How do you bring a fresh new look to an iconic style? You innovate.
Crown Point Cabinetry was faced with a challenge for a newly-built home: Designing and creating custom cabinetry that would properly complement Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Prairie style.
The homeowners worked with Michael Rust, who specializes in Wright’s design philosophy, to create a house that captured the many details of Prairie style. Introduced in the late 1800’s, the Prairie style has been called the first original American architectural style. Defining elements include strong horizontal lines, cantilevered projections, and terraced surfaces.
Coincidentally, as the clients worked with Rust to outfit their new kitchen, Crown Point Cabinetry’s product designer, Fred Puksta, was developing elements for a new and distinctive line of Prairie-style cabinetry.
“Even though Prairie is an historic style, it is not well represented in the cabinetry market segment,” Puksta explains. “We saw an opportunity to differentiate ourselves by developing and marketing a Prairie-inspired line.”
During Puksta’s research, he discovered that kitchens designed by Wright tended to be plain and lack detail, so he turned to Wright’s furniture for inspiration. Puksta drew upon many form factors to create a new, but visually appropriate idea of Prairie-style cabinetry.
The results were nothing short of spectacular, earning twenty-five Design Patents from the U.S. Patent Office. Rust, the architect, was pleased too. “The fit is extraordinary,” he said.
The most prominent element is the “channel stock” face frame construction. Most other cabinetry face frames have a single, flat surface, but channel stock is crafted with raised edges out of applied, solid wood. It can be created in a straight channel version or squared channel, which features intersecting corner channels.
The doors featured an L-shaped detail, which helped define the Prairie aesthetic. The asymmetrical detail provides an opportunity to create a visual balance across a greater space.
The look of Frank Lloyd Wright’s linear decorative designs was also interpreted into Crown Point’s Linea Wall System, a shelving system that can run underneath the Prarie style cabinets. Handcrafted storage boxes can be hung, at the owner’s discretion, from a horizontally-lined wall panel that can be installed on the wall between the countertop and cabinets or below the countertop. Additional hooks and shelves are also available to serve additional functions and needs.
Other essential components created especially for the Prairie line of cabinetry included terraced wall brackets, horizontal moulding treatment, and integrated posts (with channel stock treatment) for exposed cabinetry furniture ends.
For more information: http://www.crown-point.com/prairie/index.html
