The Prairie house
After Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses of 1900–1910: a cross-shaped plan around a central hearth, low hipped roofs with deep overhangs, and bands of windows.
The rules it illustrates
Light on two sides of every room. Give every room in which people spend time daylight from at least two sides; plan the building in narrow wings so that this is possible.
The sheltering roof. Make the roof visible, and bring its eaves down low enough, and far enough out, that the building reads as a shelter from the street and the garden.
Emphasise the horizontal. On flat land, keep the house low and let its lines run parallel to the ground: low-pitched hipped roofs with deep overhangs, continuous sills and copings, bands of windows, and terraces extending into the garden.
The hearth at the centre. Plan the house around a great fireplace at its heart, and let the wings of the plan extend from it in a cross or a pinwheel.
Where it appears in the book
In the styles Arts and Crafts, Organic architecture, Craftsman.
In the chapters The Modern Movement.