The Pope-Leighey House. A Frank Lloyd Wright Home

Saurabh's mama, Vijay mama was in town. An architect, and he had already been to the National Building Museum, so we took him to the Pope-Leighey House, a Frank Lloyd Wright home. We had talked just a week ago about going there one of these days, and this worked out perfectly.

It was our first time seeing a FLW house and they are beautiful. The Pope-Leighey house is made of three materials - cyprus wood (which is water and termite resistant), brick, and recycled glass (from old drugstores). The house is a minimalist structure

The house is beautiful. It is made to blend into nature. It has a hidden entrance, as is Wright's signature. He loves horizontal lines, and so the the way the wood is placed, the grains in the wood and even the studs had only horizontal marks on them. The obsession with the horizontal lines is also obvious in the brick work. The horizontal lines separating the bricks are especially carved out, where as the vertical line are filled in and coloured in the same colour as the brick to make them inconspicuous.

I especially like the lamp in the right corner along the book shelf

The furniture is modular. The tables in the house are made so that they can all be attached to create a long dinner table for when guests come, or broken up into smaller tables to serves as different tables in the house. The height of the table top fits exactly in the slot between the wood slats on the wall. Everything is so well thought out and designed in relation to everything in the house.

There are windows on the top of the walls like this that open out, to let the hot air out and because the open outwards, it prevents rain from coming into the house.

There are similar windows in the master bedroom on the wall between the room and the hallway - it gives a sense of space to not have a completely closed wall. 

The hallways are narrow and open up into wider spaces/rooms which gives you the sense of the space being larger than it is.

Saurabh's favourite room was the sanctum. This is the first room when you enter the house, and Pope needed it to write. One of the things I really liked from a practical point of view was the use of piano hinges everywhere. It is easier to keep clean and I think it makes a lot of sense. The other thing that I thought was really cool was that the window mesh was made of copper, not aluminium. This way, you notice the mesh less as you look out the window. Such a brilliant man!

I can't wait to visit other FLW houses. Hopefully, Falling Water soon.