Realities
Stating it plainly would claim that this studio is to develop a masterplan for the museum-house and grounds of the historically important Edith Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois. The house and grounds are in turmoil with a very unique funding mechanism and requirements. But the program is to allow the house and grounds to be continually preserved, but also to increase its capacity for meaning and relevancy. To make a new building that serves the neighborhood and community that supports the building. There are currently 6 buildings on the site that each have particularities that can be discussed, but as a whole the site, its ownership and its future are all being planned in coordination with its own balance sheet positioned in an ever evolving non-profit governmental framework.
We will travel to the Farnsworth House and do workshops with its leadership and teams to survey the needs and conditions. Help build priorities. Open paths to alternative means of development and futures. As architects we understand the meaning of the house as an object of history, media and aesthetics, but to understand how those functions operate in the context of a rural museum-house and its management already begins to destabilize the house as a piece of iconography.