Old school is the new school. That's one of our favorite sayings here at PrairieMod. Why? Because the PrairieMod Squad realized awhile ago that some of the ideas that seem so cutting-edge to us today really have roots in ideas from artists and designers from over a hundred years (or more) ago. Take prefabs for instance. They are all-the-rage right now. It seems you can't open a magazine or cruise the weblogs without hearing about the "new" prefab craze. But do you know who one of the first people to design prefab homes was? If you guessed Frank Lloyd Wright, gold star.
The notion of pre-fabricated housing goes back over a hundred years ago with Wright's original design for a $5000 fireproof home, mostly made from concrete, re-usable wooden forms and off the shelf materials. He further developed his prefab ideas with the American System-Built homes in 1915, which then led to the Usonian Automatic homes toward the end of his life in the 1950s.
This was an important evolution in Wright's quest for "organic architecture" available to the masses, one that would have a great impact on the people who lived in them. A recent article in the Staten Island Advance.com tells one story of a how the Cass family solicited Frank Lloyd Wright to design a home for them and how they received a prefab house in return (the only Wright-designed home in New York City and recently saved from destruction.)
So what can we learn from the past? Well a lot if we choose to pay attention. We'll be exploring Wright's prefab housing ideas in the next few weeks and see if there isn't something that we can collectively learn and apply towards prefab today. Stay tuned.
Cass House Photo by Mary DiBiase Blaich copyright 2005 The New York Times
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