Modernism in twentieth-century architecture has meant first and
foremost an aversion to decoration for its own sake, without a trace of
historicism. Instead, it favors a clean functionalism, which expresses
the machine age, with its insistent rationalism. Yet modern architecture
demanded far more than a reform of architectural grammar and vocabulary.
To take advantage of the expressive qualities of the new building
techniques and materials that the engineer had placed at the architect's
disposal a new philosophy was needed. The leaders of modern architecture
have characteristically been vigorous and articulate thinkers, in whose
minds architectural theory is closely linked with ideas of social reform
to meet the challenges posed by industrial civilization. To them,
architecture's ability to shape human experience brings with it the
responsibility to play an active role in molding modern society for the
better.
Although Chicago at the turn of the century was, as Frank Lloyd Wright
noted soberly after returning from a trip to Europe, a fairly
cultureless place, full of slaughter-houses, blast furnaces and George
M. Pullman's factories, there was nevertheless one place in this rapidly
expanding city which seemed to be a melting-pot for Modernist ideas.
This was the office of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan's
successful architecture practice. The young Frank Lloyd Wright as
well as Irving John Gill worked as draftsmen here.
In 1893, the year that Frank Lloyd Wright left Sullivan's office,
the Columbian World Exposition took place in Chicago. With its orgy of
white stucco and propagated ideal of the "city beautyful", it dealt a
fatal blow to those functional ideas still germinating in purpose-built
architecture and heralded the triumphant advance of academic
architecture in America. The Japanese Pavilion, a replica of the
Ho-o-den Temple, attracted Wright's particular attention. Here was an
opportunity to study Japanese architecture, with its overhanging roofs
and geometric wall slabs, in full-scale model.
Even before the turn of the century Wright had formulated, in
numerous articles and lectures, some of the fundamental principles
underlying his entire oeuvre. Anything "which has no real use or
purpose" was to be avoided,- even necessities such as radiators were to
be invisible, were to vanish into the construction. Visible elements,
however, were to have their own character and nonetheless relate to the
whole. Individuality was one of his favourite catchwords. "There are as
many different houses as there are people." Wright's mistrust of
industrial stylization was based on his personal experience with the
materials available in the building trade. It was not possible to get
plain-dyed fabrics for curtains, plain rugs, groove and tongue boards
without modelling nor posts without carvings, making a wealth of
detailed drawings necessary which were not reflected in the architect's
set fees, which were, based solely on the use of available materials.
There was in the United States no movement of opposition. The weak Arts
and Crafts scene has its forum in the magazine "The Craftsman",
published by furniture maker Gustav Stickley. He also published
individual works by Wright, Gill and the Greene brothers, but response
was weak. The brothers Charles Sumner and Henry Mather Greene probably
came closest to the ideal of the craftsman. Since they worked only with
wood, their buildings were very detailed and divided into emphatic
single structural elements. They showed lines, angles, projections and
recesses instead of closed surfaces. Their building methods were
developed directly from wood-joining techniques. The houses were not to
be covered with climbing plants,- they harmonized with their
surroundings at a respectful distance from nature. Wright had set up his
own office in Chicago's suburban Oak Park in 1889. He participated
intensively in middle-class socializing and spoke at women's club
meetings. His most important programmatic articles appeared not simply
in the magazine "Architecture Record", but also in the widely-read
"Ladies' Home Journal". His article "A Home in a Prairie Town" appeared
in the latter in February 1901 as part of a series on low-cost housing
models.
Wright's early houses were named after the flat prairies of the
American Midwest. Their exteriors are influenced by his respect for
quiet stretches of countryside and transcend the actual lack of space in
suburban areas. He used low-pitched, overhanging roofs, low eaves,
wide-set fireplaces and outreaching garden walls to achieve his effects.
