Lawrence Tech students help preserve Frank Lloyd Wright house

Thursday, April 30, 2009 | Source: metromode

Most building buffs are happy to tour a Frank Lloyd Wright house. Two Lawrence Technological University students did that every day last summer and are looking forward to doing it again this summer.

Seniors Justin Butler and Doug Metiva, architecture and construction management majors, lived in and helped restore the exterior of the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Bloomfield Hills last summer. They plan to work on the interior this year.

"The chance to live in there was pretty amazing," Butler says.

Wright, the famous American architect, designed the 2,350-square-foot house for Gregor and Elizabeth Affleck. The couple moved into the house in 1941. It's one of Wright's smallest single-family homes and was considered a home for a family of modest means. The Afflecks' children donated the house to Lawrence Tech in 1978. The university uses it as a teaching tool for its College of Architecture and Design.

Metiva and Butler got a closer look than most, tearing out rotted parts of the house and seeing how its infrastructure was put together.

"It's amazing to see what they came up with back then," Metiva says.

The students worked with university administrators to plan and perform the restoration projects, such as restoring the house's tidewater cypress siding, and were able to come in both under budget and ahead of schedule.

That earned them an opportunity to return this summer, when they plan to repair damage from a leaky roof in the bedroom wing. They will also do other interior restoration projects to help keep its status as an architectural gem.

The Affleck House is on the State and National Registers of Historic Places, and is one of the 50 most significant structures in the state, according to the Michigan Society of Architects.

Source: Justin Butler and Doug Metiva, architecture and construction management majors at Lawrence Technological University
Writer: Jon Zemke