ID 2202 Organic Architecture

Frank Lloyd Wright

- 1867-1959

- 1000+ projects

- 500+ completed works

- 20 books

- recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time"

- organic architecture: buildings that are in harmony with humanity and its environment

- 9 years old: Froebel Blocks -- "those smooth maple blocks were still in my fingers once I started designing buildings...geometrical clarity"

Robie House (Wright)

- Chicago, 1909

- "belongs to the ground"

- "horizontally"

- emphasis on long rectangles -- "stacking effect"

- flattened roof/roof overhangs (repetitive)

- long horizontal structure emphasis on horizontal overly long bricks

- Ladies Home Journal, 1909: landscape, Chicago a prairie town, flat topography

- prairie style: "planes parallel to the earth...make the building belong to the ground"

- "I see the extended horizontal line as the true earth line of human life, indicative of freedom" -- parallel motion, gravity, ground line (horizontality)

Robie House (Wright) continued

- horizontal line in roof overhang

- horizontal stacked levels; terraces (rectangular)

- bricks (horizontals) -- mortaring between bricks same color as bricks

- use of "indigenous materials" in the clay bricks

- cantilever = horizontality (a horizontal supported only on one end) -- partial enclose a rectangular space (opens up to organic world)

- "cantilever" in the terrace and in the roof overhang

- flattened roof = horizontality, strip windows = horizontality

- continuous rows of windows, long/low roof line, unornamented exterior

Robie House (interior)

- long horizontal axial arrangements in interior matching with exterior

- "major vessel": open, public (gathering areas)

- "minor vessel": smaller, utilities (kitchen, bathrooms)

- matching of materials (exterior to interior): brick/limestone

- furniture to interior architecture: wood

- fireplace: open, connects living room with dining room

- "architecture that encloses space as a covering that allows for life...breathing...flowing" -- organic aspects of humanity accomplished in the architecture

dining room (Robie House)

- lot of built in furniture

- long horizontal

- furniture match materials/horizontality

- dining room table: same wood as exterior and interior (matching), horizontality (long stretch of rectagle), lighting added to table

- light fixture: added to tops of table, stain glass (matching window -- same color, patterning, furniture, references to organic world -- trees)

- dining chair: wood matching with interior windows, horizontality (vertical elements), American Arts and Craft Movement ideal (simple, don't disguise material)

The Art and Craft of the Machine (Wright)

- "The Art and Craft of the Machine", 1901: criticizes the battle between handcrafted furniture and machine crafted furniture -- "in the Machine lies the only future of arts and crafts"

- "Now let us learn from the Machine...":

- beauty of wood lies first in its qualities as

wood

- certain simple forms and handling are

suitable to bring out beauty of the wood

and certain forms are not

- all wood-carving is apt to be a forcing of

the material, an insult to its finer possibilities

as a material

- "The Machine is Intellect mastering the drudgery of earth that the plastic art may live...":

- margin of leisure and strength by which

man's life upon earth can be made beautiful,

may immeasurably widen

- function ultimately to emancipate human

expression

Robie House (interior) continued

cantilever couch:

- multiple pieces of furniture: couch with tables connected on either end

- more efficient with design

- repetitive example of cantilever (table, armrest)

light fixture:

- cantilever horizontality

Robie House (summary)

- "organic architecture": "buildings that are in harmony with humanity and its environment"

- matching to topography

- indigenous materials

- "organic architecture": "to bring the outside world into the house and let the inside to the outside..."

- exterior/interior flow

- cantilever

- horizontality

- "Chicago landmark": 1957

Darwin D. Martin House (Wright)

- Buffalo, NY, 1905

- complement its site

- flat, horizontality -- roof flat as possible (snow)

- cantilevers

- terraces: open spaces (matching with enclose space, exterior space)

- interior: same brick as exterior, same wood for furniture (perfect balance, matching)

- barrel armchair: not disguising wood, same wood as house

- cantilever sideboard: same wood (matching with building)

- stained glass windows: "geometricized tree" (outside window is real tree -- organic world)

- mediates between interior space an

exterior world

- decorative details (juxtapose stained

glass/organic world)

