Frank Lloyd Wright Never Built His Travel Trailer. Now He Has an Airstream

The architect designed a mobile kitchen around the same time the trailer company rolled out its first units. Some 75 years later, the titans of modern design have converged.

About a decade after the word "snowbird" was first used to describe workers moving south for jobs, Frank Lloyd Wright became the embodiment of its modern meaning. From 1937 until he died in 1959, every winter before the first snowfall, the architect would depart Taliesin, his home in Wisconsin, for his Arizona residence, Taliesin West. Wright, his then-wife Olgivanna Lloyd Wright, and his apprentices would pack up and relocate for half the year, camping along the way. For as much as Wright was on the road, it wouldn’t be a stretch to suggest his caravans could have made use of a travel trailer or two—something, say, like an Airstream.

At a gathering at Wright’s Scottsdale home in May, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation unveiled a collaboration with the famous travel trailer maker that’s inspired by archival materials at Taliesin West, including a trailer he designed but never built and a passage from one of his books. Says Sally Russell, the foundation’s director of licensing, the new Airstream is meant to give an owner "the experience of living in a Wright home and the daily enrichment organic architecture provides."

Airstream and the Frank Lloyd Wright foundation have announced a new trailer based on the architect’s Usonian homes and organic architecture principles.

Airstream and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation have announced a new trailer based on the architect’s Usonian homes and organic architecture principles.

Photo by Andrew Pielage

Windows and skylights are designed to let nature flow through and a muted color scheme found in Wright’s homes abound. Elements reference the architect’s specific works, too. For example, with its vertical slats, a desk chair is a compact version of the Robie House chair, which can be tucked away when not in use, like the foldable benches Wright designed for the First Unitarian Meeting House in Madison, Wisconsin. The dinette’s cherry-stained veneers are a nod to the plywood modular chairs Wright designed for Usonian homes, and an accordion wall panel hides electrical controls, of note since Wright hated clutter. (He once went so far as to design a closet only a foot deep just to hold horse reins at the Bradley House in Kankakee, Illinois.)

The trailer is perhaps closest in design to Wright’s Usonian homes, marketed as an affordable means of organic architecture. There’s a compression-release effect from the kitchen in front to the sleeping area in back, where higher ceilings offer relief. Skylights and windows on all sides coax in natural light. In the same way Wright’s homes featured unique stained glass—like balloons for the Coonley Playhouse—the Airstream adopts a motif, too. A chrome-leaf pattern, designed by an apprentice of Wright’s in 1956 for House Beautiful editor Elizabeth Gordon, appears in the main entry with its matching die-cut screen door, two sconces, the dinette, and cabinetry pulls.

The door and a die-cut screen have a leaf motif that was originally designed for <i>House Beautiful</i> editor Elizabeth Gordon.

The door and a die-cut screen have a leaf motif that was originally designed for House Beautiful editor Elizabeth Gordon.

Photo by Andrew Pielage

Wright’s signature red square that appeared on many of his buildings is fixed to the side of the trailer.

Wright’s signature red square that appeared on many of his buildings is fixed to the side of the trailer.

Photo by Andrew Pielage

See the full story on Dwell.com: Frank Lloyd Wright Never Built His Travel Trailer. Now He Has an Airstream
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