Exhibition Catalog - Lawrence Technological University

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.
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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