The houses are multi-storey despite their obvious horizontality. Narrow
stairs emphasize the layered floor levels rather than citing the
impressive entrances found in traditional villa architecture. His
entrances have no forceful character whatsoever. They are usually
hidden, narrow and set at an angle, reflecting Wright's belief
that a house should be a "shelter". Colour, which he liked to employ in
autumnal shades, took second place behind effects achieved with
vegetation. He usually integrated bowls and troughs into parapets. He
devoted much attention to fenestration, usually aligning his windows in
long bands. He rejected the American guillotine window, preferring
instead the European casement.
Wright introduced a surprisingly strong ornamental note into his
interiors through geometric glass-work. Light filtered through coloured
class whose rising organic patterns symbolized natural growth. In his
plans, where the rooms were often grouped in a cruciform arrangement
with staggered axes around a large central fireplace, Wright
employed typical motifs from the country-house architecture of the
nineteenth century, using deliberate asymmetries as a means of artistic
design. But the only loose division of his rooms, whereby one seems to
flow into the next, goes much further. His plans are balanced and free
of obligation to symmetry. "The old structural forms which up to the
present time have spelled 'architecture' are decayed. Their life went
from them long ago and new conditions industrially, steel and concrete
and terra cotta in particular, are prophesying a more plastic art
wherein as the flesh is to our bones so will the covering be to the
structure, but more truly and beautifully expressive than ever." In such
statements Wright revealed himself as a visionary who always wanted more
than he was able to create. His goal was architecture as a unity created
by man, based on practical but not merely pragmatic considerations. His
Prairie Houses reach their climax in the Robie House in Chicago. It is
situated in the city and therefore cannot be compared to the "real"
Prairie Houses such as those he built for Willitts or Cooniey.
WRIGHT.
The first indisputably modern architect in this sense was Frank Lloyd
Wright
(1867-1959), Louis Sullivan's great disciple. If
Sullivan, Gaudi, Mackintosh, and Van de Velde could be called the
Post-Impressionists of architecture, Wright took architecture to its
Cubist phase. This is certainly true of his brilliant early style, which
he developed between 1900
and 1910 and had broad
international influence.
In the beginning Wright's main activity
was the design of suburban houses in the upper Midwest. These were known
as Prairie School houses, because their low, horizontal lines were meant
to blend with the flat landscape around them.
Frank Lloyd Wright's last, and most accomplished, example in this
series is the Robie House of
1909
(figs. 1169
and 1170).
The exterior, so unlike anything seen before, instantly
proclaims the building's modernity. However, its "Cubism" is not merely
a matter of the clean-cut rectangular elements composing the structure,
but of Wright's handling of space. It is designed as a number of "space
blocks" around a central core, the chimney. Some of the blocks are
closed and others are open, yet all are defined with equal precision.
Thus the space that has been architecturally shaped includes the
balconies, terrace, court, and garden, as well as the house itself.
Voids and solids are regarded as equivalents, analogous in their way to
Analytic Cubism in painting, and the entire complex enters into an
active and dramatic relationship with its surroundings.
Wright did not aim simply to design a house, but to create a complete
environment. In the Francis W. Little House (fig.
1171), he even took
command of the details of the interior and designed stained glass,
fabrics, and furniture. The controlling factor here was not so much the
individual client's special wishes as Wright's conviction that buildings
have a profound influence on the people who live, work, or worship in
them, making the architect, consciously or unconsciously, a molder of
people.
1169. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT. Robie
House, Chicago. 1909
Frank Lloyd Wright. Frederick C. Robie
House, Chicago, Illinois, 1908-1909
Street front; Entrance area
Four welded steel beams, approximately 30
metres in length, run lengthwise through the roof and permit its broad
overhang. Extended terraces, low storey heights, continuous parapet
bands - of which only some border balconies,
others simply delimit "holes" - and elongated
enclosures all take up the dynamic horizontals of the roof and make the
house appear larger than it actually is.
1170. Plan of the Robie House
1171. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT. Installation of the living room from the Francis W. Little House.
1913.
