Circulation, Clients, and Guest Spaces Vs. Family Spaces

chapter 11 F10 House Robie House Your Home COMPARISON BUILDINGS

Circulation, Clients, and Guest Spaces vs. Family Spaces

How do architects THE BIG How do people move arrange the rooms in through the spaces in QUESTIONS 1 2 a home to best ﬁ t the a home? needs of the client?

Architects make decisions about the When architects design any building, arrangement of all the rooms in they must consider who is going to relation to the path through the house. use it. If the architects know specifi c Consider the arrangement of rooms in information about the people who your home: Do you have to walk will live in a home, they can design through one room to get to another? it to best suit the needs of those If you were to walk from the front people. The client is the person who door of your home to your bedroom, hires the architect and often lives how many different spaces would you in the building. If you closely study pass through? Do all the spaces fl ow a fl oor plan, you can fi nd clues freely into one another? Are the rooms about the specifi c family or type of organized around a hallway? If you families for whom the home was were to walk from the front door of originally designed. your home to the back door, how Families lived a much more formal many different rooms would you walk lifestyle 100+ years ago. Throughout through? This circulation path, most of the 18th century, 19th century, designed by the architect, can depend and the fi rst half of the 20th century, on the shape of the lot and the overall American homes typically had a arrangement of the home, as well as closed fl oor plan. Each individual on the needs of the client. room had one function and doors that separated it from the other rooms. Today, many newer homes like the F10 House designed by EHDD Architecture have an open fl oor plan with few or no doors between spaces.

F10 House – circulation path through the ﬁ rst ﬂ oor plan

school came to your home. Are there rooms where they would not be “allowed” or welcomed? Which rooms CHAPTER VOCABULARY would they never be invited into? This situation helps illustrate how circulation path the path that different rooms are arranged and also a person travels when walking used by different people. through spaces in a building When a guest comes to your home, client the person or company that pays the architect to design the your family will probably lead them building; often the client lives to a room where you can comfortably in the building or is the primary © Doug Snower Photography. visit. Often, this is the living room or user, but not always F10 House interior – view looking west toward perhaps the dining room. Bedrooms the living room and the front door closed fl oor plan a fl oor plan and bathrooms aren’t usually designed where four walls enclose each near the front door of the home space; the rooms are linked by Floor plans in apartment buildings are because these spaces are more private. doors and are designed to have often more complicated because several In a two-story home, the bedrooms distinct uses; the second fl oor households (each with their own family are almost always located on the of the F10 House has a closed fl oor plan members and their own guests) live second fl oor. open fl oor plan a fl oor plan under the same roof. Apartments have Today we may use our homes without walls to fully enclose the three types of walls – interior partition differently than they were originally walls that separate rooms from one spaces; the fi rst fl oor of the F10 designed, and we may use one room House has an open fl oor plan another, exterior walls that separate for several different purposes. One interior partition wall a wall within rooms from the outside, and common hundred years ago, for example, it walls or party walls that separate one a home that separates rooms would have been completely unheard from one another apartment from another. of to eat in the living room. Today exterior wall a wall that separates While family members can freely move however, many families relax and eat rooms from the outside through all the rooms in their home on the couch in front of the TV in the (family spaces), some rooms are living room. Your family’s computer common wall / party wall a wall shared by two adjacent but might be located in the dining room specifi cally designed to also be used separate buildings or apartments; by guests (guest spaces). Imagine for or your bedroom might also be the the F10 House is a free-standing a moment that the principal of your place where you study. building, so it has no common walls family space a space or room in a home, such as a bedroom, typically used only by family members guest space a space or room in a home, such as the living room, typically used by both family members and guests; it may also include a hallway leading to the door of an individual apartment Robie House, 1906 Prairie Style home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; located in the Chicago A student’s home – bubble diagram of guest spaces (grey) and family spaces (brown) neighborhood of Hyde Park

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Prairie Style a style of buildings, Kitchens also illustrate how families you chatted with them and stirred furniture, and glass (from and rooms have changed over time. dinner on the stove. Today however, approximately 1900–1920); Meal preparation was much more labor kitchens are rooms where families and Prairie Style designs used horizontal lines to mimic the intensive 100 years ago. Families and their friends cook together and relax. ﬂ at Midwestern landscape architects felt compelled to hide these The F10 House is a good example of spaces away behind closed doors. In this, as there aren’t any interior walls Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) 1906, it would have been unthinkable to separate the kitchen from the rest an American architect who began his architectural career to have guests in your kitchen while of the home. in Chicago where he did much of his most famous work; he is well-known for his Prairie Style homes built here

A 1910 kitchen in Park Ridge, Illinois © Doug Snower Photography. F10 House interior – view looking east toward the kitchen / dining room and the back door on your way home The size of an at the exterior of homes found in more ‘public’ individual window in you pass by and see (guest) spaces within TODAY a room often provides if you can guess the the home, while smaller a good clue about the function of a room just windows are often function of that room. by looking at the size used in more ‘private’ On your way home of its window. A larger (family) spaces. today, look carefully window will typically be

