The Massaro House - Frank Lloyd Wright (PRECEDENT ANALYSIS)

The Massaro house is an aesthetically pleasing home built on a spectacular site on Petre Island on Lake Mahopac in upstate New York. The brilliant designer, Frank Lloyd Wright, began this building as a few simple pencil sketches in the 1950’s before resolving that his ideas would be expensive and difficult on this waterside location. Many years later (2007), Joe Massaro employed architect Thomas A. Heinz to construct the home from the five original sketches by Wright.

I have always been interested in Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs and his unique way of expressing different appearances and defining the space as well as its exploit. The Massaro house is one of his designs that particularly jumps out at me because of its location. Just as in Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous home, Falling water, the Massaro house is built around the natural environment. Being built over a lake and out from a rock, this building contains special construction and design techniques. Much like the Greek’s idea of design and construction, the home was built around nature, and with much consideration of it. For example, it is built from and around a large grouping of rocks. One of these rocks is actually incorporated in the house itself and used both as a visual aid as well as a physical aid. It is utilized as part of the kitchen counter and extends to another room of the home.

I feel that taking consideration of these details and using the natural environment in the design itself is an admirable quality in a designer. I also feel as though researching this building will aid, improve, and develop my own skills as a designer. The world of design has been developed over time to include precedents from earlier designs and structures such as this. Many things can be learned from Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings, and can be considered as new designs are being created. I welcome the opportunity to delve deeper into the mystery of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design of the Massaro house and am excited to discover more of the details of its design. Hopefully my analysis of this building will allow me to further my own developments and designs and inspire me to use some of the same principles of Frank Lloyd Wright, such as his knack for designing around beautiful locations and environments rather than vise versa. 

(A sketch of the Massaro House that I drew)