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SECTION
THER YPES OF OLI DAYS
A.
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Frank LloydWright was born inWisconsin
in 1867.At the age of 18 he entered univer-
sity to study civil engineering and two years
later he joined the Chicago D. Adler & L.
Sullivan architectural firm, as a draftsman.
In 1893, he set up his own business and
began to develop a style quite different
from other architects of his time, his so-
called “Prairie House” style. He claimed
that “the new reality is space instead of
matter” and, about architectural interiors,
he said that the “reality of a building is not
the container but the space within”, and so
“
he opened the box
”.
The
Winslow House
(1893-94) in River
Forest, Illinois was considered by Wright
to be his “first.”
B.
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The typical characteristics of Prairie
houses were a broad, cantilevered roof
and horizontal window bands. These
structures were built around a central
stone or brick hearth, consisted of wide
open spaces instead of strictly defined
rooms, separated from one another by
simple architectural devices instead of
partitions, walls or doors.This was called
the “open plan”. The integration of the
building with nature was another inno-
vation. Wright deliberately blurred the
distinction between interior space and
the surrounding terrain.The houses were
built with natural materials and never
painted. The introduction of all these
features helped to form a new language
in architecture and led to the concept of
organic architecture
His masterpiece of the prairie style is the
Robie House
, built in Chicago in 1909
(photo 1).
Although his philosophy of architecture
in the early years was expressed prima-
rily through the house form he had few
major commissions for public buildings,
office buildings or skyscrapers, in which
he utilised natural materials, skylights and
walls of windows to embrace the natural
environment.
C.
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In 1932 Wright opened up his
Taliesin
House
in Spring Green, Wisconsin, as an
architectural fellowship where 30 young
students could pay to work with and learn
from him.
Through the Taliesin Fellowship he cre-
ated the small
Malcolm E. Willey House
,
designed in 1933 and constructed in Min-
neapolis the following year, which marked
the beginning of what can be considered a
second phase inWright’s career.The house
is said to be the “bridge” between the prai-
rie houses and the
Usonian houses
, the
first of which was
Herbert Jacobs House
(1936), in Madison, Wisconsin (photo 2).
The word
Usonia
is an abbreviation for
United States of North America
. Frank
Lloyd Wright aspired to create a demo-
cratic, distinctly American style that was
affordable for the “common people”, the
average middle class. Although modestly
priced, the Usonian house possessed the
aesthetic, organic and spatial characteris-
tics of the prairie house: a small, one-story
structure set on concrete slabs with piping
for radiant heat beneath, no attic, no base-
ment, and little ornamentation. The living
room and the dining room were completely
unified in a single space and the kitchen
(“workspace”) was incorporated into the
living area.
D.
................................................................
In 1936,Wright’s most famous work,
Fall-
ingwater
(photo 3) at Bear Run, Pennsyl-
vania, was designed and
Taliesin West
was
built in Arizona as a winter location for
the school.
Fallingwater
, and
TaliesinWest
are considered the greatest expressions of
his revolutionary “organic architecture”, a
type of architecture which promotes the
harmony between man-made structure and
the surrounding nature.
E.
.................................................................
AfterWorldWar II,Wright showed another
surge of astonishing activity and original-
ity. In addition to rectangles, triangles,
hexagons and octagons as the basis for
residential floor plans, the circle and the
helix appeared in his buildings.The
Jacobs
House,
designed in 1943,was the first of a
series of houses that he built with curved
plans. Circles and spirals were also used to
spectacular effect in the unorthodox
Gug-
genheim Museum
in New York (1956).
Frank Lloyd Wright died in Phoenix, Ari-
zona on April 29, 1959. In his extraordinar-
ily long career he created 1,141 designs,
of which 532 were completed. Wright
initiated many new techniques, such as the
use of pre-cast concrete blocks reinforced
by steel rods. He also introduced numer-
ous innovations, including air conditioning,
indirect lighting, and panel heating.
Part 1
Sullivan and Wright were the pioneers of
organic architecture.
Wright adopted and extended Sullivan’s
maxim“Form Follows Function”(“the func-
tion or utility of a building should govern its
design” ) to his “organic” theory “Form and
Function Are One”. He refused any estab-
lished tradition and rebelled against the
ornate style of many architects of the time
who were designing architecture based on
Greek, Roman, Gothic, and Tudor models
instead of creating a new, vibrant American
landscape (“
A building should belong to
the era in which it is created
”). Instead, he
was attracted to Japanese architecture and
American architecture (Mayan, Indian etc.)
Wright believed that architecture should
follow these principles:
1 honestly express the function of
the building
A bank is not a Greek Temple
.
2 respect the nature of materials
Use the inherent properties of building
materials: wood or stone (or glass or
steel) is not disguised as something else
.
3 integrate a building with its site
A house should be of the hill, not on it
.
4 use natural colours, landscape ele-
ments and open space
Go into the woods and fields for colour
schemes
.
5 be inspired by nature
Resemble a living organism in organi-
zation or development
.
6 function like a cohesive organism
Each part of the design relates to the
whole, with a natural integration of
exterior & interior spaces
.
In a few words, the architectural form must
ultimately be determined in each case by the
particular function of the building, its envi-
ronment,and the type of materials employed
in the structure. To explain the concept of
unity in nature, the architect used the exam-
ple of “the living organism”, not subject to
geometric patterns preordained. All the parts
are related to the whole and the design of
the parts controls the design of the whole.
Wright had a deep knowledge of and a
lot of respect for natural materials such as
wood and stone. These materials had hith-
erto been used in different ways – covered,
painted, plastered, and altered to suit any
particular fashion or taste. But in his works,
these materials were always used in the
natural form, by allowing for instance, the
use of masses of stone as the natural feature
of the building.
Part 2
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