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Silverton, Oregon

March 17, 2008

"Usonian" is a term that refers to several family homes that were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. This one, the Gordon House, is the only FLW home in the Northwest. It recently opened to the public after being saved from the wrecking ball and moved to this site in the Oregon Gardens. Tours are by appointment only, but we arrived at the right time to join another family on their tour.

Usonian homes -- we learned -- are small, environmentally-conscious homes with native materials, flat roofs and cantilevered overhangs for passive solar heating and natural cooling, lots of windows and radiant floor heating. Wright coined the term "carport" which was also common to these homes.

There's a strong visual connection between the interior and exterior spaces -- this one originally was built on the banks of the Willamette River and designed to maximize the views. The kitchen and bathrooms are very small by today's standards, but that's because they were considered functional rooms, not gathering places. (Although the master bathroom isn't much smaller than mine.