The Wright Way<

EVERYBODY TALKS about Frank Lloyd Wright, but nobody does anything about him. At least that's how Robert Rosenbaum used to feel.

"I've been a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright since I was a teenager," Rosenbaum says. But it always bothered him that while many people called Wright a genius, very few put his design principles into practice.

Several years ago, Rosenbaum, an engineer who once studied architecture, realized he wanted to be one of the few. "I was tired of just seeing (Wright's designs) in books and magazines and wanted to have one myself. I wanted to see what it would be like to live in a Usonian house," he says.

About seven years and thousands of hours of labor later, Rosenbaum and his wife, Carole Elder, moved into a 1,200-square-foot Vashon Island house inspired by Wright's Usonian ideals.

"Usonian" refers to the affordable, modular homes Wright began designing soon after the Depression. They were smaller and less elaborate than many of his earlier "Prairie" houses. Most were built of concrete blocks and glass, on one level, on heated concrete slabs.

At least two true Usonian houses (designed by Wright) were built in the Seattle area: the Brandes house in Issaquah and the Tracy house in Normandy Park, which Rosenbaum has visited several times.

He recalls, "The Tracy house kicked off the idea in my mind of using the Usonian blocks. One of the things I really liked about it was the grid system that was used to design the house. The block carried through the grid horizontally and vertically in a very powerful way."

Rosenbaum decided to lay out his house on a 4-foot grid, based on concrete blocks 2 feet wide, a foot tall and 4 inches thick. All the features of the house - walls, hallways, shelves, cabinets, built-in furniture - are designed to occur on the lines of the grid. For instance, the doorways are all 2 feet wide, half the width of one module.

The building-block layout may seem simplistic, but the fabrication of the blocks themselves was another thing entirely. The design called for four basic types of blocks - solid, window, solid corner and window corner - and all the concrete had to be hand poured. Rosenbaum and Elder's fathers built the forms, then Rosenbaum poured concrete, four blocks at a time. Each pour took two hours to prepare and overnight to set (two nights in winter).

All told, it took three years to make the 1,600 blocks needed to build the house. For the duration, Rosenbaum and Elder lived in a trailer on the property.

When they were done, they called in builder David Hatfield to complete the project. He and his crew had the unenviable task of moving and placing all the blocks, many of which weighed almost 90 pounds. "They rigged up some interesting contraptions to lift them," Rosenbaum recalls.

Hatfield and Rosenbaum also had to figure out how to connect all the blocks. They used a grout and rebar fastening system developed by Wright, which the King County Building Department insisted they test to prove it would hold.

The finishing steps were probably the easiest, Rosenbaum says, because all the surfaces of the house were dictated by the structure. That is, no Sheetrock or moldings were attached to the concrete blocks for decorative effect; no flooring covered the heated concrete pad underfoot.

By design, the exterior and the interior surfaces are identical, and unadorned. "You don't go back and paint and trim," Rosenbaum says. "It is what it is."

What it is, as you approach it from a heavily wooded driveway, is a low-slung concrete and wood cottage with a deeply overhanging roof. A red-tinted concrete terrace leads into an open living/dining area with a fireplace, built-in bookshelves and seating, and a compact kitchen. The back of the house is more compartmentalized: utility, study (which doubles as a guest room), bathroom (with sauna) and master bedroom. The bedroom connects to a veranda, more private than the entry terrace, with steps leading down to the garden.

In true Wright style, almost all the furniture is built in (or will be, when the master plan is completed). Beds, desks, tables, living-room seating, shelves: All are fabricated from vertical-grain fir with a golden oak stain.

The uniformity of materials throughout gives the house a coherent, peaceful feeling, as does the low, ambient lighting.

"I love the warmth of the house, which may sound strange to people because it's made out of concrete blocks and concrete floors," Rosenbaum says. "That sounds pretty cold. But I experience it as very warm, because of the wood and the color of the floor, and because the floor is actually physically warm when it's cold out.

"And even though it's dim compared to most spaces we're in, the light changes all the time. I see subtle differences throughout the course of the day and the year."

Rosenbaum compares the house's charms to those of nature. Both are structurally complex, but appear "natural and inevitable" - and both induce a sense of "restorative calm." The grid is the key, he says.

"Wright was adamant that when he lay out a structure, he would do it on a module, (but) he would work very hard to make (it) happen in a way that looked simple. The simplicity belies all the effort that goes into it."

No one knows better than Rosenbaum how much effort that is. And how much expense.

Rosenbaum says his house was more costly to build than a wood-frame-and-drywall house of similar size, because he used such high-quality plywood, and because everything in the house had to be custom made. "But I think compared with the costs I've seen around here," he adds, "It's certainly not out of reach."

So does he still think more people should put Wright's ideas into practice?

"I'm not suggesting that everyone go out and pour their own blocks," he says. "But having built the house myself, I'm so gratified by the environment I have to live in, compared to the environments I had before.

"I don't understand (why) you see Frank Lloyd Wright stuff everywhere in the media, and yet people aren't demanding to live with that in their lives. Life is short."

And the reach of Wright's legacy is very long.

Lynn Jacobson is a Seattle Times staff reporter. Benjamin Benschneider is staff photographer for Pacific Northwest magazine.