FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
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CON TEN T 0/1 THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE
0/2 PROJECTS
0/3 DRAWINGS
THE GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM INTERIOR, 1959
WRIGHT
THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE 0/1
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT 1867-1959 No other modern architect had such a diversified building career— from skyscrapers to gas stations, factories to flower stalls—Wright wanted to reinvent all aspects of life. Nevertheless, no other architect returned so persistently to what Wright considered the true building block of social transformation—the family home.
Wright came onto the scene at a time when the United States was struggling to define its architectural identity. Most fashionable Americans still wanted their buildings—like themselves—dressed in European styles. To Wright, who believed that architecture was “the mother of all the arts,” this was unacceptable. Wright loved his country—its landscape, its people, its democratic ideals—and felt that the country desperately needed an architecture to reflect and celebrate its unique character: a truly American architecture. Wright would remain passionately devoted to this cause throughout his life. Long before our modern emphasis on constant communication, Wright recognized that structure and space could themselves be powerful tools with which to create and convey cultural values. As such, he created dramatic new forms to promote his vision of America; a country of citizens harmoniously connected, both to one another and to the land. The primacy that his residential architecture gave to the hearth, the dining table, the music rooms, and the terrace, underscores this. His celebration of the human scale, his emphasis on creating a total environment, and the warmth that pervades all of Wright’s spaces.
FALLINGWATER EXTERIOR, 2003
PROJECTS 0/2
ROBIE HOUSE, ILLINOIS FALLINGWATER, PENNSYLVANIA ENNIS HOUSE, CALIFORNIA GUGGENHEIM, NEW YORK CITY TALIESIN WEST, ARIZONA
ROBIE HOUSE CHICAGO, ILLINOIS Designed and built between 1908-1910, the Robie House for client Frederick C. Robie and his family was one of Wright’s earlier projects. Influenced by the flat, expanisve prairie landscape of the American Midwest where he grew up, Wright’s work redefined American housing with the Prairie style home.
The Robie House creates a clever arrangement of public and private spaces, slowly distancing itself from the street in a series of horizontal planes. By creating overlaps of the planes with this gesture, it allowed for interior space expanded towards the outdoors while still giving the space a level of enclosure. This play on private spaces was requested by the client, where he insisted on the idea of “seeing his neighbors without being seen.” Wright specifically approached this request with an enormous cantilever over the porch facing west that stretched outwards 10 feet from its nearest structural member and 21 from the closest masonry pier. As is seen in many of Wright’s project, the entrance of the house is not clearly distinguishable at first glance due to the fact that Wright believed the procession towards the house should involve a journey. Wright also expressed the importance of the hearth in a home with a fireplace that separated the living and dining room that is open to the ceiling above the mantelpiece for the billiard room and playroom. The program of the house includes a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, a billiards room, four bedrooms, and a servant’s wing which are defined while still flowing.
“The prairie has a beauty of its own and we should recognize and accentuate this natural beauty, its quiet level. Hence, gently sloping roofs, low proportions, quiet sky lines, supressed heavy-set chimneys and sheltering overhangs, low terraces and out-reaching walls sequestering private gardens.�
THE PURPOSE FOR THESE WINDOWS WAS TO ALLOW LIGHT INTO THE HOUSE WHILE STILL GIVING A SENSE OF PRIVACY.
The rooms were determined through a modular grid system which was given order with the 4 window mullions. Wright, however, did not use the standard window in his design, but instead used “light screens” which were composed of pieces of clear and colored glass, usually with representations of nature. The purpose for these windows was to allow light into the house while still giving a sense of privacy. Wright also stated about the light screens, “Now the outside may come inside, and the inside may, and does, go outside.” There are 174 art glass windows in the Robie House made of polished plate glass, cathedral glass, and copper-plated zinc cames, which are metal joints that hold the glass in place. The protrusions of these windows on the East and West facade, along with low ceilings, emphasized the long axis of the house and directed views towards the outside. These windows were also stretched on French doors along the entire south wall on the main level, opening up to a balcony. The sun angles were calculated so perfectly with this cantilever that a midsummer noon’s sun hits just the bottom of the entire facade while still allowing light to flood in to warm the house during the spring and autumn months
FALLINGWATER MILL RUN, PENNSYLVANIA In Mill Run, Pennsylvania in the Bear Run Nature Reserve where a stream flows at 1298 feet above sea level and suddenly breaks to fall at 30 feet, Frank Lloyd Wright designed an extraordinary house known as Fallingwater that redefined the relationship between man, architecture, and nature.
The house was built as a weekend home for owners Mr. Edgar Kaufmann, his wife, and their son, whom he developed a friendship with through their son who was studying at Wright’s school, the Taliesin Fellowship.