- table: table but also shelf (storage), wood (matching), more efficient

- Prairie style: horizontal (flat roof, cantilever roofs, cantilever terraces, strip windows)

Barnsdall House (Wright)

- Hollyhock House

- LA, 1916-20

- hollyhock: flower (3-5')

- decorated house with hollyhocks (geometricized)

- different topography, landscape: matches hills nearby (in valley) -- different levels

- different indigenous materials: plaster over clay tile -- look like concrete

- "geometrical clarity": flower

- stained glass windows: hollyhock geometricized (decorative details)

- interior:

- dining room furniture based on hollyhock

- "spinal cord chair": reference to hollyhock

Ennis-Brown House (Wright)

- LA, 1923

- concrete molded in cement

- follows contour of landscape (rolling hills)

- open space, partially enclosed

- used in a lot of different movies, TV shows, music videos ("House on Haunted Hill")

- indigenous material: "concrete for concrete jungle"

- materials: concrete blocks with texture, "textile blocks" -- patterning (like textile design)

- lot of textures (textile blocks) -- basic geometric shapes (repetitive squares, different textures)

- textile blocks used for decorative details

- matching exterior to interior: textile blocks, wood, stained glass (mediating with organic world -- trees)

Millard House (Wright)

- La Miniatura

- LA, 1923

- textile blocks (molded out of concrete, geometrical forms) -- open up blocks (ventilate, put glass in it)

- geometrical clarity: textile blocks

- match exterior to interior

- opens interior to exterior with doors

Kaufmann House (Wright)

- Falling Water

- Bear Run, PA, 1936

- built around existing waterfall -- built into nature -- foundation

- cantilevers over waterfall, terraces, indigenous materials

- "No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it"

- organic details -- sits within landscape

- stacking effect of cantilevers and terraces -- horizontality (gravity)

- stairwell -- takes down to organic world (ground)

- transparency: more glass, able to see through building to other side (into organic world)

- same stone used in exterior and interior

- hearth: including stone spurs (didn't remove, built around it) -- "live stone"

- Time Magazine: "Wright's most beautiful..."

Imperial Hotel (Wright)

- Tokyo, 1915 (demolished 1968)

- 1923: earthquake (hotel undamaged) -- buildings around it collapsed

- 1945: damaged during WW2

- By 1967: foundation had begun to sink (43")

- lobby: matching of details (ceiling structure, furniture)

- "peacock chair": referencing indigenous crafts (fans, origami)

- bar: interior to exterior: matching bricks/carved stone (consistent practice)

Johnson Wax Building and Tower (Wright)

- Racine, WI, 1944

- over 200 differently curved bricks (made from local clay)

- curves on exterior and interior

- interior: administration building (open space, introduced shape of column by entrance, column shaped like a tree)

- "dendriform": shaped like or having the

form of a tree

- 30 foot tall posts (each post is 9 inches in

diameter at the bottom, 18 feet in diameter at

the top)

- Wright's demonstration of the post's

strength: sixty tons of materials

- "floating waterlily pond" -- pyrex glass

panels: skylight (openness - glass)

- "no sense of enclosure whatsoever at any angles, top or sides..."

- stairwells, corridors kept open

- desk and chair: cantilever (suspended shelf, modular - add/subtract, drawers rotate out - curve like shape) -- "horizontal line as the...line of human life" -- three-legged chair

research tower (Johnson Wax Building)

- pyrex glass -- suspend the building with the glass on the exterior

- "bring the outside world into...and let the inside to outside"

- pyrex glass tubes (careful structure)

- central core with spiral staircase

-cantilevered floors

- much more vertical

- implied transparency (building suspended inside of another building)

-no longer in use (safety code violation, spiral staircase: 29" wide) -- reopened for tours in 2014 (set up as if "frozen in time")

Guggenheim Museum (Wright)

- NYC, 1943-1959

- use of concrete (urban setting)

- museum to display new contemporary art

- spiral staircase shape (open) -- geometrical clarity (shell) -- spiral chambers are all connected to each other

- huge spiral (elevator to the top, then descend)

- geometrical, consistent

- skylight at the top

- "architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form" - serving the purpose of humanity in harmony with the organic world (Organic Architecture)