Introduction
Wright built the “house of spirit” for the family of teachers and Jean R. Paul Hanna, intellectuals close to the positions of John Dewey, one of America’s staunchest critics of the city and society of the twentieth century.
The social ideas of the time, shared by the Wright usoniano period, created an ideal climate for the relationship between architect and client and allowed the process of overcoming a difficult start work. In a letter accompanying the shipment Wright writes of the first sketches in April 1936, transmits them to abandon their hope someday the cash and the following angles for designing the geometry of the bees: “I hope that the unusual rooms do not bother because you really have to be quieter than the square and just have some irregularity… While the project is large and spreads by itself is not very extravagant. I hope that both of you enjoy both like me once you have familiarized you with its unusual proportions. ”
Usonian Period
Usonian is a neologism made by Samuel Butler that Wright used when referring to a United States (USA) ideal, utopian, that his work should help to build. Usoniano a man’s world would be freed, ie, “consistent with their nature and vocation.”
The term was used at the end of the twentieth and the early thirties, in times of economic recession, when Wright began to operate an architecture of cheaper materials, and therefore a simple architecture that can contribute to social transformation.
Location
The house is situated on a hillside with a slight slope to the west and is built around three old oak trees from the property.
It was built on the campus of Stanford University, 737 French Road, Palo Alto, California, USA
Concept
In its continuing search for a more flexible form of plant, a plant that would result in a more flexible interior space also, Wright takes the hexagon and the hexagonal pattern, which prefer square or rectangle.
Wright had used hexagonal patterns as the basis for development of certain projects such as Casa San Marcos Cudney (1928), at the Hotel project in San Marcos and the Steel Cathedral in New York (1936) but none of them reaches the complexity and richness of situations and possibilities of the Hanna House.
Description
From the first moment can be felt a sense of continuity surround achieved based on the folds that describes the facade, following the laws of the hexagonal pattern and the large overhangs that are projected toward the visitor, combining the deck of the garage with access itself. The chimney acts as a hexagonal core
However, the house itself is not a hexagon, but it is a plant with larger angles, 120 degrees, the usual angles. Since this was a prototype, the project required large numbers of drawings and sketches to develop plans easy to understand the builder and the workers.
Spaces
Interior
Access is by the far east, in connection with the garage and a courtyard first, as an anteroom outside, before entering the main hall of the house with a double height, opened two nuclei: the room oriented west and the bedrooms and study, looking to the east and southeast.
In the center, behind the fireplace, we found the kitchen, as labeled by Wright Laboratory and bathrooms with high ceilings, which are the facilities and claristorio windows (clerestory windows), used in other projects of the period usoniano.
• Windows claristorio
These lanterns are an interesting invention which combines two elements, which allows higher ventilate kitchens and bathrooms, and the bottom allows the passage of light in the morning and afternoon.
The rooms are grouped into the contours of the house forming spaces that are slowly revealed.
External
• Guest House
The guest house in the back and a little further up the hill, is where the full time caretaker lives on today. It has the same floor to ceiling windows that cut the main house.
• Waterfall
It is located at the rear of the main house and reflects the hexagonal pattern in the whole site has been designed.
Materials
Although Wright uses the term “wooden house” to refer to this house, It was built using a combination of red brick and wood, both inside and outside.
In the porch of the input is used San Jose, red brick flat, as in the stack that forms the core of the house, with a horizontal mortar joints of about one inch, while the vertical joints are flush. The exterior of the house is a combination of brick and wood.
The outdoor deck is concrete and it has also raised a number of hexagonal modules to house plants and protect the old trees from the property.
As in the first houses usonianas, Wright used in the interior wood walls, formed by outer and inner boards and battens. Large tables were secured with screws to the studs and the structural parameters were defined by a sequence of tables placed together horizontally, and its intermediates.
The lack of internal masonry walls allows the flexibility to change the space.
Wright used cypress wood, softer, for the horizontal slabs and hardwood for the frames.
Modulation horizontal walls in order to cross the position of windows and balconeras and the emergence of shelves on the interior walls.
The floor is resolved through a thick carpet that adds a natural texture, close to the smooth wood surfaces, and strengthens the effort to create a continuous space from the beginning that characterizes the work of Wright.
Drawings
Photos
