., Frank Lloyd Wright
Collected Writings, Vol. 3, 1931-1939 (New York: Rizzoli
International Publications, and The Frank Lloyd Wright
Foundation, 1995), 239-240.
31
Affl eck to Wright, 28 June 1940, A065B02, FLWFA.
32
Interior photographs from the 1940s show a couch
in the space at the base of the wall to the bedroom
26

27
wing, perhaps indicating the Affl ecks’ desire to use the
loggia as more than just a staging area.
33
Affl eck to Wright, 17 June 1940, A065A09, FLWFA.
34
Affl eck to Wright, 4 August 1940, A065B07, FLWFA.
35
Affl eck to Wright, 15 September 1940, A066B05,
FLWFA.
36
Harold Turner to Frank Lloyd Wright, 21 January 1941,
T024A07, FLWFA.
37
Affl eck to Turner, 25 February 1941, A068C08, FLWFA.
38
Affl eck to Wright, 15 September 1940, A066B05,
FLWFA.
39
Affl eck, “Client’s Report,” FLWFA.
40
Turner to Wright, 13 July 1941, T024C06, FLWFA.
41
Affl eck, “Client’s Report,” FLWFA.
42
Frank Lloyd Wright, “In the Cause of Architecture,”
Architectural Record 23 (March 1908): 157.
43
Wright, Autobiography, 493.
44
Affl eck, “Client’s Report, FLWFA.
Gregor recounts how “Betty bought the worst looking chair
I have ever seen. I kicked a hole in it, so now it goes into the
maid’s room (we have no maid).” Affl eck to Wright, 1 April
1942, A073A09, and 27 November 1943, A077E03, FLWFA.
52
Affl eck to Wright, 9 August 1942, A073C06, and 18 November
1942, A074A09, FLWFA.
53
A tantalizing later reference to such a piece occurs in a
1947 letter where Affl eck writes to Wright, “I hear that you
have an abstraction for the upper doors in our loggia.” Affl
eck to Wright, 17 November 1947, A097C07, FLWFA.
54
Affl eck to Wright, 17 June 1940, A065A09, FLWFA. On
home prices, see Clifford Edward Clark, The American Family
Home, 1800-1960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1986), 217.
55
The exhibition is chronicled in Peter Reed and William Kaizen,
eds., The Show to End All Shows: Frank Lloyd Wright and
the Museum of Modern Art, 1940 (New York: The Museum of
Modern Art, 2004).
56
Ibid., 215.
57
General Motors. Television Advertisement (1948) (http://
revver.com/video/372649/commercial-classics-futuramicoldsmobile-commercial/)
(accessed 9 February 2011).
58
General Motors, print advertisement (1948).
45
Ibid.
59
Affl eck to Wright, 9 August 1942, A073C06, FLWFA.
46
Neil Levine, “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Diagonal Planning
Revisited,” in Robert McCarter, ed., On and By Frank
Lloyd Wright: A Primer of Architectural Principles (New
York: Phaidon Press, 2005), 233.
47
Wright, Autobiography, 494.
48
Ibid., 493.
49
An excellent discussion of this aspect of Wright’s
design can be found in Grant Hildebrand, The Wright
Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Houses (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991).
50
A 1941 letter from Harold Turner to Wright indicates
that the furniture was to be made by “Lyman of Montclair.”
Turner to Wright, 13 July 1941, T024C06, FLWFA.
Later that year, Affl eck indicated that he was “working
on Klearfl ex about carpet.” Affl eck to Wright, 21
December 1941, A072A04, FLWFA.
51
Oral history interview with Ruth Adler Schnee, 2002
Nov. 24-30, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian
Institution (http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-ruth-adler-schnee-12111)
(accessed 9 February 2011). The dissatisfaction with
the Wright furniture may have come more from Elizabeth
than Gregor. The existing correspondence in the
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives contains two
examples of Gregor Affl eck commenting negatively
on his wife’s furniture purchases. In the fi rst, Affl eck tells
Wright that Elizabeth “bought an AALTO chair which
I will neither sit in nor pay for,” while in the second
60
Affl eck to Wright, 18 June 1943, A077B07, FLWFA.
61
Wright, Autobiography, 516.
62
Affl eck to Wright, 6 December 1943, A078A01, FLWFA.
63
Affl eck to Wright, 7 June 1947, (A095D02), 17 November
1947 (A097C07), and 2 May 1951 (A126E05), FLWFA.
64
Affl eck to Wright, 23 October 1951, A128D06, FLWFA.
65
Affl eck to Wright, 30 June 1952, A133B07, FLWFA.
66
Affl eck to Wright, 17 June 1940, A065A09, FLWFA.
67
“Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house gifted to Lawrence
Institute of Technology,” Lawrence Institute of Technology
Magazine (Winter/Spring 1978): 5.
68
Affl eck to Wright, 21 May 1942, A073B04, FLWFA.
69
Affl eck, “Client’s Report,” FLWFA.
70
“Wright-designed house gifted to Lawrence,” 4.

