Usonia


Usonia is a term that was used by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright to refer to the United States in general, and more specifically to his vision for the landscape of the country, including the planning of cities and the architecture of buildings. Wright proposed the use of the adjective Usonian, coined by a Scottish writer in the early 20th century, to describe the particular New World character of the American landscape as distinct and free of previous architectural conventions. The term also refers to an architectural style shared by a group of approximately 60 middle-income family homes designed by Wright based in 1934.

Usonian houses

"Usonian" usually refers to a style shared by approximately 60 middle-income family homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The Willey House, built in 1934, may have been the first Usonian house; the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First House, built 1937, is often considered to be the first true "Usonian". The "Usonian Homes" are typically small, single-story dwellings without a garage or much storage. They are often L-shaped to fit around a garden terrace on unusual and inexpensive sites. They are characterized by native materials; flat roofs and large cantilevered overhangs for passive solar heating and natural cooling; natural lighting with clerestory windows; and radiant-floor heating. Another distinctive feature is that they typically have little exposure to the front/'public' side, while the rear/'private' sides open expansively to their view. This strong visual connection between the interior and exterior spaces is an important characteristic of all Usonian homes. The word carport was coined by Wright to describe an overhang for sheltering a parked vehicle.
The Usonia Historic District is a planned community in Pleasantville, New York, built in the 1950s following this concept. Wright designed three of the 47 homes himself.
After designing the Jacobs First House, Wright ultimately designed dozens of similar Usonian homes across the U.S. The Usonian design is considered among the aesthetic origins of the ranch-style house popular in the American west of the 1950s.

The FSC Usonian House

The Florida Southern College campus features a collection of thirteen Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, known as Child of the Sun. The most recent, referred to as the "Usonian House", was constructed in 2013 according to a 1939 Wright design for one of twenty faculty housing units. The building includes textile-block construction and colored glass in perforated concrete blocks, and features furniture also designed by Wright. It is home to the Sharp Family Tourism and Education Center, a visitor center for guests visiting campus to see the Wright buildings, and includes Wright photographs and a documentary film about the architect's work at the school.

Origin of the word

The word Usonian appears to have been coined by James Duff Law, a Scottish writer born in 1865. In a miscellaneous collection, Here and There in Two Hemispheres, Law quoted a letter of his own that begins "We of the United States, in justice to Canadians and Mexicans, have no right to use the title 'Americans' when referring to matters pertaining exclusively to ourselves." He went on to acknowledge that some author had proposed "Usona", but that he preferred the form "Usonia". Perhaps the earliest published use by Wright was in 1927:
However, this may be a misattribution, as there is as yet no other published evidence that Butler ever used the word.
Historian José F. Buscaglia reclaims the term Usonian to refer to the peoples, national ideology and neo-imperial tradition of the United States of America.
Author Miguel Torres-Castro uses the term Usonian to refer to the origin of the Atlantic puffin used in the children's book Jupu the Puffin: A Usonian Story. The bird is a puffin from Maine, US.

Noted Usonian houses

Precursor to Usonians

File:View of window wall looking into house - day.jpg|right|thumb|View of the rear/private side of the Laurent House. This house is a "hemicycle" Usonian, rather than the more typical L-shaped variants. It is also the only house Wright designed for a physically disabled client.

Usonian Houses

The Usonian Automatic houses were made with concrete blocks. An attempt on the part of Wright to further lower the cost of housing, the clients could actually be involved in the creation of the blocks and thus the construction of the building.