"Final Usonian Home" by Frank Lloyd Wright Completed in Ohio
dezeen.com
dezeen.com
From a practical standpoint this usually means that if you put this house in a publication about Wright, the Foundation and Conservancy will deny you use of their archival material and photographic access to their sites.
Their behavior is why you rarely see Wrights work at Florida Southern College in books on Wright despite Florida Southern being the largest collection of Wright designed buildings anywhere, one of a few examples of his commercial work, absolutely amazing designs, and actually in ordinary use…worth a visit if you are passing by Lakeland on I4.
"Trying" is not a meaningful bar to clear. Love or care doesn't matter, either. According to the article, the foundation says that the building is simply not built to Wright's spec, which is an objective measure.
The owners don't outright deny this, using a handful of of qualifiers in response: "true to Wright's plan, intent and spirit while also ensuring that the home would meet current building regulations."
Saying your house was designed by a famous architect, especially one the stature of Wright brings a value and prestige that is worth claiming, like any other brand. On the flip side, if you own the brand, it is worth protecting from knock offs.
This is a synonym for “the worst construction allowed by law.”
If it wasn’t designed to meet current building regulations, the construction would be illegal.
Of course it would need some structural improvements. Wright had some problems on the structural engineering side. Fallingwater is currently getting major structural upgrading.[1] There are arguments about whom to blame in the original construction, but it's clear that the aggressive cantilevered design didn't have enough safety margin.
[1] https://www.architecturelab.net/fallingwater-undergoes-7-mil...
There is another comment that says that the contractor for Falling Water didn't follow design and include extra cement and rebar. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43621995
I don't know how I feel about the Wright organization's pushback; on one hand this was built in 2025, well after Wright's death abet to original prints(with only non-visible modifications due to code) so I would not be willing to call it a Wright house based on that.
However; if it is true to design, as much as possible(which happens in current builds too), then it is a Wright house.
On the third hand, I think Wright would not agree... I remember hearing stories of him going into houses he built and rearranging the rooms back to how he had set them up. So perhaps they are doing what he would do?
I saw Riverrock over Christmas when it was 95% complete, and it does look really cool. Similar in a lot of ways, especially the living room, but quite a different floor plan. I hope the doors are a bit wider than the Louis Penfield house on the same site; even folks of normal width have to rotate sideways. Toilet in a narrow alcove, narrow cushions on the furniture, etc. Absolute commitment to design integrity, not always comfortable. Still a fascinating place to stay.
And famously, like in the case of Fallingwater among others I believe, he forced contractors to remove supports that the contractors deemed structurally necessary and had added, against his designs. In one case at least the contractors refused and Wright himself took a sledge hammer to them personally. At least that’s what I was told by the tour guide.
TBF what I’m referring to was not part of the building itself and not in need of repairs. It was a walkway area.
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 (1903), Law quoted a letter of his own (dated June 18, 1903) 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" (United States of North America), but that he preferred the form "Usonia" (United States of North Independent America).
But, not here in Canada for some reason. We are fine with terms like "North America" and "the Americas" being distinct from America.
I like forests. That's why I think they should be protected, and the best way to protect them is to not smear the entire population across them like very fine jam and carve infinite roads through them to provide them with transportation and government services like garbage collection.
The idea of presenting a bare facade to the street and turning the front entrance inward only makes this vision even more antisocial.
The man could make beautiful things but the planning principles needed to provide that beauty were fundamentally ugly.
However, the process was painful for me as a young adult. I recall first a controversy over whether a professional, licensed architect should be retained, or if the contractor himself should draw up the plans. We were told that architects often had ivory-tower type plans that were impractical, expensive, or needed modifications by the contractor anyway. I can't actually remember which side we came down on.
Mom and Dad also permitted me to specify a bunch of elements in my own room, and being a rebellious goth in the throes of PTSD I made some really bad decisions, before permanently moving out two years later. My dad has the room now: it's got pitch-black carpeting with an incense burn in it, the miniblinds are also charcoal black with dark-grey accents in weird middle stripes, and two windows may be cranked open for fresh air, but one is ridiculously narrow, and I suspect that the design intent was "prevent AStonesThrow from jumping out of this one". (Well I did climb out of windows, but more for exploration's sake than self-harm.)
The demolition was also mindblowing as I got a taste of just how sturdy our original construction was. It was a tough "chicken-wire" lath embedded in plaster/stucco, and it was a Faraday cage fortress that took weeks to tear down. They replaced it with ordinary gypsum drywall, and I was incredulous about the sheer quality difference, but it was clear that matching the original style would need to be superficial unless we were spending millions of bucks at that point.
It really turned out well despite all my efforts at sabotage. I'm not sure about my parents' motivations; I believe it was mostly Mom who received a really awesome modern kitchen, and a modicum of "keeping up with the Joneses" because that decade saw so many of our neighbors adding stories and Granny Flats and renovations, commensurate with rising property values. Yay!
Edit: Just found the reference and I need to learn to read :) So yes is my answer
Assuming 2-bathroom house? Why oh why has editorial review just become such a joke? This seems like such an obvious thing to catch.
I did notice the lack of curtains or drapes on the bedroom, which would make it hard to sleep in the summer at a high latitude.
Looking at some virtual tours, it seems to be a fairly solid design. I would probably disagree with a bunch of the furniture, but the architecture itself is fairly close to what I would expect in my ideal home.