hemicycles

Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs second home in December of 1943.

Despite my ongoing pursuit of plant knowledge and current employment as a landscape architect, architecture was my first love, and however cliche in the architecture community it may be, I will continue to argue that FLW was the best and most influential architect ever. Although published far less frequently than other Wright homes, one of the most interesting houses he designed and built was the Jacobs II house.

On the first six working drawings of the Jacobs II house (as it is often referred to) the project is labeled “solar hemicyclo”. Subsequent drawings and references use the name “solar hemicycle”. The house is called a solar hemicycle because the plan is based on a south facing semi-circle. Although the home occupies only 120 degrees, planting beds occupy the remaining 30 degrees on each side, finalizing the half circle.

The design was shown to the clients at Taliesin on February 8, 1944. Paul Sprague defines the geometry of the home in its National Historic Landmark Nomination as follows;

In plan it was nothing more than an arc of about 120 degrees. Inside it would be two stories, 14 feet in height, and would spread out along the arc for approximately 88 feet at the rear, or north side, and 60 feet on its front , or south side. Its depth inside was to be 17 feet. The south wall would be all glass, 48 feet in length, divided between doors and fixed panes.

I find the home most interesting because of its relationship to the site and its integration with a landscape that extends from the north berm all the way to the southern sun. The entry procession cuts through the ground and bleeds sunlight on the other side.

The sunlight is captured as heat in the home during the winter and shaded by a large overhang in the summer.

The poetry of the house is less in the furniture or details but rather grounded in the stone wall, concrete floor, and cylindrical towers that contain a stairwell and service functions. The house has a strength that I think is often guilded in other Wright homes. Sunlight and plants drive through the veins and keep the house breathing and beautiful even in eventual decay.

(original photography credits unknown; photograph color and diagram by Ryan Moody)