The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York
Frank Lloyd Wright. Dining room in
the Robie House
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Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright, original name Frank Lincoln Wright (born
June 8, 1867, Richland Center, Wisconsin, U.S.—died April 9,
1959, Phoenix, Arizona), architect and writer, the most
abundantly creative genius of American architecture. His
“Prairie style” became the basis of 20th-century residential
design in the United States.
Early life
Wright’s mother, Anna Lloyd-Jones, was a schoolteacher,
aged 24, when she married a widower, William C. Wright, an
itinerant 41-year-old musician and preacher. The Wrights
moved with their infant son, Frank Lincoln (he would later
change his middle name to Lloyd), to Iowa in 1869 and then
lived successively in Rhode Island and Weymouth,
Massachusetts, before eventually moving back to Wright’s
mother’s home state of Wisconsin. The young Wright attended
the University of Wisconsin at Madison for a few terms in
1885–86 as a special student, but as there was no
instruction in architecture, he took engineering courses. In
order to supplement the family income, Wright worked for the
dean of engineering, but he did not like his situation nor
the commonplace architecture around him. He dreamed of
Chicago, where great buildings of unprecedented structural
ingenuity were rising.
The early Chicago years
Wright left Madison early in 1887 for Chicago, where he
found employment with J.L. Silsbee, doing architectural
detailing. Silsbee, a magnificent sketcher, inspired Wright
to achieve a mastery of ductile line and telling accent. In
time Wright found more rewarding work in the important
architectural firm of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan.
Wright soon became chief assistant to Sullivan, and in June
1889 he married Catherine Tobin. He worked under Sullivan
until 1893, at which time he opened his own architectural
practice. His family grew to six children, while his firm
grew until as many as 10 assistants were employed.
The first work from the new
office, a house for W.H. Winslow, was sensational and
skillful enough to attract the attention of the most
influential architect in Chicago, Daniel Burnham, who
offered to subsidize Wright for several years if Wright
would study in Europe to become the principal designer in
Burnham’s firm. It was a solid compliment, but Wright
refused, and this difficult decision strengthened his
determination to search for a new and appropriate Midwestern
architecture.
Other young architects were
searching in the same way; this trend became known as the
“Prairie school” of architecture. By 1900 Prairie
architecture was mature, and Frank Lloyd Wright, 33 years
old and mainly self-taught, was its chief practitioner. The
Prairie school was soon widely recognized for its radical
approach to building modern homes. Utilizing mass-produced
materials and equipment, mostly developed for commercial
buildings, the Prairie architects discarded elaborate
compartmentalization and detailing for bold, plain walls,
roomy family living areas, and perimeter heating below broad
glazed areas. Comfort, convenience, and spaciousness were
economically achieved. Wright alone built about 50 Prairie
houses from 1900 to 1910. The typical Wright-designed
residence from this period displayed a wide, low roof over
continuous window bands that turned corners, defying the
conventional boxlike structure of most houses, and the
house’s main rooms flowed together in an uninterrupted
space.
During this period Wright
lectured repeatedly; his most famous talk, The Art and Craft
of the Machine, was first printed in 1901. His works were
featured in local exhibitions from 1894 through 1902. In
that year he built the home of the W.W. Willitses, the first
masterwork of the Prairie school. In 1905 he traveled to
Japan.
By now Wright’s practice
encompassed apartment houses, group dwellings, and
recreation centres. Most remarkable were his works for
business and church. The administrative block for the Larkin
Company, a mail-order firm in Buffalo, New York, was erected
in 1904 (demolished in 1950). Abutting the railways, it was
sealed and fireproof, with filtered, conditioned, mechanical
ventilation; metal desks, chairs, and files; ample
sound-absorbent surfaces; and excellently balanced light,
both natural and artificial. Two years later the Unitarian
church of Oak Park, Illinois, Unity Temple, was under way;
in 1971 it was registered as a national historic landmark.
