The Prairie House is
located in Norman, Oklahoma and was designed by Herb Greene in 1961. The home
was created as a sculpture on the Oklahoma prairie and is based on a loosely
fish-shaped plan in which the mouth and tail open to become windows. The home
has been nicknamed the Prairie Chicken House, though it is more commonly referred
to as the Buffalo House. Greene tried to evoke natural forms using delicate
timber shingles and low-cost building materials.
Greene envisioned
the land, not as a surface to build on, but as a landscape to build within. Cedar boards and shakes are collaged over a wood-sheathed frame
surfaced with mineral-coated roll roofing, giving the house complex rhythms,
fractures and metaphors of scales and feathers. Inside, the shingles continue
to create a complex, layered and feathered interior.
“My House contains references ranging from
primordial creature to futurist object and represents my interest in creating
metaphors of age and the passage of time ... Human beings, with our unique
ability to remember and anticipate, need to develop an architecture [which]
gives direction to an imaginative mingling of past, present and future.” -
Greene
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