For the last PrairieMod Monday post this month on the principle of "Think Natural,” we felt we would use a recent experience the PrairieMod Squad had as an example of how a special group of people enjoy this idea in their everyday lives.
This last Sunday, the PrairieMod Squad took part in the architecture tour “Planned Modern Communities: Keck and Wright Subdivisions in Glencoe” coordinated by Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond. It was a wonderful look inside two remarkable communities. Each envisioned and executed using the same fundamental principles--yet designed and built 50 years apart.
The first community we toured consisted of a group of homes designed by the brotherly architectural team of George Fred Keck and William Keck. As stated on the Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond website:
“The architecture firm of Keck & Keck designed modern, award-winning, affordable homes in the Chicagoland area and around the Midwest from 1935-1979…The Kecks created hundreds of elegant, livable houses in the Chicago area and elsewhere.”
The homes we saw displayed all the characteristics of the brothers Keck—flat roofs, radiant heat flooring, modular design, post and beam construction, indirect lighting, passive solar heat, and most distinctive is fixed Thermopane windows with screened vents for airflow. It was refreshing to see smaller, open planned homes that utilized natural light, natural materials and natural heating and cooling as an integral part of their design. These humble yet inspired homes were all OF the site—not plopped ON the site. The Kecks followed principles in executing their designs. They gave the families that chose to live in their homes all the benefits of a "natural" home. This was evident time and again on the tour when we would listen to the owners (both original and new) talk about all the great aspects of their homes, The passion and devotion was so real that it bolstered our belief in everything we talk about here at PrairieMod.
As we finished the Keck & Keck home portion of the tour, we made our way to the second subdivision--this one designed in 1915 by Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright’s designs for this subdivision were done during a transitional period in his career. Still utilizing many of the elements of his Prairie Period (several of the houses display the characteristic long, horizontal lines, broad hip roofs and bands of windows), they are also vastly simplified in their ornamentation—an effect that makes them seem way more modern than their built date suggests.
The highlight of the tour was the cocktail reception at the Sherman Booth House. Designed and built for Frank Lloyd Wright’s attorney, the house is an amazing massing of both horizontal and vertical spaces. Throughout the entire home, you are confronted with Wright’s grammar—geometric patterns and repetitious proportions, integral ornamentation, utilization of natural materials, color schemes and sunlight. It was fascinating to see the same principle of “Think Natural” played out by Wright 50 years before the Kecks, yet in a totally different form for a totally different type of client. The Kecks work more closely resembles the ideal architecture that Wright aspired to and ultimately succeeded in materializing in his Usonian homes. Keck & Keck, whose work trailed Wright by a half century, picked up the architectural torch and carried it further along the path of development. Most importantly, they did it in their own unique way using the exact same principles Wright followed, the exact same ones espoused in the PrairieMod lifestyle.
As we started back to our car after leaving the Booth house, we were met face to face with a sight that gave us pause.
Ginormous McMansions were being built on the sites where homes very much like the ones we just walked through used to stand. It’s a shame that our society is so slow to realize that bigger is rarely better and that closet space is never a substitution for principled living. Our hope is that through education and exposure to the ideas we talk about here at PrairieMod, more people can realize the happiness and contentment that can be found through approaching our homes and our lives in a thoughtfully “natural” way.
We would very much like to thank Chicago Bauhaus and Beyond for their extraordinary work and for putting together such a wonderful house tour. If you’d like to find out more about the events and mission of the CB&B, check out their website. We'll also be posting several photos from the tour very soon, so be on the look out for them!
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