Kenneth and Phyllis Laurent House

The Kenneth and Phyllis Laurent House is a single-family home in Rockford featuring expansive windows, flat roofs, and horizontal lines that blend with the surrounding landscape. The structure displays an intentional design that connects interior spaces directly to the natural environment outside.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed this residence in 1948 as part of his Usonian vision for affordable American housing. The project became significant because it was built with specific accessibility considerations in mind, making it a notable example of thoughtful, inclusive design from that era.

This house reflects a mid-20th century design approach that sought to merge living spaces with the natural environment through thoughtful architecture. Visitors can see today how the large windows and open floor plan blur the boundary between indoors and outdoors.

The home features wheelchair-accessible design throughout, with wider doorways and open floor plans that make movement easy from room to room. The interior layout was specifically designed to accommodate mobility needs, which was uncommon in residential architecture of that period.

This is the only Frank Lloyd Wright house ever built specifically for a wheelchair user, making it a groundbreaking example of accessible residential design. The attention to individual mobility needs at this scale was revolutionary for its time and remains exceptional today.