29
Taliesin Blueprint Drawings

Taliesin Model and Drawings
30

Professor Jin Feng Independent Study
Interior Design Study by Shawn Calvin
35
3-D VIEW
SCALE: NTS

NEW REFRIDGERATOR
& FREEZER COMBO
NEW DISHWASHER
NEW LAMINATE
COUNTERTOP, SINK &
FAUCET
NEW RANGE
1 - a
-
KITCHEN
1 - b
-
-
-
1 - d
DN
DINING ROOM
UP
BATH
MAIN
ENTRY
BALCONY
Elevation 1 - d
-
Elevation 2 - a
-
-
LOGGIA
36
DN
LIVING ROOM
NEW CREDENZA
(DESIGNED BY
VICKI BIGHAM)
FIRST FLOOR PLAN
SCALE: NTS
NEW L.E.D ROPE LIGHTING
(PLACE ABOVE LIGHT SHELF)
NEW CHAIR
(DESIGNED BY ALI
ALWAYEL)
NEW TABLES 30" x 60"
TO ACCOMMODATE
10-12 PEOPLE (TBD)
NEW TWO-TIER
COAT CLOSET
KITCHEN
DINING ROOM
DN
UP
BATH
MAIN
ENTRY
3' - 11"
2' - 0"
BALCONY
LOGGIA
DN
LIVING ROOM
NEW SUSPENDED
L.E.D STRING OF LIGHTS
FIRST FLOOR PLAN:
MEETING SPACE
SCALE: NTS
WASHER/DRYER
COMBO UNIT (P1)
DN
Elevation 1 - a
-
-
MASTER BEDROOM
MASTER BATH
CHILD'S BEDROOM
BATH
OFFICE
BAMBOO CONSOLE
TABLE (T4)
NEW CHAIR (DESIGNED
BY ALI ALWAYEL)
SECOND FLOOR PLAN
SCALE: NTS

MASTER BEDROOM
37
ELEVATION 2 - A
SCALE: NTS
ELEVATION 2 - B
SCALE: NTS
FURNITURE & FINISHES
LIGHTING
NEW 24” x 36”
“IMPERIAL
HOTEL” PRINT
EXISTING FLW
INSPIRED LAMPS
NEW BLUE WILLOW
GINGER JAR
NEW MINI POTTED
BONSAI TREE
NEW BLUE WILLOW
VASE
CONCRETE FLOORING
NEW LG COMBO
WASHER/DRYER UNIT
EXISTING FLOOR
LAMP
EXISTING
NIGHT STAND
NEW “LIVING, DANCING BAMBOO
RUG BY SHAW
TIDEWATER CYPRESS WOOD SIDING
NEW COMFORTER: FIELDCREST,
STYLE: LUXURY ICON, COLOR: BLUE
EXISTING VANITY
CHAIR
EXISTING TWIN BED
NEW DIGITALLY FABRICATED
LIGHT-IN-HEADBOARD
EXISTING TWIN BED

ORIGINAL PHOTOS
DISPLAYED IN THE
MASTER BEDROOM
38
ELEVATION 2 - C
SCALE: NTS
ELEVATION 2 - D
SCALE: NTS

BEDROOM & OFFICE
39
ELEVATION 2 - E
SCALE: NTS
ELEVATION 2 - G
SCALE: NTS
ORIGINAL PHOTOS
DISPLAYED IN THE
BEDROOM
ORIGINAL PHOTOS
DISPLAYED IN THE
OFFICE
ELEVATION 2 - F
SCALE: NTS
ELEVATION 2 - H
SCALE: NTS
FURNITURE & FINISHES
MASTER BEDROOM FLOOR PLAN
SCALE: NTS
CONCRETE FLOORING

ELEVATION 2 - I
SCALE: NTS
40
ELEVATION 2 - K
SCALE: NTS
LIGHTING
ATER CYPRESS
SIDING
ELEVATION 2 - J
SCALE: NTS
ELEVATION 2 - L
SCALE: NTS
FURNITURE & FINISHES
LIGHTING
TIDEWATER CYPRESS
WOOD SIDING
NEW FLW GLOBE
NEW TIFFANY LAMP
BRICK
EXISTING DINING ROOM TABLE
MISSING IMAGE:
NEW CHAIR
EXISTING LOUNGE
CHAIR
CONCRETE FLOORING
NEW OCEAN RUG BY ANGELA ADAMS

