Visiting Oak Park

Au Bon Pain currently has three locations in the Chicago metropolitan area and JL Architects is thrilled to be involved in the opening of their fourth location.  Chicago is a great city, and on a recent visit to the new Au Bon Pain site, I had a few hours to kill.  So I jumped on the CTA Green Line out to Oak Park, Illinois. 

Oak Park is the home to Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home studio and the birthplace of his early home design style, coined the Prairie School.  I spent a good bit of my early years in architecture trying to visit the notable architecture that I had been exposed to during college.  What is amazing is that I failed to make the two hour flight to Chicago to see the early work of the Father of Modern American Architecture.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust offers a guided tour of his home and studio at 951 Chicago Avenue, Oak Park, Illinois.  During the tour, which lasts about an hour, you get to roam through the home and studio he first designed for himself as a bachelor, and continually expanded as his family and business grew.  Astonishingly, you are able to see up close and personal the details which he undoubtedly spent hours contemplating and redesigning.

His house and studio demonstrate the evolution of his theories into the unique Prairie Style. The original house façade has a shingle style feel with its basic geometric shapes of triangles, rectangles and circles.  In the barrel vaulted playroom designed for his six children, it is evident that he truly started to think about the user’s experience.   All window head heights and sills are set for a child and are far too low for an adult’s line of vision.  Mr. Wright also practiced his stylistic designs inspired by nature, as seen in the stained glass windows of the playroom, which is his version of a geometric tulip.

Years after the construction of the original house, Wright designed a new studio attached to the home. All manner of architectural and structural thought are embodied into the design. The second floor gallery is literally hung from chains suspended from the roof. These same chains make up the supports for the light fixtures.

Whereas every architectural office has the dilemma of where to store the rolls of oversized drawings, Wright designed free standing drawing cabinets that themselves are individual pieces of architecture.  I could go on and on about the many unique details of this building which I observed on the tour that day, but the most important concept I hope to put into practice is that every detail is worth the thought of good design.  As the saying goes, “God is in the Details”.

For additional information here’s a link to the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust: http://www.flwright.org/

-Colleen Brogan, RA