"American is a tricky word. It can refer to everyone and everything pertaining to all the countries of North America - and potentially South America as well - but it's commonly used with specific regard to the United States. For Frank Lloyd Wright, linguistic as well as architectural perfectionist, this was an untenable state of affairs. To his mind, the newest civilization of the New World, a vast land that offered man the rare chance to remake himself, needed an adjective all its own."
"Challenged to "create a decent home for $5,000," the architect seized the chance to realize "a new affordable architecture that freed itself from European conventions and responded to the American landscape." This first Usonian house and its 60 or so successors "related directly to the earth, unimpeded by a foundation, front porch, protruding chimney, or distracting shrubbery. Glass curtain walls and natural materials like wood, stone and brick further tied the house to its environment.""
The term Usonian named a distinctly American architectural and cultural project distinguishing United States identity from broader continental labels. Frank Lloyd Wright developed the Usonian concept and built the first Usonian house, the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin, during the Great Depression, charged to create an affordable home for $5,000. The Usonian program produced about sixty houses that related directly to the earth, often lacking traditional foundations, porches, chimneys, or ornamental shrubbery. Design elements included glass curtain walls and natural materials like wood, stone, and brick, tying interior and exterior and rejecting European conventions.
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