Issue Sep 11th 2024 September 11th 2024

The Headlines

Balch House Becomes A Sustainability Leader

Though the concept of sustainability wasn’t commonplace when Frank Lloyd Wright was alive, had he lived in the 21st century, it’s likely he would have been a considerable proponent of greener, more eco-friendly architecture. After all, he considered nature his god and often spelled it with a capital N.

The Oscar B. Balch house, a historic 1911 Frank Lloyd Wright design in Oak Park, Illinois, has been extensively renovated to incorporate modern sustainability features. The current owner spent $800,000 on upgrades like geothermal heating, extra insulation, and storm windows to make the home more eco-friendly, even wiring the roof for solar panels. The house now reflects a blend of his architectural vision and 21st-century climate consciousness. It’s currently listed for just under $1.5 million.

How Two Architects Restored Wright’s Eppstein House

Marika Broere and Tony Hillebrandt share their experience restoring Frank Lloyd Wright's Eppstein House in Michigan. The couple was drawn to the home's unique integration with nature and its light-filled spaces, despite its poor condition when they purchased it. They worked meticulously to preserve Wright’s original design, using traditional materials like mahogany while incorporating modern systems where necessary. The restoration was a passion project that took over a year and involved significant investment, but the couple finds joy in owning such a historically significant space.

Hoyt House Owner Receive Restoration Award

Patricia MacLachlan said she remembers the day she and her late husband James learned a Prairie-style house that famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright had designed was available.

“We had been looking at Prairie School houses when they came on the market,” MacLachlan said. “We had been abroad for almost a month. The phone rings at seven in the morning and Paula says, ‘Hello, Trish? I’m divorcing Phil. Do you want the house?’ ”

The MacLachlans bought the PD Hoyt House at 318 S. Fifth St. in Geneva in 1974. They spent years undoing what previous owners had done, chipping paint away from woodwork, uncovering a central fireplace, tearing off blue flock wallpaper and pulling out orange shag carpeting.

“It was as if people hated this house but just wanted a five-bedroom house in Geneva,” MacLachlan said. “It didn’t look anything like what the Wright drawings showed how it looked.”

They restored it and then almost lost it in a fire in 2012 when a tree limb damaged by the emerald ash borer fell on overhanging electrical wiring. So they restored it again.

“What it [the fire] did was afforded us an opportunity to rebuild according to Wright-made specifications for how the house is supposed to be built,” MacLachlan said. “We followed the specs.”

The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy announced Patricia MacLachlan was named a recipient of the Wright Spirit Award in the private category.

“The award is given each year to recognize extraordinary commitment to preserving the built works of Frank Lloyd Wright and enriching his legacy,” according to a news release about the awards.

The award was a pleasant surprise. Ron Duplack, a member of the Wright Conservancy board and architect Tannys Langdon nominated the Hoyt House. McLachlan said she had contacted the conservancy for help in restoring the stucco after the fire.

That’s when the Wright Conservancy people saw the restoration work up close and made the nomination.

A Match Made in Idaho

In 2017, on a trip to Japan with the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust, architectural writer Henry Whiting encountered the work of the ceramist Shiro Tsujimura at Kou Gallery in Kyoto. He noticed in particular a vase with a pale spot on its surface (he later learned it had been masked by a small cup in the kiln). “That yellow eye kept following me as I moved around the space,” he says. “It was as if the pot chose me.”

Whiting bought the pot, of course. It was the first of many by Tsujimura that he would acquire, along with the works of other Japanese potters, ranging from the young phenom Kodai Ujiie, who enlivens his work with fine inlays of polychrome lacquer, and the eminent Suzuki Goro, who has infused the venerable tradition of Oribe ware with seismic deconstructivist energy. Also in his collection are representative examples of leading American ceramists past and present, including the work of Richard DeVore, Gertrud and Otto Natzler, and Toshiko Takaezu. It’s a diverse collection that finds perfect unity at Whiting’s residence, Teater’s Knoll, a special place located in Bliss, Idaho. “The synergy between the architecture and the ceramics, something that was totally unplanned, was a revelation for me,” says Whiting.

An 1,800-square-foot artist’s studio perched on a basalt cliff high above the Snake River, Teater’s Knoll is the only building in the state designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The sublimely round works by Tsujimura—inspired by storage jars from the old kilns of Korea and Japan, noble in their proportions and marvelously subtle in their coloration, each one the archaeological record of its own making and firing—are the perfect complement to the angular prow of Teater’s Knoll, which juts into the valley like a boat cresting a wave. It’s a scene one of its original owners, Archie Boyd Teater, painted many times, and never the same twice.

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