Here are three projects, arranged chronologically, that seem to share some of the same themes and elements: The Alexander Chandler Block House of 1927, the Zoned House[s] of 1935, and the All Steel Houses of 1938.
Alexander Chandler Block House as published in
In the Nature of Materials:
Project: The Zoned House for City, Suburb and Country, 1935 as found in Monograph 5. Here is Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer's text:
When he made these three designs for what he called "The Zoned House," Mr. Wright explained the project accordingly:
"New facilities make it desirable to lay aside the provincial American parlor. A beautiful kitchen should now go where the parlor went some time ago. With modern appurtenances what used to be the kitchen can now become a high spacious work studio opening level with the garden, therefore, a natural get-together place in which to live while at work. In a zoned plan the utility stack has, economically standardized and concentrated within it, all appurtenances of modern house construction: oil burning boiler and fuel tanks - air compressors, oil and gasoline supply for car, heating and air conditioning units, electric wiring and plumbing, vent and smoke flues. This enlarged hollow chimney - about 6 by 8 feet on the ground - is accessible from the coat-room and so placed that only one short run of horizontal pipe or wire to the study is necessary. Each bathroom is a one-piece standardized fixture directly connected to the stack. Kitchen sink, ranges and refrigeration, likewise. Here at the nexus of the arrangement is complete standardized factory production, in lieu of the wasteful, [angleci web of" wires ancl piping involved in the construction of the ordinary dwelling at present. Thus the cost of about one third of the usual home is here seen as reduced to a certainty, and one half or one third of the cost is potentially saved.
"The carport, integral feature of the dwelling, is convenient, not the gaping hole it usually is. Other features of the zoned house are the utilities stack; the development of the kitchen into the real living room, completely furnished, part of the whole; and the segregated space called the study. A third zone -- the slumber zone -- is introduced as mezzanine with balcony opening into the living kitchen or work room. While the children are young, each has a dressing room and sleeps out. When they grow up, by a few simple changes in the mezzanine each has a private room. Here are self-contained economies for the family, more natural and more orderly than is possible at present.
"This germ-plan would easily adapt itself, as indicated, to the several conditions of the small house in suburb, town and country. The suburban house is shown lighted largely from above - to avoid the more or less indecent exposure most suburban houses suffer from when they try to be little country houses on lots 50 feet wide. The town house is tall, all rooms having high ceilings. The entire house is hermetically sealed from dirt and noise and air-conditioned, with opportunity to go out to view the passing show on occasions, but only when moved; also opportunity to live outside, up top where greenery can see the sky. The utility stack and bathrooms, work room, segregated study and segregated slumber rooms of this town house all keep to the underlying scheme of the suburban house.
"The country house has the same scheme too. Its outer walls are mostly metal and glass screens and the plan is opened wide to sun, air and vista. A spreading good-time place is possible in country life."
Plate 255
Note that this sheet has a portion at the top which is to be read "from the opposite side of the table," as it were. I have reproduced that portion below, as Plate 255 (rotated). But first, an enlargement of the bottom right portion, followed by a separate plate of the same subject:
Plate 255, detail 1
Plate 257
Plate 255 (rotated) (detail)
Plate 255 detail 2
Plate 259
Plate 256
Plate 256 detail
Plate 258
Plates 135, 136
Plates 137, 138