Frank Lloyd Wright's
SAMARA
John E. Christian, Owner


SAMARAQuest


Benton Fifth Grade Team

The Pink Light Bulbs

Nate Knowles / Joey Bunton / Natalee Hinshaw

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SAMARAQuest
    1   Why are the halls and some of the rooms so small?
    2   Why do you have so many doors and windows?

To make Mr. Wright's Usonian homes "affordable" and still maintain the artistic quality, he purposely designed the houses to be small.

Most of his homes ranged in living space from 1,800 to 2,000 square feet. SAMARA is one of his largest Usonian homes being over 2,200 square feet.

Like most of his custom designed homes, the living room is large with other parts of the house such as the workspace, the hallways, the bed rooms, and the bathrooms being quite small.

In this way, he kept cost to a level that middle income people could afford to build them.

In 1955-56 when SAMARA was being designed and built, air conditioning for homes was just being developed.

Again, in the interest of keeping the building cost reasonable, Mr. Wright told my wife and I that we would not need air conditioning. He said, "You won't need air conditioning. I will design the house without it."

For this reason, there are a number of doors and windows that open to the outside. Many of the deck windows also open. With these windows open, inside living was almost like going outside.


This also accomplished Mr. Wright's objective of bringing the outside in with more natural light, fragrances and sounds inside so that the living conditions are closer to Nature.

I've enjoyed responding to your questions. To learn more about SAMARA, I encourage you to visit the other Benton Fifth Grade Team pages. You may also be interested in taking a look at the Benton SAMARAQuest Challenge.

The Benton SAMARAQuest Challenge is designed to expand your learnings beyond what you already know about Frank Lloyd Wright and SAMARA. The Challenge suggests activities for exploring things you're interested in learning more about in your studies of the world's greatest architect.

Visit another
Benton Fifth Grade Team
to learn more about
SAMARA.
The Benton SAMARAQuest Fifth Grade Teams The Wrights / The Pink Light Bulbs / Falling Water
The Wright Team / The Falling Icicles / The Icicles
Visit these other Benton SAMARAQuest Teams
Grade 3 / Grade 4 / Grade 5 / Grade 6

Return to the Benton SAMARAQuest Main Directory

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Copyright © 1998   All rights reserved.
The John Christian Family Memorial Trust, Inc. and LEARNING ASSOCIATES
Latest revision September 30, 1998