Design
The Isabel Roberts house is sometimes credited as being the first split-level house. It also has features typical of Wright’s mature Prairie style, including broad overhanging eaves, low hip roofs, continuous bands of windows which he called “light screens”, an emphatic water table, cruciform plan, large fireplace surrounded by Roman brick, built-in bookcases, stained woodwork, a tree growing through the roof, elimination of basement and attic space, and an overall emphasis on the horizontal line. Wright’s Vosburgh House is similar in conception to the Isabel Roberts house.
The living room boasts groupings of windows on three of the four main walls, some 1½ stories high, and some clerestory; this provides a gracious feeling of light and airiness. Among the Isabel Roberts House's most appealing features is the balcony overlooking the tall living room, a design element Wright used here and elsewhere to create a sense of spaciousness in a small house.
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Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Teaching is the perpetual end and office of all things. Teaching, instruction is the main design that shines through the sky and earth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The reason American cars don’t sell anymore is that they have forgotten how to design the American Dream. What does it matter if you buy a car today or six months from now, because cars are not beautiful. That’s why the American auto industry is in trouble: no design, no desire.”
—Karl Lagerfeld (b. 1938)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)