The Frank Lloyd Wright Protégé Behind the Most Modern Town in Michigan

The unit block was only the beginning of Dow’s material innovation. For the 1961 Dow Test House—a design laboratory of a kind—the architect used a prefabricated panel made of sand­wiched plywood and Styrofoam as the primary building system. The house was also used to test several Dow products, including plastic clerestory windows and a failed concrete additive called Sarabond. Eventually Dow’s youngest daughter, Barbara, and her husband, Peter Carras, moved in.