Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright is known for many iconic building designs here in metro Phoenix, from Taliesin West to Gammage Auditorium. And now, a forgotten Wright sketch for a food truck, of all things, has inspired a collaboration with Airstream camp trailers.
Andrew P. Collins, executive editor of The Drive, says Wright’s mobile kitchen design looks like an old truck from the 1930s, except the back is almost like a railroad car.
"Not dissimilar from food trucks we would see today. The plans for it were an artifact that I guess must have been at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation out in Arizona," Collins said.
"The vehicle was never built, so this was kind of like a back of napkin idea that he must have had at one point. I guess not much is known about whether or not it was commissioned by a company or if it was just something that he dreamed up, but it was a pretty simple truck design, two axles on the back, it had a cooktop with a bunch of different burners, and, and yeah, his signature like very sharp lines, smooth design on the exterior."
The concept was sketched by Wright in 1939, near the end of the Great Depression.
"It certainly would have been a time when maybe not a lot of people were going out to restaurants, so that might have been a good way to increase accessibility to different types of food. Maybe it could be a good way for someone to get a business off the ground," Collins said.
"You know, Frank Lloyd Wright was all about making the most of small spaces with some of his Usonian ideas, and so that could have been a great way to make the most of the small footprint of a vehicle."
The company released its first factory-made silver travel trailer in 1936, around the same time Wright arrived in the Sonoran Desert, and three years before he sketched that food truck design.
Collins said there may have been some overlap between Wright's career and Airstream.
"His whole thing was a oneness with nature and having a structure look at home wherever it was. And when you look at a classic Airstream trailer, it really does look at home in any exterior environment. It’s such a quintessential shape, so maybe it does kind of fit his principles," Collins said.
This new vehicle — officially called the Airstream Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Limited Edition Travel Trailer — takes these two ideas, from nearly 100 years ago, and incorporates them into a high-end mashup, combining the aesthetics of Airstream with Wright’s architectural principles.
"So, the exterior is a pretty classic Airstream. They kind of look like a chrome caterpillar so to speak, but the inside has a lot of his signature, kind of like the dark wood that he uses, lot of really nice clean straight lines and uh a big part of it is consistent with the Frank Lloyd Wright principal of bringing the outdoors to the indoors," Collins said.
"Of course that’s pretty endemic to any camper vehicle, but this one in particular has like a nice big rear opening door in the back that basically lets the bedroom be right into the outdoors. It’s got that coinciding with nature that was obviously big with Frank Lloyd Wright."
The limited-edition trailer is 28 feet long and sleeps four. Don’t expect a Depression-era price tag. With clean lines, warm wood-toned cabinets, a wood-slatted lighting panel, and desert-hued decor, the vehicle will set you back $185,000 — making us wonder if Frank Lloyd Wright ever heard of glamping.
