Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ARCHITECTURE FANTASY CAMP
design your dream home
OAK PARK, ILLINOIS
A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is
made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart.
—Frank Lloyd Wright
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Frank Lloyd Wright built 362 houses. You have the chance to build one more at the
Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust's architecture fantasy camps. Not only will you learn
basic drafting techniques and execute framable floor plans for this dream house of yours, but
you'll do it in the very studio from which Wright and his innovations rocked the world. Wright
worked from the two-level drafting room next to his Oak Park home for nearly 20 years. It's
where he conceived his groundbreaking prairie style and where he germinated the concepts
behind Fallingwater, Taliesin, and New York's Guggenheim Museum.
“It's impossible to be in the drafting room without feeling the energy,” says Jan Kieck-
hefer, the trust's director of education, who calls herself the “den mother” for the fantasy camp
and for the dozens of other workshops and special events planned by the Oak Park trust. “It's
inspiring no matter what field you're in.”
Indeed, the attendees of the trust's four-night fantasy camps hail from many fields: stay-
at-home moms, retirees wanting to build their dream retirement home, doctors, you name it.
The only field missing among the students is architects, but that's because the workshop is
open to laypeople only. Volunteer architects, however, show up to assist with drafting tech-
niques and to go over plans.
The camp grew out of a Youth Architecture Class that the trust has offered for 15
years. After the dad of one of the teenagers lusted after his son's class, Kieckhefer thought,
“Hmmm.” That “hmmm” turned out to be a brilliant stroke of genius. The camp, which can
accept only 12 per session (two to each of the six drafting tables in Wright's studio), fills up
quicker that you can say “Frank Lloyd Wright was a veritable genius of the 20th century.”
WHILE YOU'RE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
