The unique and quirky vision embodied in the architecture of Terry Brown has inspired a generation of students, courageous clients and teams of craftsmen who helped him create it, working with him side by side. At a time when many architects build halfway across the world, rarely even seeing the results of their efforts, this earthy personal work provides a diametrically opposed alternative. Yet it is the product not only of his rural upbringing, but also of his Eastern establishment work experience in the heyday of postmodernism, and of an unusual, self-directed international education.

It took Brown 10 years to return to his Midwestern roots and begin to make something really original out of them-an architecture inspired by natural forms, Native American traditions, Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff. He used cedar shakes, stained glass, copper, shell, ceramics, glass slag, glittery OSB plywood boards, sheet metal and tile in unusual patterns that were rooted in nature and geometry, art and architecture, the psyche and society. But before he could develop this very personal way of building, he had to absorb architectural history, theory and the mainstream architectural culture of his time.

He grew up on a farm in Iowa, studied architecture at Iowa State and earned a master's in architecture at Washington University in St. Louis working with Udo Kultermann and Norris Kelly Smith and where, in a critique, he met Robert A. M. Stern, whose office he joined after graduation. In New York, Brown studied with the Italian Rationalist architect Aldo Rossi at Peter Eisenman's Institute for Urban Design. Afterward he went to Philadelphia to work for Venturi, Rauch and Scott Brown.

"Although Terry underwent an amazing professional transformation-from a willing avatar of postmodernism to a true architectural maverick-it is not so large a leap as you might think," explains his old friend and colleague Anthony Cohn, an architect now at Einhorn Yaffee Prescott who is working on the restoration of the United Nations buildings in New York City. "The work we did in the late 1970s at Bob Stern's office was actually very detail- and craft-oriented. We didn't make things ourselves, but we worked directly with those who did. If modernism removed craft from architecture and design through its emphasis on the machine-like qualities of construction, the work of the ‘postmodern' architects re-emphasized the hand of man in building. That may have been our greatest achievement-not the rediscovery of history, but the rediscovery of human imperfection."

Although Brown moved to Cincinnati in 1982 to practice, it was four years later, on a Fulbright Scholarship to the Vienna Academy of Fine Art in Austria, that he began to find his own voice. Doing independent research with Professor Otto Antonia Graf, he analyzed conceptual pattern relationships between the Viennese Secession movement and the American Prairie School. This work became the cornerstone of his practice and academic work for the rest of his life, which ended tragically on June 28 when he died at 53 in a highway accident near his ranch in Rosebud, Texas.

Living in Cincinnati (and on a farm nearby), Brown taught both at the University of Cincinnati and at Miami University in nearby Oxford, Ohio, where he won the devotion of students. He de-signed sensitive contextual residential renovations, offices, and unusual projects like a bookstore for the Contemporary Arts Center (the institution that later commissioned a building from Zaha Hadid).

In 1992, Terry and his wife, Jean, bought a modest house in a residential neighborhood of Cincinnati and began converting it to an in-town residence and studio. Over 14 years, working with students and young associates, they transformed this unexceptional dwelling into one of the most extraordinary buildings in the United States. The Mushroom House (sometimes called the Tree House) occupies a hilly corner site on a major street, where it turns heads and can stop traffic. Oculus windows pierce its curved forms, sheathed in shingles that ripple like waves. Some seem to wink, some narrow as if falling asleep, others expand to form a balcony or frame abstract compositions of colored, beveled and patterned glass. One large owl-like window is recessed; another fan-like one projects from the façade.

"Terry liked working with his hands, but some of the handmade quality of his work came from necessity. Often, he was the only person who understood what it should look like," Cohn says. Building the Mushroom House, he became "familiar with materials and their nature. He taught himself to cut shingles because he wanted a particular effect and needed to experiment to achieve it."

Eventually, he developed a community of collaborators-changing many of their lives. "No detail was insignificant," architect and metalsmith Paul Lashua says. "He maintained his overall vision while trusting his craftsmen to carry out the details as a team, a creative collaboration with a unique vision in the same spirit as architects and artists of years ago." Potter Louise Jenks helped him create the house's gargoyles and chimney pots in her kiln. Richard Duncan, founder of Architectural Art Glass Studio, worked on the windows. Cabinetmakers Zaim Halilovic and Tahsin Mert both helped him build bookcases and other woodwork.

Brown shared his extensive library with colleagues. "He encouraged me to investigate the works of architects, artists and styles that had influenced him (Louis Sullivan, Antonio Gaudí, Josep Jujol, Alphonse Mucha, James Hubbell, Le Corbusier... ) and further explore my own (Samuel Yellin, Albert Paley, David Smith)," Lashua recalls. "Terry also shared his interest in Native American culture and the Japanese aesthetic concept of ‘wabi-sabi'- an appreciation of the humble beauty of imperfect and unconventional things. That lies, I feel, at the heart of Terry's grounded and authentic acceptance of the world around him."

Returning to the Midwest, Terry Brown was able to create something both unique and indigenous. In 2005 he and Jean bought the ranch in Texas, where he taught at Baylor University, raised longhorn cattle, rode horses and began to devise new forms out of that place and experience. Though his search ended too soon, this regional architect who was anything but provincial leaves a legacy of work and shared ideals inspiring to all those striving for an architecture grounded in place yet open to the world.