Art Students Learn about Architecture from Frank Lloyd Wright Photographs and text by Mark Graham
	Groups of students roamed the house, studying its design and materials. One group studies the spacious living room. Another group of students looks at the horizontal roof line and exterior walls.		MARCH 11, 1999--Students in Associate Professor of Art Pat Mathews's introductory Approaches to Modern Art class didn't have to travel far to examine a work of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural vision. For Tuesday's class they walked, biked, and drove to Oberlin College's Weltzheimer/Johnson House, designed by the famous architect. Instead of leading a standard tour, local architect Stan Mathews, who served as a guide for the class, had the students divide into groups to explore the house for themselves. He assigned each group a design element to study: materials, form and space, order, context, and style. Architect Mathews prefers that students enter the house without theoretical baggage. "Certain buildings are inarticulate and don't speak clearly," he says. "This one speaks very clearly." Toward the end of the session, the groups rejoined, and Mathews led a discussion about what they found. The Usonian house, he says, is part of Frank Lloyd Wright's ethos. Intended to be small, affordable, and easily built for middle-class families, Usonian houses are examples of organic architecture. "Organic architecture is one of the least understood concepts," says Mathews. He says that Wright's architecture was based on the desire to create buildings that followed the "divine order of nature." Wright's buildings are designed with basic construction materials--brick, wood, glass, and cement--in mathematical precision to maintain a steady horizontal feel throughout the structure. "You will see the organizing principles of this house in every other one of Frank Lloyd Wright's houses," Mathews says. "I was surprised to find that Oberlin has such a fine example of the work of one of America's greatest architects," says Evan Reeves, a senior biology and environmental-studies major from Needham, Massachusetts. Reeves says he enjoyed exploring the house with his classmates. "The building is a treasure," says Mathews. But it isn't the only treasure on campus. He says that the rest of the campus has much interesting architecture, citing the Venturi addition to the Allen Memorial Art Museum as "the first postmodern building." "It's in many textbooks," he says. The Weltzheimer/Johnson House is open to the public year round on the first Sunday and third Saturday of the month from 1 to 5 P.M. Tours are on the hour with the last tour beginning at 4 P.M. The next tour is Saturday, March 20. Tickets, maps, and brochures are available at Uncommon Objects, the New Union Center for the Arts, 39 S. Main Street in Oberlin. Telephone: 440-775-2086.
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