Carolina Architecture & Design ‘Wright Revered’

Feature Article

Wright Revered

When retired executive Bob Lurie and his wife Jane decided to build an oceanfront house on Kiawah Island, they saw their first from-scratch building project as an opportunity to pay tribute to their favorite architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

“I’ve always been a frustrated architect,” says Bob Lurie. “In studying architecture, I discovered Frank Lloyd Wright as a forward thinker and a true innovator, and I came to love his designs. We’ve visited many of his houses, so when we had a chance to do our own house, it was sort of natural we would use Wright’s work as a basis.”

‘A Great Place’

The Luries discovered Kiawah Island on a vacation. They bought a vacation home there in 1996 and later, a beachfront building lot.

“We were coming down here a few weeks a year, but when we found a piece of property on the beach, we decided to make this our permanent home,” says Lurie. The Luries are active in Charleston civic life and have a second home in downtown Charleston.

“The combination of Kiawah and Charleston—about 40 minutes away—is hard to beat,” adds Jane Lurie. “It’s a great place.”

Prairie Style Meets Carolina Coast

After deciding “we liked the idea of a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the beach in Kiawah,” Lurie says he and his wife spotted two houses on the island that exhibited Wrightian design influences. They discovered architect Grady Woods had designed both.

“I have admired Mr. Wright, and I have a pretty good library of his work,” says Woods, who designed the Lurie residence. “We had done the two other homes that showed the influence of the Wrightian era, but in neither of those were Wright’s ideas taken to the level they were in this home.”

Despite their adherence to Wright’s design philosophies, the Luries and Woods are quick to point out a number of departures from a strictly Wrightian approach—most of them concessions to the home’s coastal location and the size and shape of the building lot.

“If Wright were to walk in, I wouldn’t expect him to say, ‘Great job,’” says Lurie. Yet throughout the house, Wright would most certainly recognize countless details—even entire rooms—inspired by his work.

Perhaps the greatest design challenge was to achieve the strong horizontal lines characteristic of Wright’s Prairie Style architecture on a relatively narrow building lot. “A Prairie Style house is very horizontal and low to the ground,” says Lurie, “but because of our lot, the front of the house ends up being vertical.”

To compensate, Woods designed a series of relatively flat rooflines with broad overhangs, characteristic of the Prairie Style. He also lowered the first-level living area over the garage to just above the flood plane and set the first-level ceiling height at ten feet—a bit lower than usual on Kiawah.

“The house looks like its really set in the ground instead of sitting on supports or piers,” says Lurie. “This is very much in keeping with Wright’s idea that a house should grow out of the land.”

“Wright used the term ‘organic’ to describe his architecture,” says Woods, “and it’s a term that really applies to this home. We wanted it to feel like the house grew out of its site.”

The home’s exterior brickwork also emphasizes the horizontal. “They specified Norman brick, which is the standard four inches wide and two inches thick, but instead of eight inches, it’s 12 inches long,” says general contractor Dan  Buffington. “And when we installed it, we raked out the horizontal joints but left the vertical joints filled flat.”

Long planters around the base of the house, as well as strategic landscaping, also help tie it to the ground. “With flood and setback requirements and the significant square footage, it was necessary that the house have verticality,” says landscape architect Clyde Timmons. “This tended to set it apart from the landscape and we felt that part of our job was to tie the two together in a harmonious way.”

Timmons used several means to achieve his goal. “We left as much of the native vegetation as practical and added primarily native plants appropriate to the maritime forest on the landward side and to the dune vegetation on the seaward side,” says Timmons. “Likewise, we pulled some of the beach vegetation up into the planters. Frank Lloyd Wright was a big fan of vines hanging down from his planters, so we wanted to use appropriate trailing plants, too. We also used some ornamental plants like grasses and palms that are visually compatible, though not native.”

‘A Pathway to Discovery’

Above the garage, the first level of the house has a family room and adjoining sunroom, a fitness room opening onto a deck next to the pool and spa and three guest bedrooms. Borrowing from Wright’s later Usonian design period, the first level has a poured concrete floor, dyed  in Wright’s favorite color, Cherokee Red.

