The Martin House embodies Frank Lloyd Wright's principle of organic architecture by joining the built environment and nature in a unified design. In the historic community of Parkside, the site brings together six buildings within a verdant residential landscape. Wright conceived the plan in collaboration with Walter Burley Griffin, his Oak Park studio office superintendent and landscape architect. The grounds also express Darwin and Isabelle Martin's shared passion for gardening. Distinguished by expansive outdoor rooms and individual garden spaces, the landscape features the floricycle, a colorful blooming arc of sequential plantings that forms a soft, natural screen between the home and the adjacent streetscape. Surrounding the verandah as a half-circle of flowers, shrubs, and trees, it was designed to be beautiful in all four seasons through careful selection of plant colors, heights, and bloom times. The Martin House also reflects a fundamental shift in American residential landscape design during a period of growing home gardens, advances in horticulture, and new appreciation for garden aesthetics. Darwin and Isabelle Martin cared for the landscape intently for thirty years and spent endless hours enjoying life in their garden.

Photo: William Fischer, Jr.

Photo: William Fischer, Jr.

Photo: William Fischer, Jr.

Buffalo, New York · USA