LOGGIA, LIVING/DINING & KITCHEN
41
ELEVATION 1 -B
SCALE: NTS
FURNITURE & FINISHES
VARIOUS
TECO POTTERY
POTTED
PEACOCK
FEATHERS
CANDLE
HOLDER
ELEVATION 1 - D
SCALE: NTS
FURNITURE & FINISHES
TIDEWATER CYPRESS
WOOD SIDING
BRICK
VARIOUS
PUBLICATIONS
LIGHTING
MINI SCREEN
LED ROPE
LIGHTING
FLW GUEST BOOK
NEW CREDENZA DESIGNED BY
VICKI BIGHAM (LTU STUDENT)
FORMICA: STOP RED
COUNTERTOP
NEW MICROWAVE
CONCRETE FLOORING
LIGHTING
NEW BATTERY POWERED
LED STRING LIGHTS
NEW RUNNER
NEW DISHWASHER NEW RANGE NEW REFRIDGERATOR

42
ELEVATION 1 -A
SCALE: NTS
ELEVATION 1 - C
SCALE: NTS
ELEVATION 1 - E
SCALE: NTS
LOGGIA, LIVING/DINING &
KITCHEN FLOOR PLAN
SCALE: NTS
ORIGINAL PHOTOS
DISPLAYED IN THE
LIVING & DINING
ROOMS
ORIGINAL PHOTOS
DISPLAYED IN THE
LOGGIA
LIGHTING
LED ROPE
LIGHTING

43
Exterior Lamp Replica
By Brian Raymond with Jason Westhouse

44
Situated in two locations
on the site, this exterior
lamp was inspired by the
designer of the house.
The front island and
backyard both benefit
from the light these
fixtures provide.
Crowning the top of a
lighted post, a pyramid
shaped prism clad in
copper reflects light
downward toward the
landscape. Four pine
supports stabilize both an
outer frame and the interior
lamp unit.

Affleck End Table Replica
By Brian Raymond with Jason Westhouse
45
Dating back to the 1940s, this end table is found
in many early photographs. It was commonly used
in master bedrooms and living rooms were common
places for these furnishings to be seen. This simple
design constructed from pine lumber and a plywood
top fits the Usonian style of the house.

Assistant Professor Jim Stevens with Lesa Rosmarek
Applied Digital Fabrication
By Graduate Student Ali Alwayel
47
The design for a chair to be placed within the Affl eck House is based off of the linear geometry and
unique use of light found in the Usonian style of architecture. The direction of the design is heavily
rooted in the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards and Guidelines for Rehabilitation, in particular,
Standard 9 and the guidelines for the Design for Missing Historic Features. According to the standards,
replication of the existing chair is considered inappropriate, especially since the new chair
would be constructed using the CNC machine. In Lawrence Tech’s digital fabrication makeLab
the approach taken in the design of the new chair was to assume Frank Lloyd Wright had access
to a CNC machine and applied the Usonian principles of style and economy.
Surrendering to the principal of economy in terms of time and material, the team held to tight
constraints in depth, made possible by the technology of the CNC machine and the process of
laminating the wood in the vertical direction. The verticality of the chair fi ts within the language of
the vertical shaft of the house. Verticality of this nature is not usually seen in Usonian homes and,
therefore, should be celebrated within the Affl eck House. This chair emphasizes this unique opportunity
by subscribing to strong lines within the overall design of the chair and the orientation and
use of materials within the chair.
The chair is constructed out of 25 3/4inch laminations that are held together with glue and wood
dowels. This construction takes full advantage of the strength of the material in the vertical position.
The prototype chair is constructed out of plywood; the fi nal chair will be constructed out of
Plyboo Plywood.
This project was made possible by funding from the David Evans Memorial Grant and by a generous
donation by Smith & Fong of Plyboo Plywood.

