Peter Berndtson, 1909-1972.

Peter Berndtson was a Wrightian designer who maintained a largely domestic practice in the Pittsburgh area between 1947 and 1972.

Berndtson was studying at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin, when he met and married Cornelia Brierly, a fellow student, who had formerly studied at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh. The Berndtsons settled in southwestern Pennsylvania, and together applied Wrightian theories to the design of houses. After Cornelia returned to Taliesin in 1957, Peter Berndtson continued on with the regional practice. Berndtson's buildings are rooted in Wrightian principles and the practice of "organic" architecture. They tend to share the horizontal massing, geometric rationale, conceptual unity, and careful siting of Wright's houses, and employ a Wrightian vocabulary of overhanging eaves and ribbon windows. Some of Berndtson's houses are closely related to Wright's Usonian houses, and many feature radiant heating plans. These are not slavish imitations, however; Berndtson absorbed Wright's principles, but he was an accomplished designer in his own right. Clients praised him for his personal investment in each design.