Frank Lloyd Wright

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Frank Lloyd Wright

• Organic Architecture

Beautiful buildings are more than scientificthey
are true organisms, spiritually conceived works
of art using the best technology - FLW
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• I dont think its unfair to say that there is no
  American architect who has ever lived who has
  done as much to touch the world, who has done as
  much to realize his vision of what a perfect
  architecture might be than Frank Lloyd
  Wright.William Cronon, Historian

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What is Organic Architecture?

• Respect for the properties of the materialsyou
  dont twist steel into a flower
• Respect for the harmonious relationship between
  the form/design and the function of the building
  (for example, Wright rejected the idea of making
  a bank look like a Greek temple).
• Attempt to integrate the spaces into a coherent
  whole a marriage between the site and the
  structure and a union between the context and the
  structure.

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Honeycomb House (1936)
Palo Alto,California

• This Usonian house built for Paul R. Hanna is
  planned on a hexagonal grid system with most
  walls meeting at 120-degree angles. Many interior
  walls are wood and can be easily assembled or
  disassembled for reconfiguration of living space.

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Cultural Influences

• Arts and Crafts movement commitment to crafting
  all objects in such a way as to render them
  beautiful.
• Japan culture in which every human action and
  every human object were integrated so as to make
  of an entire civilization a work of art.

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Taliesen West, Arizona
It is considered his "most dramatic assimilation
of a building into a natural environment."

• "For the designing of our buildings, certain
  forms already abounded... tremendous drifts and
  heaps of sun-burned desert rocks were nearby to
  be used. ... We devised a light canvas covered
  redwood framework resting upon this massive stone
  masonry that belonged to the mountain slopes all
  around. On a fair day, when these white tops and
  side flaps were flung open, the desert air and
  the birds flew clear through." Frank Lloyd Wright

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Technology and Geometry

• New Technologies new materials
• Creativity
• Larkin House Air conditioning, plate glass
  windows, integral desk furniture.
• I was a real Leonardo da Vinci when I built that
  building, everything in it was my invention.
• Geometry is the key to beauty
• Consistency

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Form and Function are One

• NOT form follows function

Guggenheim Museum (1956),New York
Of the museum's interior Wright said, "We are not
building a cellular composition of compartments,
but one where all is one great space on a
continuous floor... no meeting of the eye with
angular or abrupt changes of form..." It has been
called one of the great architectural spaces of
the 20th century.
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Frank Lloyd Wrights VisionPlayfulness and
Romance

• According to John Wright, his fathers talent was
  to build a romance about you, who will live in
  itand you get the House of Houses, in which
  everyone lives a better life because of it. It
  may have a crack, a leak, or both, but you
  wouldnt trade it for one that didnt.
• This would be true, John said, even if Wright
  were building you a chicken coop. He weaves a
  romance around the gullibility of the chicken and
  the chicanery of the human beingand you get the
  Coup of Coops in which every chicken lives a
  better life on its own plot of ground. You may
  crack your head or bump your shins on some
  projecting romanticism, but life will seem
  richer, the air clearer, the sunshine brighter.
  The shadows a lighter violet. You will gather the
  eggs with a dance in your feet and a song in your
  heart, for your coop will be a work of art, not
  the cold logical form chasing the cold logical
  function.

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Art and Architecture

• Wright considered architecture to be the master
  art form. The art form that subordinated all
  other art forms because contained within it were
  the visual arts, the plastic arts, sculpture .
  It would make the people different who inhabited
  that space.
• - William Cronon, Historian

S. C. Johnson Administration Building (1936),
Racine, Wisconsin