Built on a minimal budget, the small house of worship and
attached social centre achieved timeless monumentality. The
congregation still meets in the building’s intimate, top-lit
cube of space, which is turned inward, away from city
noises. The Unity Temple improved on the Larkin Building in
the consistency of its structure (it was built of concrete,
with massive walls and reinforced roof) and in the ingenious
interior ornament that emphasized space while subordinating
mass. Unlike many contemporary architects, Wright took
advantage of ornament to define scale and accentuation.
Europe and Japan
By 1909 Wright’s estrangement from his wife and his
relationship with Mamah Cheney, the wife of one of his
former clients, were damaging his ability to obtain
architectural commissions. In that year Wright began work on
his own house near Spring Green, Wisconsin, which he named
Taliesin, before he left for Europe that September. Abroad,
Wright set to work on two books, both first published in
Germany, which became famous; a grand double portfolio of
his drawings (Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe, 1910) and a
smaller but full photographic record of his buildings (Ausgeführte
Bauten, 1911). With a draftsman, Taylor Willey, and his
eldest son, Lloyd Wright, the architect produced the
numerous beautiful drawings published in these portfolios by
reworking renderings brought from Chicago, Oak Park, and
Wisconsin.
By 1911 Wright and Cheney,
still unmarried since Wright could not get a divorce, were
living at Taliesin. Wright’s career suffered from
unfavourable publicity generated by his relationship with
Cheney, but he found a few loyal clients like the Avery
Coonleys, whose suburban estate, west of Chicago, the grand
masterwork of the Prairie style, he had designed in 1908. In
1912 Wright designed his first skyscraper, a slender
concrete slab, prophetic but unbuilt.
At this time the Japanese
began to consider Wright as architect for a new Tokyo hotel
where visitors could be officially entertained and housed in
Western style. Thus, early in 1913 he and Cheney spent some
months in Japan. The following year Wright was occupied in
Chicago with the rushed construction of Midway Gardens, a
complex planned to include open-air dining, other
restaurants, and clubs. Symmetrical in plan, this building
was sparklingly decorated with abstract and near-abstract
art and ornament. Its initial success was cut short by
Prohibition, however, and it was later demolished. Just
before Midway Gardens opened, Wright was dealt a crushing
blow; Cheney and her children, who were visiting her at
Taliesin, and four others were killed by an insane houseman,
and the living quarters of the house were devastated by
fire.
Stunned by the tragedy,
Wright began to rebuild his home and was soon joined by the
sculptor Miriam Noel, who became his mistress. In 1916 they
went to Japan, which was to be their home for five years.
The Imperial Hotel
(1915–22, dismantled 1967) in Tokyo was one of Wright’s most
significant works in its lavish comfort, splendid spaces,
and unprecedented construction. Because of its
revolutionary, floating cantilever construction, it was one
of the only large buildings that safely withstood the
devastating earthquake that struck Tokyo in 1923. No one
still doubted Wright’s complete mastery of his art, but he
continued to experience difficulty in acquiring major
commissions because of his egocentric and unconventional
behaviour and the scandals that surrounded his private life.
The ’20s and ’30s
Wright’s transpacific journeys took him to California,
where he met a wealthy, demanding client, Aline Barnsdall,
who about 1920 built to Wright’s designs a complex of houses
and studios amid gardens on an estate called Olive Hill;
these now serve as the Municipal Art Gallery in Hollywood.
In 1923 and 1924 Wright built four houses in California,
using textured concrete blocks with a fresh sense of form.
Late in 1922 Wright’s wife
Catherine divorced him at last. His relationship with Miriam
Noel ended, and in 1925 Taliesin again burned, struck by
lightning, and again Wright rebuilt it. That same year a
Dutch publication, Wendingen, presented Wright’s newer work
fully and handsomely, with praise from Europeans. In 1924
Wright had met Olgivanna Hinzenberg; soon she came to live
with Wright permanently, and they married in 1928.
