Over eleven years during the first half of the twentieth century, two heavyweights of architecture and industry collaborated to construct a modern office complex that still exerts an architectural legacy today way beyond just the design of the office environment. Frank Lloyd Wright met H.F. Johnson Jr. – head of the cleaning products company SC Johnson – in 1936 and together they set about creating the Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin. Herbert Wright (no relation) took a trip 95 kilometres north of Chicago – on one of the free tours organised by the company during the Chicago Architecture Biennial – to Racine for uncube, and waxes lyrical (naturally) about an industrial complex built with the workers very much in mind.