Typical of many beachfront homes, the public spaces are on the second level, where the Lurie home contains a great room, dining room, kitchen, screened porch and two offices. Featuring a commanding view of the Atlantic, the third level has the master bedroom and bath, a dressing room, sitting room, sun deck and balcony.

“We arranged the spaces based on how we would use the house,” says Jane Lurie. “We really use and enjoy most of the house every day.”

In designing the entrance to the house, Woods deliberately departed from the ordinary. “When you elevate a home to above flood plane level, you have to have a way to get into it, so the first thing you normally do is pop in a big flight of stairs,” he says. “But we really wanted this entry to be atypical.”

Taking his cue from Wright, who often hid entrances and placed them to the side, Woods created a covered walkway leading to an enclosed entry space designed to engage visitors as it leads them into the house. “We’re really playing with this sense of experiences as you go from one point to another and one level to another as you enter the house,” says Woods. “It’s not the usual, obvious, boring sense of arrival.”

“Wright liked to create small, contained entry spaces which would then lead to what he called ‘a pathway to discovery’ of the rest of the house,” adds Lurie. “Our entrance leads visitors to an open gallery area at the top of the stairs.”

“We’ve been collecting pottery over ten years, and a good part of our pottery collection is displayed in the gallery area,” says Jane Lurie. “We particularly enjoyed creating specific display spaces for some of our favorite pieces.”

Throughout the house, floor plans are open and informal. “Wright typically designed open interior spaces instead of strictly defined rooms,” says Jane Lurie.

“There are only three doors on our second floor,” adds Bob Lurie. “Everything else is one large space divided by entryways.”

Wright typically blurred distinctions between interior and exterior spaces, an approach very much in keeping with the Luries’ goals for the house. “To be on the beach—that’s why we’re here,” notes Bob Lurie. “There are windows all over the place to provide visual access to the outdoors as well as a screened porch and numerous decks and balconies that are really nice.”

To tie the interior spaces together, all windows and ceilings are trimmed in white oak, and a band of white oak trim runs at doorway-top-level throughout the house. All furniture is also made of white oak, favored by Wright in the furniture he often designed for his homes. “We have both original Stickley furniture and custom reproductions made Swartzendruber Hardwood Creations in Goshen, Indiana,” says Jane Lurie.

Cabinet maker Dale Hostetler worked from architect’s drawings to develop working drawings for cabinetry, also made of white oak, throughout the house. He drew plans for powder room cabinets based on a piece of furniture. “We made some adjustments here and there to fit the spaces, and we had to spend some time getting the stain color exactly right,” recalls Hostetler. “They had very specific details they wanted to see, which added some extra challenges to the overall project. But I’m a stickler for detail so it was right up my alley as far as how I like to work.”

Inspired by Wright’s Wingspread, a home built for the Johnson family in Wisconsin, the Lurie home features a massive central brick chimney, with multi-sided fireplaces on all three levels.

Another unifying feature is a recurring design motif based on Wright’s Tree of Life pattern, created for Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, N.Y., completed in 1905. “Wright often would come up with a design element to use throughout a house,” notes Lurie. “We came up with our own design based on Wright’s Tree of Life, and you see it in a lot of different places—in our art glass, ceilings, light fixtures, doorways, metal railings—everywhere.”

The Challenge of Simplicity

While the relative simplicity of Wright’s Prairie Style might suggest otherwise, contractor Dan Buffington emphasizes the extra challenges that come with executing Wright-inspired designs. “In this style everything is very linear,” says Buffington. “Everything—including every corner—is exactly square. There are no curves, and no rounded edges to hide imperfections.

“Many clients don’t know what they want,” he continues. “But the Luries were different. They said, ‘Here’s exactly what we want,’ and they pushed us to give it to them. We’ve built bigger, more expensive and grander houses, but by far, this is the most satisfying. It’s a house I’m proud of.”

“This home cannot be digested easily in a short stay,” says Woods. “You’d have to live there a long time to appreciate the subtlety and complexity. Some things are more commanding of attention than others, but everything has a purpose and is there to be sensed and enjoyed, to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing.

“The challenges were there,” he adds, “but in a positive way. The Luries were very much hands-on, definitive in their goals, and they kept pushing us to make it better and better. There was no ‘by-the-way’ or default in this house. Everything was done by conscious choice. It was a true labor of love.”