Meanwhile, Wright’s finances had fallen into a catastrophic
state; in 1926–27 he sold a great collection of Japanese
prints but could not rescue Taliesin from the bank that
seized it. Amid these debacles, Wright began to write An
Autobiography, as well as a series of articles on
architecture, which appeared in 1927 and 1928. Finally, some
of Wright’s admirers set up Wright, Incorporated—a firm that
owned his talents, his properties, and his debts—that
effectively shielded him. In 1929 Wright designed a tower of
studios cantilevered from a concrete core, to be built in
New York City; in various permutations it appeared as one of
his best concepts. (In 1956 the St. Mark’s Tower project was
finally realized as the Price Tower in Bartlesville,
Oklahoma.)
The stock market crash of
1929 ended all architectural activity in the United States,
and Wright spent the next years lecturing at Chicago, New
York City, and Princeton, New Jersey. Meanwhile an
exhibition of his architecture toured Europe and the United
States. In 1932 An Autobiography and the first of Wright’s
books on urban problems, The Disappearing City, were
published. In the same year the Wrights opened the Taliesin
Fellowship, a training program for architects and related
artists who lived in and operated Taliesin, its buildings,
and further school structures as they built or remodeled
them. From 20 to 60 apprentices worked with Wright each
year; a few remained for decades, constituting his main
office staff. In the winter Wright and his entourage packed
up and drove to Arizona, where Taliesin West was soon to be
built. At this time Wright developed an effective system for
constructing low-cost homes and, over the years, many were
built. Unlike the Prairie houses these “Usonians” were flat
roofed, usually of one floor placed on a heated concrete
foundation mat; among them were some of Wright’s best
works—e.g., the Jacobs house (1937) in Westmorland,
Wisconsin, near Madison, and the Winckler-Goetsch house
(1939) at Okemos, Michigan.
International success and acclaim
Wright gradually reemerged as a leading architect; when
the national economy improved, two commissions came to him
that he utilized magnificently. The first was for a weekend
retreat near Pittsburgh in the Allegheny Mountains. This
residence, Fallingwater, was cantilevered over a waterfall
with a simple daring that evoked wide publicity from 1936 to
the present. Probably Wright’s most-admired work, it was
later given to the state and was opened to visitors. The
second important commission was the administrative centre
for S.C. Johnson, wax manufacturers, at Racine, Wisconsin.
Here Wright combined a closed, top-lit space with recurving
forms and novel, tubular mushroom columns. The resulting
airy enclosure is one of the most humane workrooms in modern
architecture. Each of these buildings showed Wright to be as
innovative as younger designers and a master of unique
expressive forms.
Thereafter commissions
flowed to Wright for every kind of building and from many
parts of the world. His designs for the campus and buildings
of Florida Southern College at Lakeland (1940–49) were
begun, and the V.C. Morris Shop (1948) in San Francisco was
executed. Among Wright’s many late designs, executed and
unexecuted, two major works stand out: the Guggenheim Museum
in New York City and the Marin County government centre near
San Francisco. The Guggenheim Museum was commissioned as
early as 1943 to house a permanent collection of abstract
art. Construction began in 1956, and the museum opened in
1959 after Wright’s death. The Guggenheim, which has no
separate floor levels but instead uses a spiral ramp,
realized Wright’s ideal of a continuous space and is one of
his most significant buildings. The Marin County complex is
Wright’s only executed work for government, and the only one
that integrates architecture, highway, and automobile, a
concept that had long preoccupied Wright.
A prolific author, Wright
produced An Autobiography (published 1932, revised 1943), An
Organic Architecture (1939), An American Architecture
(1955), and A Testament (1957).
Wright was a great
originator and a highly productive architect. He designed
some 800 buildings, of which 380 were actually built and
about 280 are still standing. Throughout his career he
retained the use of ornamental detail, earthy colours, and
rich textural effects. His sensitive use of materials helped
to control and perfect his dynamic expression of space,
which opened a new era in American architecture. He became
famous as the creator and expounder of “organic
architecture,” his phrase indicating buildings that
harmonize both with their inhabitants and with their
environment. The boldness and fertility of his invention and
his command of space are probably his greatest achievements.
Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.
Encyclopædia
Britannica
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