Exhibition Catalog - Lawrence Technological University

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