Modern and contemporary
The Prairie style emerged in Chicago in the late 19th and early 20th century, led by Frank Lloyd Wright and the circle known as the Prairie School. It was the first genuinely American architectural language to break from European revivals, proposing a horizontal house integrated with the flat midwestern landscape, with open plans decades before that became common practice.
Between 1900 and 1910, Frank Lloyd Wright developed, from his studio in Oak Park, Illinois, an architecture that responded to the horizontal geography of the American prairies. The period's most cited work is the Robie House (1910) in Chicago, now a landmark open to visitors. Other Prairie School architects, such as Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, expanded the vocabulary beyond Wright's own practice.
Prairie houses show gently sloped roofs with deeply projecting eaves, horizontal lines emphasized by brick banding, ribbon windows, and a low massing that appears anchored to the ground. Robust central chimneys and the near-total absence of a visible basement reinforce this dialogue with the horizon line.
Wright pioneered the open plan, removing partition walls in favor of fluid spaces organized around a central fireplace. Geometric art-glass windows, furniture designed specifically for each house, and a palette of earthy tones and dark wood reinforce the unity between architecture and furnishing — Wright often designed even the furniture and light fixtures himself.
In original Prairie houses, exterior and interior were designed as one system, with Wright detailing glasswork, furniture and lighting alongside the architecture itself. When using separate reference boards for architecture and interiors today, that integration should be understood as the spirit to pursue, not a promise to reproduce a specific Wright house.
Prairie's central concept is organic architecture: the idea that a house should grow from its site and respond to the landscape rather than impose itself on it. This pursuit of horizontality, spatial openness and connection to nature influenced nearly all residential modern architecture that followed.
In a contemporary project, the Prairie spirit can appear as low-pitched roofs with strong eaves, a horizontal emphasis on the façade, open plans organized around a central element, and large openings that frame the landscape — always adapted to the real site and climate, without literally reproducing a historic house.
No: Prairie came first, in the 1900s–1910s, growing out of Frank Lloyd Wright's work; Mid-Century Modern emerged decades later, in the postwar years, with a different generation of architects and a different building language.
It directly references the flat midwestern American prairie, whose horizontality the movement's architects sought to translate into the massing of their houses.
FROM INSPIRATION TO PROJECT
This is a development approach. The scope of each stage is defined in the contracted proposal.
Understand routines, preferences, the site and the planned investment.
Define the concept and relationship between architecture and interiors.
Adapt siting, spaces, materials and openings to local conditions.
Develop and detail the project according to the contracted scope.
A contemporary of Prairie, sharing its pursuit of craft and natural materials.
Explore this styleInherits Prairie's open plan and landscape integration in a more radical language.
Explore this styleContinues, decades later, Prairie's pursuit of horizontality and connection to the outdoors.
Explore this style