Cranbrook receives Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House as donation

2018-04-23T13:25:00-04:00

Cranbrook, known worldwide as an architectural set piece, is getting a new gem in its diadem — a Frank Lloyd Wright house. The house was built in 1950 by Sara and Melvyn Maxwell Smith. The donation came from the Towbes Foundation. “The Smith family always said they didn’t want this to just pass to another set of homeowners,” said Gregory Wittkopp, director of the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research. “The phrase they used was they wanted it to be ‘an educational resource.’ ”

The donation by the Towbes Foundation was a gift "that other design schools would kill for," The Detroit News reports and tells the legendary tale of A. Alfred Taubman donating a substantial portion of the windows to the cash-strapped Smith family to get the FLW-designed house finished before the winter of 1949.

Five decades later, Richard Meier unites with Smith House clients

2018-02-27T15:37:00-05:00

[...] Richard Meier designed a house on a rocky site on Long Island Sound that exhibited many of the moves that would come to define his career. From the front, the Smith House—located in Darien, Connecticut, and completed in 1967—is a narrow, three-story white box.

Completed in 1967, Smith House was one of Richard Meier's earliest commissions and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. Judging by a new set of images shot by photographer Mike Schwartz, the building with its light-flooded interior and floor-to-ceiling windows enabling stunning vistas of the Long Island Sound has aged gracefully.

Photo: Mike Schwartz

Marking the occasion, Surface magazine united Meier with Chuck Smith, current co-owner and one of the original clients' two sons who had the privilege of growing up in this modernist masterpiece.

Richard Meier: "The special quality of the house is that it gives you an understanding of the relationship between what’s man-made and what’s natural. The whiteness, of course, highlights that relationship. It reflects and refracts the color of nature in a way it heightens your perception of the landscape around you."

Photo: Mike Schwartz

Read the complete interview here.

Archinect - News

Cranbrook receives Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Smith House as donation

Five decades later, Richard Meier unites with Smith House clients