After 50 Years, a Frank Lloyd Wright Finally Got Built. Then It Spawned a Sibling.
Over the course of a seven-decade career and up until his death in 1959, Frank Lloyd Wright was remarkably prolific. He designed more than 1,100 structures, from museums, office towers, hotels, and churches to houses of all sizes and configurations. Not all were realized, but some served as templates for later designs in which the architect refined and adapted themes that sparked his seemingly limitless curiosity.
Bear Run, realized by architect David Uppgren in Marine on St. Croix, Minneapolis, is based on two nearly identical Frank Lloyd Wright designs that were never built: a 1948 plan for the architect’s sister and drawings of a cottage for his friends from 1958.
One such project was a 1958 guest house that Wright planned for his friends and clients Don and Virginia Lovness in Stillwater, Minnesota. With its triangulated roof and sharply angled overhang projecting out from one side—Wright had a facility for acute geometries—the drawings for the Lovnesses’ Cottage C were nearly identical to the unbuilt summer home he’d designed a decade before at Taliesin for his youngest sister, Maginel Wright Barney.
Like his 1948 plan for Maginel, the Minnesota home also demonstrated Wright’s penchant for exploring new ideas, says architect Tim Quigley, the coauthor of a monograph on the architectural career of Wright’s chief draftsman, John Howe, and a board member of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.
The original drawing for Virginia and Don Lovness’s cabin shows the severity of the roofline, preserved in the built home in Marine on St. Croix.
The home’s exterior limestone blocks wrap into its entrance, where Wright’s signature compression technique is in play. The compact space "releases" into a larger, more open space.
"Why was Wright playing with extreme geometries in 1948? He was always restless from a design standpoint," Quigley says. "He tried to get everything he ever designed built, and time and again, he designed many a house type that became the basis of subsequent, related designs."
Maginel’s summer retreat and Cottage C might have existed only on paper, but after Don’s death, Virginia gifted working drawings to a longtime friend, done by Taliesin Associated Architects, a firm founded by Wright apprentices. And that friend had just the spot for it: a lakeside site he co-owned in Marine on St. Croix, northeast of Minneapolis. Working with architect David Uppgren, in 2006, the owners realized the single-story design, but expanded it to include a lower level that opens out to the lake. Virginia’s friend now lives there full-time.
The owners’ dogs, Yoshi and Bear, rest in the living room, where a monumental fireplace anchors the house. "That craggy hunk of stone above the fireplace is something you see at Taliesin," says Tim Quigley, coauthor of a book on Wright’s chief draftsman, John Howe, and a member of the board of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.
Floor-to-ceiling windows and doors connect the primary space downstairs to the outdoors and offer a view of the lake beyond.
Refined millwork pairs with limestone in the kitchen-and-dining area.
Called Bear Run, the home’s name is a nod to both the nature reserve surrounding Wright’s masterpiece, Fallingwater, and the owners’ collective succession of white English golden retrievers—all given ursine names like Grizzly, Panda, and Kodiak. After several years, the owners began thinking about building an "age-in-place" companion to the original residence on a neighboring property where the other of the two could live, and reached out to Jeremy and Sara Imhoff, founders and principals of Imprint Architecture + Design, to collaborate.
The office occupies a loft space accessed from the entry.
Jeremy and Sara considered the site, the friendship between the two owners, and the undeniable impact of Wright’s original design and asked themselves three questions: How to show respect to Wright’s design without duplicating it? How to create a design alongside Bear Run that would stand the test of time? How to imbue the house with a modern, timeless sophistication within their clients’ budget?
Bear Run’s roofline recalls Wright’s design for the Seth Peterson Cottage in Wisconsin.
A plaque in the garden honors the contributions of Virginia Lovness, who gifted the working drawings of her unbuilt cottage to one of the owners of Bear Run, making the home possible.
The result is an 1,818-square-foot house the owners call Kyodai, Japanese for "brothers." It complements the dramatic geometries of Bear Run while also honoring Wright’s longstanding appreciation for Japan and his style of organic architecture, which is distinct in how it harmonizes with a setting. The houses, says Sara, are "brothers—different yet the same."
On the neighboring property, Kyodai House brings to mind the horizontal lines and deep overhangs that are hallmarks of Wright’s homes.
Jeremy and Sara Imhoff laid out Kyodai in the shape of a "Y," which turns Bear Run’s triangle-shaped roofline inside out.
Explains Jeremy: "We were really conscious about the relationship between the two homes and how they would feed off each other. Bear Run’s very unique roof—an asymmetrical tetrahedron—was a major focus of our design. For Kyodai, we created a very simple hipped roof that comes down to a knifepoint at the edge" much like Bear Run’s.
"We also studied the roof overhangs," says Sara. "Frank Lloyd Wright had these beautiful, cantilevered, Prairie-style roof overhangs, so we looked at how we could play with that. We didn’t want to compete with that tetrahedron roof, but to complement it."
As a nod to the textured limestone at Bear Run, Sara and Jeremy chose concrete masonry blocks for both the interior and the exterior. The club chairs are from Restoration Hardware and the windows and doors throughout are by Andersen.
In the dining area, a table by Willie Willette sits beneath pendants from Design Within Reach. Jeremy designed the walnut built-in cabinets.
Sustainability was important to the clients, so Sara and Jeremy specified features such as radiant-heated polished-concrete floors, triple-pane windows, locally sourced pine, and an energy-efficient heat pump for cooling.
The roofline of the Wright design inspired Kyodai’s Y-shaped plan, whose three wings "essentially turn Bear Run’s three-sided roof plan inside out," adds Sara. The plan also yields views of and access to three outdoor spaces: an entrance court, a rear garden that serves as a connection between the two homes, and a terrace and seating area that faces the lake.
Instead of replicating Bear Run’s extensive use of limestone, Sara and Jeremy chose concrete masonry units, cut into four-by-twenty-four-inch blocks and laid in a combination of smooth and split faces for a variegated texture and to emphasize the home’s horizontal lines.
A bed and side tables by Willie Willette and a Frank Gehry Wiggle Side Chair are joined by Frank Lloyd Wright lamps in the primary bedroom.
"There are a lot of natural materials in this house," Sara explains. "And that’s what we were striving for—a balance of a natural grounding stone or concrete with wood."
In his autobiography, Wright wrote that "no house should ever be on a hill… it should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other." Side by side, Kyodai and Bear Run sit high above the lake shore nestled into Marine on St. Croix’s sloping landscape, perhaps just as Wright would have imagined.
Outdoor furniture by Restoration Hardware sits on the terrace off the living room.
Floor plan of Kyodai House by Imprint Architecture
More Frank Lloyd Wright:
The Ultimate Guide to Frank Lloyd Wright
What You Need to Know About Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Homes
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel Was a Trial by Fire, But It Sparked His Most Famous Homes
Project Credits:
Bear Run:
Architect of Record: David Uppgren of Uppgren + Associates, Inc.
Builder: David Wallin, Anderson Wallin Construction
Kyodai House:
Architecture and Interior Design: Sara and Jeremy Imhoff of Imprint Architecture / @imprint.architecture
Contractor: Hagstrom Builder / @hagstrombuilder
Structural Engineer: Kyle Bruender, PE, Mortarless System Engineering
Landscape Design: Landscape Love / @landscapelovempls
Landscape Installation: Landscape Renovations / @landscaperenovationsmn
Concrete Design: Living Stone Concrete Design / @living_stone_concrete_design
Woodwork: Great Lakes Wood Co. / @greatlakeswoodco
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