jay wrote:It's a very interesting house... Does anyone else find it to be an especially peculiar design? I'm no expert, but to use the terminology of Grant Hildebrand, it seems to be a very "refuge-dominant" house. I suppose that makes sense considering it was called "Below Zero"... But I can't recall another Usonian that features the contrasting dual-combination of super slim horizontal windows and the fairly limited use of vertical window walls. There are no mid-sized type windows anywhere. (Of course, there's the great clerestory, and looks like the second and third bedroom have skylights, which I couldn't tell if were in the original design...) If most Wright Usonian's seem to blend "prospect" and "refuge" evenly, this one seems more like 80% refuge.
Also, the living room terrace seems pretty unusual. I can't recall a main terrace of Wright's that seems so on top of the driveway. The front door being so close to the living room's expansive glazing is also something I can't recall seeing much or any of.
And one more.... No seating near the fireplace is also somewhat unusual for Wright, though I'm sure there's some cases of that in his work. But, wouldn't seating near the fireplace be a compliment to the "refuge" theme?
All that said, a gorgeous house and design, and I'd sell a half dozen of my bodily organs to live in it.
Having grown up on the prairies of Central ND, where winters are long, cold, and extremely windy ... this house would have been a natural ... a place where once in you would never want to leave, but once you did ... you couldn't wait to get back. It's a house where you would have and feel an innate sense of warmth and security.
Having said that, I have to agree that the driveway ... and the concomitant parking for additional cars ... directly in front of the living room French doors ... seems terribly odd. Perhaps that aspect of the design was related to the fact that cars were not as common in 1941, as they now are, when nearly every home is surrounded by three-four-or-five cars.
It was a house for the country ... rather remotely located ... without the ordinary city streets, sidewalks and houses chock-a-block to every other house, so in this case it might be nice to be able to see (through your living room windows) cars and people occasionally coming up the road to visit. Who else but welcome friends and neighbors?
The lack of seating near the fireplace is something the design has in common with the Willey house in Minneapolis, and these two houses bear more than a passing resemblance. It might be said they are cousins ... born just a few years apart.
I do have a long seat set a a right angle to my fireplace, here in Arizona, but on particularly cold winter mornings ... I usually pull up a comfortable chair to sit and eat breakfast right in front of the fire. No doubt I'd do the same if I lived in the Edith Carlson house.
You can see a fire from a seat set at right angles, but you really can't feel much warmth ... unless you have a very large fireplace, like the one in the Wisconsin draughting room which takes big, un-split logs
(Reminds me of the unusually cold winter day in Concord, Mass, when the Thoreau family crowded around their fireplace ... even to the point of hanging blankets behind them to ward off the chill breezes blowing through the house ... Thoreau related that it was so bitterly cold that a glass of water placed on the mantel ... froze solid!)
As for Wrighter's worry about walking by a shallow firebox ... this one is fully 24 inches deep, whereas my Arizona fireplace is only 20 inches deep, and I've never had a problem. Indeed, can't you just feel the delicious warmth of a fire, as you walk by?
Another feature of the Carlson living room fireplace, is that a fire is visible from every part of the living room, the dining alcove, and the kitchen. In that it bears a partial resemblance to the design of the later Teater House ... in Idaho.
Too often Wright's "Workspaces" were somewhat cut off, but here everything comes together in a unique, entirely workable plan. The house is a perfect gem.