I love the 60s. So much about its allure and magic. It was a radical decade, marked by the Vietnam War, Woodstock, the Civil Rights Movement, JFK’s assassination, the mini dress, manifesting as a cradle of visionary architecture. It was a decade of experimentation when the modernist formula has begun to lose its cachet, and architects were searching for an alternative formula, creating surprising, futuristic buildings. One of the most extraordinary American houses of this era, is the Prairie House, designed by Herb Greene in Norman Oklahoma in 1960. Working for John Lautner who was one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s apprentices, Greene was interested in connecting the building to the Oklahoma’s prairie and to integrate it into its unique landscape. When creating his own home, Greene, who is less famous than Frank Gehry, formulated similar ideas to the Los-Angeles-based architect when creating his home in Santa Monica. Both are built of low-cost materials, both are free of style, and are spontaneous in form, though this house was built from scratch, whereas Gehry’s was an existing house which he slashed. Greene’s house is covered with unfinished rough-sawn boards of cedar, which makes it look like a prairie chicken, the indigenous rare bird, and at the same time, it comes to emulate and correspond to the surroundings. This is an architectural gem on which Greene said that he sought to create curiosity, puzzle, a gestalt. But to me, its a testimony to the glorious sixties. Photos by Julius Shulman.
