Construction
of the Alden B. Dow Home & Studio
Dow's
studio and residence took six years to build. The narrow drafting room and
office went up first. The unit blocks hadn't been manufactured at this time,
so the first studio section was framed with 2x4s and clad with masonite
panels. Long and narrow, it runs along the pond but draws its light from
windows facing the courtyard.
Once this office was complete and
Dow's staff had room to work, he began the entryway and conference rooms at
the front of the office. The conference area is the most dramatic space in
the building. From the oversized door at the entry with its polygonal
lights, the floor level steps down toward the pond in three stages. Dow
wanted people who would be seated in the lowest area to be close to the
water so he continued the roof slope down over the pond, overhanging a
narrow band of windows. The lower conference-room floor is about 20 inches
below the water level. The
plans for walls and floor in this part of the studio called for two shells
of concrete, sandwiching several plies of asphalt-impregnated felt and
totaling more than one foot thick. This wall has kept the structure weighted
against buoyancy and sealed against moisture.
Dow built a second studio wing in 1937, at a right angle to the one facing
the pond. It is also slightly below ground level and gets most of its light
from east-facing windows set in triangular folds in the roof.
Dow
started building his house in 1939. As in the entry and conference rooms,
unit-block construction is the principal unifying feature. Dow located his
private office between the studio, where his assistants worked, and his
residence. He also made it several steps down from the drafting room to mark
the transition from public to private space. Above Dow's study, the
bedrooms, living room and dining room are raised one story above the pond
and look out through broad windows onto a planted terrace that borders the
water. Dow used steel beams and columns to create the broader, more open
spaces to distinguish house from office. The open, intersecting ceiling
planes in the living and dining rooms get their support from steel posts set
between windows in the outer walls.
The
pitched roof that spreads above the block walls follows conventional
hip-roof design, but seems to rise gently away from the water, echoing the
angle of the pond's bank. To get light into the central parts of the house,
Dow interrupted the roof plane and inserted a narrow band of clerestory
windows. The roofing is standing-seam copper panels throughout. Panels are
bent over ridgeboards, eliminating the need for ridge caps. An extravagance
today, copper was relatively inexpensive in the 1930s, and the blue-green
patina of the roof links the building with the surrounding landscape.
The House section was added onto the complex beginning in 1939, and was
completed in 1941. The house is roughly 14,000 square feet. Mr. Dow said one
the greatest things he learned from Mr. Wright was the understanding that
you look to the future in relation to the growth potential of people. If
designing a house
 |
|
Elevation Drawings of the Alden B. Dow Residence, 1939
|
for a young couple, you can estimate that in time they
will increase the size of their family and most likely increase the amount
of their income. Therefore you should create an elaborate house design that
can be built in sections, allowing for that growth potential. Then, when you
put an addition on, it corresponds with the existing structure and becomes a
part of it.
Mr. Dow planned the entire complex in 1934. He labeled "Office Space,"
"Future Office Space," and "Future House." As business grew, so did the
structure to include the originally labeled "Future Office Space." And as
his family grew, he added to the house section.
Back to Top