Professor Steven Rost
Photography
49
Dustin Illes
Jason Johnides

50
Dustin Illes
Erica Salucci

51
Andrew Dwyer
Ashley Bordenuik

52
Cody Millinder
Davide Daniles

Assistant Professor Gretchen Maricak
Visual Communication 2
53
Robert Hanna
James Case

54
Julian Sesi
Nawfaa Al-Bahrani

55
Reem Al-Zahrani
Samantha Szeszulski

56
Elise Torchala
Amanda Curtis

57
Heidi Bolenbaugh
Erin Kleinbecker

58
Brandon Hartwick
Anon.

Professor William Allen
Allied Design
59
Ryan Maynard, Kirk Stefko
Ryan Maynard, Kirk Stefko

60
Ryan Maynard, Kirk Stefko
Ryan Maynard, Kirk Stefko

61
Ryan Maynard, Kirk Stefko
Ryan Maynard, Kirk Stefko

62
Ryan Maynard, Kirk Stefko
Ryan Maynard, Kirk Stefko

73
Assistant Professor Janice Means
Affleck Applied Study

77

78

81
original

1925
Af
1925 N
Blo
Assistant Professor Michelle Belt
Furniture and Millwork
85
Frank Lloyd Wright ‘s architecture focuses on the horizontal line and its connection with nature.
Not only are his forms natural and simplisitic, but the functionality of the space and systems
within the residence provide for maximum usage and comfort. In the dining table design, I used a
proportioning system that reflects the existing furniture and shelving. The side tables fold for
easy transport and storage for use in other activities. The side and main tables fit together
seamlessly. The proportions, along with the functionality, reflect FLW’s goal for a unified design.
Abigail Schroeder

86
Victoria Bigham
Michelle Danius

87
Sarah Lowrey

Professor Steven Rost
Sculpture
88
Teah Fink
Ben Hoyt

89
Fran DePalma
Joseph Giannola

Assistant Professor Jolanta Skorupka
Visual Communication 1 - Independent Study
By Josh Thornton
90

91
Balance
An overall balance line is a conjectural axis that visually conveys a sense of equilibrium in a
building. This imaginary line creates a sense of unity within a composition, typically following
repetitive forms and symmetry lines. Frank Lloyd Wright often used these balance lines in his
structures to refl ect and rotate shapes.

92
Balance (plan view)
An overall balance line is a conjectural axis that visually conveys a sense of equilibrium in a building. This imaginary
line creates a sense of unity within a composition, typically following repetitive forms and symmetry lines.
Frank Lloyd Wright often used these balance lines in his structures to refl ect and rotate shapes. These lines almost
always intersect in or in front of the fi re place in Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses. This followed his theory of the fi replace
being the heart of the house.
Unit to Whole Relationship
The relationship of unit to whole focuses on the subdivision of a building. It examines each individual section of
the edifi ce and how it relates to the whole of the structure. Units are typically spatial entities that are defi ned by
a function. They are related by the connections that they form with other units and their relative size.

93
Square Repetition
The repetition of the square is a geometric concept of space subdivision. It examines the
modular unit of the square and how its repetition throughout an edifi ce can create and divide
spaces within. This concept focuses on the size, location, combined shape and proportion
for each subdivided area.
Meadow and Cave
Meadow and cave is an emotional and spatial concept that Frank Lloyd Wright often incorporated
into his structures. It divides an edifi ce into large open spaces called meadows and
small cozier areas defi ned as caves. These areas were often developed through the use of
manipulating the ceiling heights. A transitional area is also often developed between these
areas by the use of low overhangs, columns, and stairways.

94
Structure
Structure is formed by the basic components that provide support in a building. These components
can be manipulated by a designer in order to defi ne a space, develop movement, or to
create composition and modulation. Structure thus forms a close relationship with the spatial
division and geometry of an edifi ce.
Golden Section
The golden section is a ratio, 1:1.6180339887, which is found in nature and the proportions of
man. This ratio has been theorized to be the perfect proportion between man and architecture.
Its use and repetition in an edifi ce demonstrates both complex geometric reasoning and
spatial proportioning.

Assistant Professor Jolanta Skorupka
Visual Communication 1
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Eunice Wilson
Anon.

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Anon.
Breck Crandell

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Justin Lee

98
Joo Younh Ham
Kelsie Foster

99
Alyssa Stacherski
Bryan Burnham

100
Elliot Disner
Evander Kizy

101
John Depew
Molly Yeo

102
John Thornton
Joo Younh Ham

103
Bryan Burnham
John Thornton

104
John Thornton
Evander Kizy

105
Justin Lee
Megan Stewart

107
Faculty Gallery
Professor Gretchen Maricak

108

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Faculty Gallery
Professor Steven Rost

Lawrence Technological University
College of Architecture & Design
21000 West Ten Mile Road
Southfi eld, MI, USA
www.ltu.edu/affl eck_house/
ISBN # : 978-0-9841374-2-8