Modern Over Modern. The SOM Interiors Restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House (1967-1975)

Despite being one of the world's most recognized modern houses of the 20th-Century, the Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House (1910) has undergone a complex series of events in more than a century as changes in ownership and function, threats of demolition, and restorations, whose traces are latent in the current appearance of the house. This contribution aims at investigating and interpreting the 1967-75 phase, when the Robie House was turned into the headquarters of the Adlai Stevenson Institute through a project by the Chicago's firm Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) that remodeled its interiors. This prestigious tenant, entitled to Adlai E. Stevenson II (1900-1965), who was twice a candidate for the American Presidency, converted the house into a multipurpose building, with a reception area, a library, office rooms, conference halls, and public relation spaces, resulting in a rare and stimulating modern addition over a modern authorial house. This study will provide information about the SOM phase, analyzing its related architectural interventions and their compatibility with the existing palimpsest through a bibliographical, archival, and on-site research. The current image of the house, frozen in a suspended time, lacks any reference to this period, whose traces were lost, together with the original Wrightian furnishings. The most recent restoration, lasting from 1997 to 2018, led to a new configuration of the house where the Wrightian phase was favored through the salvation of the original vestiges and the partial reproductions of some fixtures. The outcomes of this paper will ultimately provide new perspectives on a renowned international modern landmark prompting new considerations over its current use and configuration, trying to complicate the concept of authenticity and authorship in the ambitious intention to capture time evolution in a modern architectural interior.