Some remember the 9teen-nineties in America because the second coming of the 9teen-fifties. Whatever holes one can poke in that historical framing, it does really feel unusually plausible inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Circular Solar Home. Although not actually constructed till 1967, it was commissioned from Wright by shipping magazinenate Norman Lykes in 1959, the final 12 months of the architect’s life. Nearly dated although it might have appeared by the point of its completion, tremendousvised by Wright’s apprentice John Rattenbury, it might have accrued some retro cachet over the subsequent a long time. Then, within the renovation-mad nineties, the home’s personalers introduced Rattenbury again out to do a thorough replace and remodel.
The result’s a form of hybrid fifties-nineties aesthetic, which can go well with some tastes wagerter than others. However then, so do all of the residences designed by Wright, of which the Circular Solar Home in Phoenix, Arizona, is the final.
In the Architectural Digest video above, published when the home went on the market in 2021, actual property agent Deanna Peters factors out a number of of its Wrightian features: its circular kind, but additionally its curved corridormethods, its custom-built cabinetry (Philippine mahogany, after all), its signature “compression-and-release” and “inside-out” spatial results, its cantilevered balcony, its integration with the desert environment, and even its automobileport — Wright’s personal coinage, and certainly his personal invention.
Additionally within the manner of most Wright-designed properties — as he himself was identified to acknowledge, and never without a boastful notice — the Circular Solar Home appears easier to take a look at than to dwell in, not to mention principaltain. “The three‑bed room residence final offered in 2019, earlier than it had a short period on Airbnb (hireed for approximately $1,395 an evening),” wrote Houses & Gardens’ Megan Slack in 2023. At the moment, it was on the market for $8.5 million, about half a million dollars greater than its personaler needed in 2021. Paradoxically, although it stays unsold as of this writing, its asking value has risen to $8,950,000. Wright’s title brings a certain premium, after all, however so do the developments of the second: one hears, in any case, that the nineties are again.
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Based mostly in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His tasks embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the e-book The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social internetwork formerly often called Twitter at @colinmarshall.
