Your Dream Frank Lloyd Wright House Is Ready to Be Assembled
Plans based on the iconic architect’s work are now sold as kits.
Updated: 3:57 PM CDT Jun 15, 2024
Mary Anne Erickson has been a Frank Lloyd Wright fan for years, but she never thought she’d be part of the architect’s design legacy. That changed when she started looking to downsize her home after her son left for college. “It really was a bigger house than we needed, and we knew as we moved into retirement we would want a bedroom on the ground floor and a smaller home that would be easier to maintain,” says Mary Anne, who owns Blue Mountain Bistro-to-Go in Kingston, New York, with her husband, Richard. “We saw this home advertised in a local magazine, and we instantly fell in love with it. We knew it was it.”The home in question wasn’t a townhouse in a well-to-do enclave or a sprawling country oasis. Actually, it wasn’t a house at all but a plan for a house. Mary Anne had come across an ad for a Wright-inspired building system kit made by Lindal, a home design and manufacturing company. Founded in Canada but headquartered in Seattle, Lindal has been offering home-building kits since its founding in 1944, and it has been developing the Wright-style homes for 15 years.“Lindal first began working with Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired designs in 2009 through a collaboration with The School of Architecture, founded by Wright and housed at his original home in Taliesin at the time,” explains Josefin Kannin, Lindal’s director of marketing. “We worked with the faculty and students to develop designs using our modern Lindal Elements system.” A decade later, Lindal tapped Aris Georges, a professor at The School of Architecture, to create the Imagine Series, an assortment of building system kits that pay homage to Wright’s Usonian house.Designed in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the Imagine Series is by no means a copycat. Rather, it’s an extension of the architect’s enduring legacy. “The homes are inspired by, and sometimes direct translations of, Wright’s Usonian home designs,” Kannin says. “As such, they share six principles of Usonian design with the originals: open floor plans, strong horizontal elements, flexible floor plans, light-filled spaces, energy efficiency, and an integration with nature.” They also incorporate a modern focus on sustainability. “Our system utilizes materials very efficiently, so there is little waste,” he adds. “We also site our homes to take advantage of the natural heating and cooling properties of sun, wind, and shade.” The company also donates to American Forests to plant 25 trees in its name through its Global Releaf program for every home built. There are nine different kits to choose from, depending on which design elements you love and what will work best where your home will be located. Take the Erickson family, who selected the Crystal Springs model, which is based on the original Bachman Wilson house that’s currently on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. “We loved the clean lines, high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and the overall feeling of light and air,” Mary Anne explains. They worked with a Lindal distributor to find a builder and sub-contractors to built it from the ground up, including elements not included in the kit. (The systems don’t include interior lighting or designing and installing a kitchen or bathrooms.)Once a customer purchases a design, which includes all the building materials to construct the actual house, Lindal delivers the system to the site so they can get started. (According to the brand, prices range from $380,000 to $691,000.) Though Crystal Springs is a set plan, Mary Anne said there was room to make small changes. Not only was she able to modify the design to create room for a garage, storage room, and utility room underneath, but she was also able to ensure the home was conducive with her property in Saugerties, New York. “Our house is on a pretty steep hill, so we were able to do this, but it turned out the actual first floor of the house had to be raised up considerably, leaving a crawl space under part of the house,” Mary Anne adds. “Instead of the front steps and back steps, we had to modify the design and put a large deck with railings on the back side of the house.”The result? A home with indoor-outdoor living spaces she and her husband are grateful for every day.“At any moment of the day or night, we feel we are a part of this magical landscape that nurtures our souls,” Erickson says. “I believe that one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s missions was to take away the barriers to feeling confined by a home: for the inside to blend effortlessly into its surrounding outdoor environment.”
Mary Anne Erickson has been a Frank Lloyd Wright fan for years, but she never thought she’d be part of the architect’s design legacy. That changed when she started looking to downsize her home after her son left for college.
“It really was a bigger house than we needed, and we knew as we moved into retirement [that] we would want a bedroom on the ground floor and a smaller home that would be easier to maintain,” says Mary Anne, who owns Blue Mountain Bistro-to-Go in Kingston, New York, with her husband, Richard. “We saw this home advertised in a local magazine, and we instantly fell in love with it. We knew it was it.”
The home in question wasn’t a townhouse in a well-to-do enclave or a sprawling country oasis. Actually, it wasn’t a house at all but a plan for a house. Mary Anne had come across an ad for a Wright-inspired building system kit made by Lindal, a home design and manufacturing company. Founded in Canada but headquartered in Seattle, Lindal has been offering home-building kits since its founding in 1944, and it has been developing the Wright-style homes for 15 years.
“Lindal first began working with Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired designs in 2009 through a collaboration with The School of Architecture, founded by Wright and housed at his original home in Taliesin at the time,” explains Josefin Kannin, Lindal’s director of marketing. “We worked with the faculty and students to develop designs using our modern Lindal Elements system.” A decade later, Lindal tapped Aris Georges, a professor at The School of Architecture, to create the Imagine Series, an assortment of building system kits that pay homage to Wright’s Usonian house.
Designed in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the Imagine Series is by no means a copycat. Rather, it’s an extension of the architect’s enduring legacy. “The homes are inspired by, and sometimes direct translations of, Wright’s Usonian home designs,” Kannin says. “As such, they share six principles of Usonian design with the originals: open floor plans, strong horizontal elements, flexible floor plans, light-filled spaces, energy efficiency, and an integration with nature.” They also incorporate a modern focus on sustainability. “Our system utilizes materials very efficiently, so there is little waste,” he adds. “We also site our homes to take advantage of the natural heating and cooling properties of sun, wind, and shade.” The company also donates to American Forests to plant 25 trees in its name through its Global Releaf program for every home built.
There are nine different kits to choose from, depending on which design elements you love and what will work best where your home will be located. Take the Erickson family, who selected the Crystal Springs model, which is based on the original Bachman Wilson house that’s currently on view at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. “We loved the clean lines, high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and the overall feeling of light and air,” Mary Anne explains. They worked with a Lindal distributor to find a builder and sub-contractors to built it from the ground up, including elements not included in the kit. (The systems don’t include interior lighting or designing and installing a kitchen or bathrooms.)
Once a customer purchases a design, which includes all the building materials to construct the actual house, Lindal delivers the system to the site so they can get started. (According to the brand, prices range from $380,000 to $691,000.) Though Crystal Springs is a set plan, Mary Anne said there was room to make small changes. Not only was she able to modify the design to create room for a garage, storage room, and utility room underneath, but she was also able to ensure the home was conducive with her property in Saugerties, New York.
“Our house is on a pretty steep hill, so we were able to do this, but it turned out the actual first floor of the house had to be raised up considerably, leaving a crawl space under part of the house,” Mary Anne adds. “Instead of the front steps and back steps, we had to modify the design and put a large deck with railings on the back side of the house.”
The result? A home with indoor-outdoor living spaces she and her husband are grateful for every day.
“At any moment of the day or night, we feel we are a part of this magical landscape that nurtures our souls,” Erickson says. “I believe that one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s missions was to take away the barriers to feeling confined by a home: for the inside to blend effortlessly into its surrounding outdoor environment.”
