I was in Chicago this weekend. One of the top attractions to see was Frank Lloyd Wright’s artistic headquarters and ground zero for much of his residential architecture. After we saw it, I ask now more than ever: What the F$#*&? I soon realized that I do not understand architecture in the least. Can anyone explain why people consider Frank Lloyd Wright to be a great architect? These were some of the ugliest buildings I have ever seen in my life. From what I can gather, Frank was responsible for poor knockoffs that spawned ranch houses and the “modern” buildings that are now being happily knocked down all over the U.S. His seminal work “Falling Water” in Pennsylvania is OK but is very poor from an engineering standpoint. Several parts of that structure have deteriorated and had to be replaced. Please explain to me, in plain English, why this man is America’s “greatest architect”?
I’m not qualified not motivated to defend Wright as a genius, but he was certainly among the most innovative designers of his time. His statements were bold and brash and eminently quotable and the publication of his work in 1909 caused a sensation around the world. A big part of the appeal of his residential architecture was that he, almost without peer in architectural circles, was committed to designing affordable houses.
As for the designs themselves, the best I can say for them is that they don’t suffer from timidity, blind acceptance of existing patterns, or lack of compositional skill. For may purposes, they may be entirely too loud - but many of them are well loved and justly appreciated.
Anyone as assertive as Wright is likely to collect the strongest admirers and detractors. I’m not sure why he alone has infiltrated the popular image of architects, but those who consider him America’s greatest are not entirely unreasonable. In my opinion they overlook a lot of obvious weaknesses and miscalculations.
Check the historical context. It always helps when evaluating the work of trendsetters.
If you read Raymond Chandler novels you may convince yourself that the guy was mired in cliche, until you remember that he was CREATING things that would become cliched in the hands of lesser writers. Those 1950s ranch houses may look cheap and crappy, but before Wright got involved (around the turn of the century!) in open spaces with one room flowing into another, and houses designed to complement the terrain, people lived in boxes inside of boxes.
Also, Wright was the Richard Wagner of American architects…when he wasn’t designing buildings, his time was mostly spent in self-promotion, and in creating monuments to himself. Two of his most interesting books, THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE and THE NATURAL HOUSE, make great reading as much for his chutzpah as for his theories.
I LIKE his work. If I’m in a city with one or two Wright buildings, I make a point of going over to look at them.
Dover Publications has done a number of reasonably-priced pictorial volumes devoted to Wright’s masterpieces…in addition to Falling Water, two good ones are Robie House in Chicago and the International Hotel in Japan. Check 'em out.
Like any well-aged master, FLLW can only really be appreciated when you look at the state of architecture at the time of his career. FLLW came on the scene when architects were divided between the sterile modernist movement and the ho-him traditional camp. If you take a good a FLLW’s work you’ll see he took the best parts of the modernist movement, namely the interplay between geometric shapes and fused them with the old art of making a cozy and livable home.
The end results looks really good, its really just eye-candy, especially when considering the super-low ceilings and doors, giant fireplaces, and odd layouts. Regardless, it was a lot more livable than what the modernists were dreaming up, houses that are pretty much steel and glass office buildings with some avante garde weirdness tossed in like a glass bathroom that can be seen from outside, concrete front yards painted green, etc.
FLLW also had a holistic approach to his work, designing chairs, tables, etc. He also tried to fit his buildings into their environment going against the modernist ethic of just forcing their cube-houses onto nature. It helps to have a background in architecture history to get what the big deal its. Its like saying, hey whats the big deal with Picasso his stuff looks like crap, it might, but its the historical reasons that really matter, not what a person 80 years down the road is going to think. Though I find him pretty over-rated his houses are beautiful, but I probably couldn’t live in one for very long without busting my head open at 6’1, I think FLLW was like 5’8.
A good write-up at here:
I think Frank was closer to 5’2". There are many amusing anecdotes about this…his ceilings were low because HE didn’t need high ceilings. One of his top students and disciples at Taliesin West stood 6’4", and Wright was always yelling at him to sit down, as he was “ruining the scale!”
Then there’s the story about the householder who told the architect that he really, really, loved the house he’d designed for him, but because of the flat roof, uh, the living room ceiling leaked. What should he do? Wright told him to put a bucket under the drip.
Horse: I think your dates are a bit off. The Internationalist Movement in architecture, which gave us all those lovely sterile urban glass boxes, got going about forty years after Wright had defined his style. Wright was already an established master by the time the Bauhaus got started. The houses in Oak Park, which are easily identifiable as Wright designs, went up before World War I.
I think the Bauhaus movement got started before you think it did, Ike. Walter Gropius submitted a pretty Bauhaus-looking entry in the competition to design the Chicago Tribune Tower, which was in, IIRC, 1929. But the International Style didn’t really catch on until the Seagram Building in the late fifties. Incidentally, I do happen to like the Seagram, but the Chase Manhattan Building defines the ugliness wrought by imitators of it. Then Citicorp Center ushered in the end of the International Style in New York, and things started to look up.