Chapter 11 compares the fl oor plan of the F10 House with the fl oor plan DID of the Robie House designed in 1906. The fl oor plan of this Prairie Style YOU home shows that architect Frank Lloyd Wright was ahead of his time. He know? anticipated that families would use rooms in less formal ways and that Tea and guests in the parlor guest spaces and family spaces would be separated in different ways. Frank Lloyd Wright

Colonial-era families in early America (1600s–1700s) did not have the luxury of building homes with rooms designed for only one purpose. “Hall and parlor” homes had rooms that were multi-functional, just as are the rooms in many new homes Robie House designed today. These two-room homes typically were 18 feet wide and 36 feet long, and they had a ﬁ replace at each end of the structure. The hall was typically the larger and more informal space and was used as the kitchen, dining, and work room. The parlor served as the formal room where the guests were received and where the family slept. (Toilet facilities were located in the outhouse!) © Hedrich Blessing. Robie House – view looking toward the living room from the dining room (during the home’s restoration, the furniture was removed)

Although the kitchen in the Robie A fi replace and open stairwell are in class House is still separate from the other the only divisions between the living rooms, the living room and dining room and the dining room. This Mr. Robie with the open fl oor room can both be seen at the same arrangement was very different than plan in the red brick home time. The two rooms are visually tied most of the other homes designed together with a continuous strip of in America at the beginning of the The playing cards provide the windows along one wall. 20th century. clues: you fi gure out how the clients match up with their homes. Team up with several classmates and test your knowledge of reading fl oor plans in the 10 comparison buildings. See if you can fi gure out which home was designed for which client. Your teacher has the complete instructions and playing cards for this in-class activity. © Hedrich Blessing. (all photos) Robie House – view of the living room and Robie House – view of fi rst fl oor stairwell fi replace (during the home’s restoration, the furniture was removed)

TALK about it

• Is there a clear path • Going from the front to • Do you have to travel • Can you ﬁ nd any evidence from the front door to the the back, which spaces or through one room to get in your own home (such as back door in the F10 rooms do you travel through to another? Or, are rooms old hinges or slots for the House? In the Robie and in which order do arranged along a hallway? lock) where there was once House? In your own home? you encounter them? • When you walk in the a door? Why do you think • Is there a back door in front door, how many rooms the door was removed? these homes? or parts of rooms can you immediately see?

CHAPTER RESOURCES Architecture, Form, Space, and Order, 2nd ed., Francis D.K. Ching. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1996. NA2760.C46 Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House: The Illustrated Story of an Architectural Masterpiece, Donald Hoffmann. New York: Dover Publications, 1984. NA7238.C4H63

Robie House – ground ﬂ oor plan The Robie House of Frank Lloyd Wright, Joseph Connors. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. NA7238.C4C65 The Wright Space, Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Houses, Grant Hildebrand. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991. NA737.W7H48

Robie House – ﬁ rst ﬂ oor plan

Robie House – second ﬂ oor plan

COMPARISONS ﬂ oor plan spaces

F10 HOUSE ROBIE HOUSE FLOOR PLAN SPACES EHDD Architecture Frank Lloyd Wright MY HOME Chicago, IL Chicago, IL

year 2000 1906

a narrow urban lot with neighboring a corner urban lot with one site homes close on both sides neighboring house along the back

1,837 sq. feet (full basement, 9,063 sq. feet (full ground fl oor with square footage fi rst and second fl oors) living spaces, fi rst and second fl oors)

27 year-old Frederick and Lora Robie designed for a competition for an client and their 3 children (Mr. Robie owned unknown client with a modest income a bicycle manufacturing business)

a winding path inside the center circulation paths nearly a straight line from the front of the ﬂ oor plan, so a guest must inside the home of the home to the back climb stairs and make several 90º turns to reach the living room

on the fi rst fl oor, raised up 7 steps on the ground fl oor, level with front door off the ground the ground

ﬂ oor set at ground level; designed for basement set below ground; designed basement or both guests (billiard room) and family for storage and laundry; no guests ground ﬂ oor rooms (children’s play room) although these would go to these rooms are not visible from the front door

designed for guests (living room, designed for guests (living room, main or ﬁ rst dining room, guest bedroom); kitchen dining room, and an open kitchen ﬂ oor rooms is for the family and staff, out of visible to anyone) sight from guests

upper ﬂ oor rooms designed for family (bedrooms) designed for family (bedrooms)

overall ﬂ oor long and narrow long and narrow plan shape

short side of the living room long sides of the living room and overall arrangement faces the street, kitchen faces the dining room face the street corner, of rooms alley in the back, bedrooms on kitchen faces the neighboring house second ﬂ oor in the back, bedrooms on second ﬂ oor

most of the rooms are divided by fi rst fl oor rooms are primarily walls and doors although the living organized in one large area with division of rooms room and dining room fl ow into each no doors or walls dividing up other divided only by a fi replace the space and open stairwell