Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hanna House, also known as the “Honeycomb House”
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hanna House (1936), also known as the “Honeycomb House,” is the latest addition to the #500fllwproject. Designed in 1937 for Stanford professor Paul Hanna and his wife Jean, the house sits tucked into the hills of Palo Alto, California, and remains one of Wright’s most experimental residential designs.
Instead of the traditional square or rectangular grid Wright used in many of his homes, Hanna House is based on a unique hexagonal plan with virtually no right angles in the layout.
It was Wright’s first major exploration of the hexagonal module and became an important stepping stone toward even more daring ideas later in his career.
It’s easy to see why Hanna House became one of Wright’s most important architectural experiments.
Hanna House (1936), aka “Honeycomb House”. 📷: iPhone15Pro
Hanna House (1936), aka “Honeycomb House”. 📷: iPhone15Pro
HANNA HOUSE FIELD NOTES
DESIGN NOTES:
I really enjoyed this design. The house moves across a series of different levels separated by only a few steps up or down. It felt like yet another example of Wright creating “rooms within rooms,” where spaces remain connected while still feeling distinct from one another.
Wright believed the hexagon allowed spaces to open more naturally to the landscape, and walking through the home you can genuinely feel that connection. That simple geometric shift changes the entire experience of the space. The walls, ceilings, furniture, and even the flow of movement all work within this repeating rhythm, creating a house that feels (surprisingly) even more organic and alive.
With most of Wright’s square-grid designs, movement tends to pull you in four directions. With the hexagon, there are six. To be honest, I’m not sure I fully understand the psychology behind it, but I could absolutely feel it while moving and photographing through the house. It was wonderful.
The Hannas were also very “techy” for their time. Speakers, some built directly into the architecture, were installed throughout much of the house. Later, some shelving was removed to make room for a large organ that connected to those speakers throughout the home. They also reworked portions of the children’s rooms to create a larger shared office space for themselves.
The kitchen was great too. It included movable dividers that could completely enclose the space when needed, which felt surprisingly modern for a house designed in the 1930s.
Hanna House (1936), aka “Honeycomb House” - Kitchen. 📷: iPhone15Pro
PHOTOGRAPHY NOTES:
It’s almost always sunny in Arizona, so direct natural light is what I’m most used to working with. About 95% of the time, I use only available natural light when photographing Wright designs. Because of that, blue skies on shoot day are always a win for me.
Direct sunlight, compared to an overcast day with softer "flat" light, is much harder to control because of the extreme range between bright highlights and dark shadows. A properly exposed image needs detail in both. But beyond the technical challenge, direct light is what really reveals, in my humble opinion, Wright’s full design. His window arrangements, the connection to the outdoors, and his art glass all come alive when sunlight moves through the space. I love telling time from the shadows inside a Wright design.
My approach at Hanna was the same as the other 160-ish sites in the project. I always begin with a quick full interior and exterior walkthrough to understand the flow of the house and hear stories from the owners or staff. That scouting process is imperative because it helps me build the entire days compositions in my head before I ever set up the camera.
Hanna House is laid out beautifully for light. The backside bedroom wing and double office space collect incredible morning light, while the main common areas — essentially one long connected living and dining space — gather warm sunset light throughout the afternoon. I was fortunate to get excellent light both early and late in the day.
Anticipating (while not seeing it) when the light will arrive, where it will hit, and how high it will travel across the room is critical during that initial walkthrough. I’m mentally building a shot list and timeline the entire time. It allows me to move efficiently from one composition to the next as the light shifts through the house, instead of stopping after every image and searching for what to photograph next.
Of course there are always distractions and unexpected moments along the way, but I’m constantly thinking about timing and light and trying to stay as close to that internal schedule as possible. You can have the most beautiful subject in the world, but for me, if the light is not right, I usually won’t take the image. It’s that combination of subject and timing that can really separate your architectural photography, and all your photography really.
I use my Canon 24mm tilt-shift lens about 90% of the time for the #500fllwproject. For me, it’s simply the right tool for architectural photography. At Hanna House, I found myself constantly using the hexagonal floor patterns as guides for my compositions. Those same floor lines continue upward into the trim and ceiling geometry, creating incredibly strong visual structure to work with.
Hanna House (1936), aka “Honeycomb House” - Hexagonal Grid. 📷: iPhone15Pro
I’ve always enjoyed lining up forms and geometry in Wright’s work, but the hexagonal layout opens up six possible directional relationships instead of the usual four found in his square or rectangular grids. It made for a really fun photographic challenge and stretched my compositional creativity in the best possible way. It’s kind of like finding a new stretch that suddenly hits the exact muscle group you didn’t realize needed it.
Overall, Hanna House felt like one of Wright’s most playful and experimental residential designs while still remaining deeply human and comfortable. The hexagonal geometry changes the way you move, see, and experience the architecture in ways that are hard to fully explain until you walk through it yourself. Photographing it pushed me creatively and reminded me how willing Wright was to challenge his own ideas throughout his career. It’s easy to see why Hanna House became such an important turning point in his work.
Hanna House (1936), aka “Honeycomb House”. 📷: iPhone15Pro
Have you been? I’d love to hear what you all think of the Hanna House design and where it ranks among Wright’s residential work.