Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was famously explicit concerning the particulars of his designs, usually controlling supplies, artworks, and palette — for instance, by limiting his masterpiece, the Fallingwater home in southwest Pennsylvania, to solely two colours all through (a lightweight ochre for the concrete and “Cherokee purple” for the metal). Although the architect is thought for having a darkish facet, a minimum of one occasion of his disciplinarian nature produced lovable outcomes, on behalf of a canine consumer named Eddie.
“Eddie’s Home” is a doghouse designed free of charge by Wright in 1956 to enrich a Usonian-style home he constructed on fee for Robert and Gloria Berger between 1950 and 1951, within the Marin County city of San Anselmo, California. The county is a vacation spot for followers of the architect, as he additionally designed the orange-and-blue Marin County Civic Heart, which stands as his largest public challenge (and was prominently featured within the 1997 sci-fi film Gattaca).
The Civic Heart will now be the everlasting house of Wright’s smallest construction, a doghouse he drew on the again of an envelope on the request of 12-year-old Jim Berger so the household might accommodate their new golden retriever in fashion.
“My canine’s title is Edward, however we name him Eddie. He’s 4 years outdated or in canine life 28 years,” reads the letter penned by the younger Berger, wherein the boy provides he would pay for the doghouse with cash from his newspaper route.
The ultimate doghouse design options a few of Wright’s signature strikes, with a low-slung roof and the suggestion to make use of scrap materials from the unique house construct, together with Philippine mahogany and cedar, to additional improve its harmonious mix with the strains of the human domicile. The Bergers bought round to constructing the doghouse in 1963, although apparently Eddie by no means actually bothered to sleep in it, preferring cushier digs inside the home. He definitely wouldn’t be the primary of Wright’s purchasers to be dissatisfied by a few of the architect’s shortcomings — apparently, as with a lot of Wright’s designs, the roof to Eddie’s Home leaked.
In 1970, Gloria Berger despatched the doghouse to the dump, however in 2012, Berger brothers Jim and Eric rebuilt the doghouse from Wright’s authentic plans, and in 2016, Jim donated the piece to the county. It was on show briefly earlier than going again into storage; now, it’s again on view.
Consistent with Wrightian ideas of incorporation, the curved plexiglass used to guard the doghouse show is repurposed from one of many authentic Marin County Civic Heart skylights (though the skylights have been added after the architect’s demise, to shelter the open mall areas that have been a part of the unique Civic Heart design).
Whereas this wasn’t the one time Frank Lloyd Wright discovered himself within the doghouse — for often working off with married girls, snubbing the American Institute of Architects, and creating lovely aesthetics, typically at the price of structural deficiencies — the story of Eddie’s Home is definitely essentially the most charming occasion.