The Bauhaus was founded in 1919, and existed until 1933, when the Nazis closed it down. Wright’s Prairie Style, in which the underlying concepts of the modern house were developed, falls roughly into 1895-1910.
What I meant to say in that last post was that Wright’s views were accepted LONG before Mies van der Rohe and the International Style became the norm in 20th century architecture, post-WWII, and that he had already made a name EVEN BEFORE the Bauhaus, which hit its stride decades earlier.
(The Seagram I can take or leave, but I DO like Lever House, just across the Avenue.)
Yeah, Lever House is cool, but a damn waste of space, and it looked like the second floor was abandoned. I believe that Wright called it a “house on sticks” or something. I have to agree with his assessment of Le Corbusier: “a painter, and not a good one.” Luckily New York was spared his influence, with only one building by him in the city.
Hey, let’s go over to IMHO and start an architecture thread.
People love to point this out as one of FLW’s flaws, but I’d like to point out that the house was not built as a tourist attraction. It was meant to be a weekend getaway “cottage” for a single family. It was not designed to handle groups of 20 or more people stomping through the house every 12 minutes. If the Guggenheim starts falling down, then you can complain about Wright’s engineering.
What I find most impressive about Wright is his treatment of light in the houses I’ve seen. Victorian houses tended to be rather dark and gloomy. Wright came along and filled his houses with glorious natural light, yet still managed to keep a feeling of privacy within the enclosed space. C’mon, mavpace, didn’t you notice how the upstairs morning room was bathed in glowing light? That wasn’t by accident.
His window and glass designs are brilliant. They treat the eye to stylized versions of natural forms - flowers, leaves - while blocking out any intrusion from the life on the other side of the glass. You can feel quite secluded in a Wright house even if it’s on a busy street.
His exteriors, especially in Oak Park, are exciting shapes, inviting you to look, yet they also convey a sense of something hidden away - a secret they’re not sharing with the casual passerby. They tempt you, well okay, me, to go inside to see what other wonders might be within. And there are wonders within! The light, the space, the furniture, the shapes of rooms - all combine to make the interior an escape, a personal sanctuary from the outside world.
Yes, he did have a problem with leaky roofs (rooves?). The story I heard was about the Johnson house in Wisconsin. While building the Johnson&Johnson headquarters, Wright also built a new home for the company president. After the house was completed, Johnson held a large dinner party and was greatly embarassed when rain started to come through the ceiling of his expensive new domain. He angrily phoned Wright and said, “It’s raining right where I’m sitting!”
“Then,” replied Wright, “I suggest you move your chair.”
Sorry, it was Johnson Wax, not Johnson&Johnson. That’s what I get for huffing baby oil.
I wrote my senior term paper on FLW and his impact on modern architecture, and I still remember quite a bit of it.
He hated the boxed in feelings of Victorian houses, he even said that they were “as pleasant as coffins.” What FLW did was open up houses, using instead changes in elevation or shelves in place of walls, and many more windows on his designs. Open floor plans have been used in nearly all of the houses that I have been in.
He was also revolutionary in his designs for safety. His Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was one of the only buildings to survive the earthquake of 1923.
Also, FLW did not want people to seem to be lost inside their homes.
On a side note, the above mentioned research paper is still the only paper that I look back on and am both proud of and enjoyed researching and writing.
GHreat thread. I am a great admirer of FL Wright. One thing really puzzles me-he drew up plans for a mile high skyscraper in 1952-is this feasible? I’d love to have an office on the top floor! Would it make sense to build such a structure? And-are our materials 9steel beams, concrete) strong enough for this?
I am far from being an expert on architecture (I know what I like ;)) and whilst I adore some FLW there is also some I am not so keen on. When I toured his home/studio in Oak Park what struck me most was his use of space. As you turned a corner a new and unexpected environment would appear and his sense of light and balance gave me a feeling of tranquillity which was almost overwhelming - even on a guided tour. As with so much good design the important qualities are those inexplicable ones which are missing from others which, superficially at least, seem similar.
Didn’t he also have a plan for a mile-high building? Not that it was ever actually seriously considered, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that he had at least drawn how he would like it to turn out.
I took a peek last night into one of those books I mentioned…Wright claimed to stand five-foot eight-and-a-half in his stocking feet.
But I’ll betcha the shrimp’s lying.
This is like saying BMW was responsible for the creation of the Yugo.
Wright created his Usonian homes to be well built, practical alternatives for families that didn’t have the means to build elaborate and expensive homes. The poor knockoff ranch houses may have been based partly on his design, but you can’t hold him responsible for the copies of his work. In fact, Wright said that we were “ruining the American landscape” with shoebox homes.
Where? He designed a building at Harvard and I’ve heard it was his only work in the U.S.
I believe he designed one of the UN buildings. Actually, I might be wrong. I’ll look into it, but I think one of the buildings is by him.
Le Corbusier helped to design the Secretariat Building at the UN I believe.
I looked into it, and he was apparently a member of the team of architects that designed it.