The waterfall had been the family’s retreat for fifteen years and when they commissioned Wright to design the house they envisioned one across from the waterfall, so that they could have it in their view. Instead, Wright integrated the design of the house with the waterfall itself, placing it right on top of it to make it a part of the Kaufmanns’ lives. Wright’s admiration for Japanese architecture was important in his inspiration for this house, along with most of his work. Just like in Japanese architecture, Wright wanted to create harmony between man and nature, and his integration of the house with the waterfall was successful in doing so. The house was meant to compliment its site while still competing with the drama of the falls and their endless sounds of crashing water. The power of the falls is always felt, not visually but through sound, as the breaking water could constantly be heard throughout the entire house. Wright revolved the design of the house around the fireplace, the hearth of the home which he considered to be the gathering place for the family. Here a rock cuts into the fireplace, physically bringing in the waterfall into the house. He also brings notice to this concept by dramatically extending the chimney upwards to make it the highest point on the exterior of the house.
Just like in Japanese architecture, Wright wanted to create harmony between man and nature, and his integration of the house with the waterfall was successful in doing so.
ENNIS HOUSE HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA While driving through the Los Angeles area, a look up into the hillside above Griffith Park and you’ll be feasting your eyes with beauty and intrigue of monumental proportion.
Near the top of Vermont Avenue sits the Ennis House done in 1924, which dominates its surroundings as a modular masonry structure composed of square concrete bricks. Its inspiration is rather obvious, as Wright’s love for Mayan art and architecture connects this residence to the culture’s highly ornamented, symmetric and organized structures.
Why concrete blocks? “It was the cheapest (and ugliest) thing in the building world,” says Wright. “It lived mostly in the architectural gutter as an imitation of rock-faced stone. Why not see what could be done with that gutter rat?”
The Ennis House was built fourth in a series of concrete block houses designed and completed by Frank Lloyd Wright for a client who shared his passion for the ancient Mayan culture. He fused successful methods of previous dwellings with an understanding of the necessity of considering the dwelling within its sunny Southern California environment. It was originally built for Mabel and Charles Ennis in 1924, but changed ownership multiple times until it was purchased by Augustus O. Brown in 1968. The Ennis House is sometimes referred to as the Ennis-Brown House, as it was renamed after the house was donated to the Trust for Preservation of Cultural Heritage by Brown. Wright takes on the challenge of creating a warm and decorative material out of the standard cold industrial concrete, and achieves this through the carvings of a repeated geometric design. As solid concrete walls, one would assume that the penetration of light inside is minimal. But upon closer investigation it becomes apparent that many of the pieces of textile blocks are punctured to create spaces through which light is revealed.
The house consists of two buildings, the main house and a smaller detached apartment/garage, which are separated by a vast paved courtyard that overlooks the greater Los Angeles area. Together, the two separate pieces work to conquer the landscape and houses built around the streets, as the whopping 10,000 square foot dwelling expands horizontally
across
the
hilltop.
The
spine-like loggia runs along the northern side of the house to connect the public and private spaces to the south. Many recognize the buildings unique design and massive quality from movies like “The Day of the Locust” of 1975 or probably more likely from “Blade Runner” of 1982. The list goes on, and also goes to show how beautiful and significant this structure really is. Like some other architectural landmarks that explore above and beyond typical construction methods, it was marked structurally instable even before it was completed. Many of the concrete blocks in lower sections of the walls began to crack and buckle under tension.
THE PURPOSE FOR THESE WINDOWS WAS TO ALLOW LIGHT INTO THE HOUSE WHILE STILL GIVING A SENSE OF PRIVACY.
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK Swelling out towards the city of Manhattan, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was the last major project designed and built by Frank Lloyd Wright between 1943 until it opened to the public in 1959, six months after his death, making it one of his longest works in creation along with one of his most popular projects. Completely contrasting the strict Manhattan city grid, the organic curves of the museum are a familiar landmark for both art lovers, visitors, and pedestrians alike.
The design of the museum as one continuous floor with the levels of ramps overlooking the open atrium also allowed for the interaction of people on different levels, enhancing the design in section.
The exterior of the Guggenheim Museum is a stacked white cylinder of reinfored concrete
swirling
towards
the
sky.
The museum’s dramatic curves of the exterior, however, had an even more stunning effect on the interior. Inside Wright proposed “one great space on a continuous floor,” and his concept was a success. Walking inside, a visitor’s first intake is a huge atrium, rising 92 in height to an expansive glass dome. Along the sides of this atrium is a continuous
ramp
uncoiling
upwards
six stories for more than one-quarter of a mile, allowing for one floor to flow into another. The ramp also creates a procession in which a visitor experiences the art displayed along the walls as they climb upwards towards the sky. Although the space within the building is undeniably majestic and the building itself monumental, it was not perfectly successful in terms of function. The curved walls of the interior were intended so that paintings had to be tilted backward, “as on the artist’s easel.”
TALIESIN WEST SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA Situated in the Sonoran desert outside of Scottsdale, Arizona stands a living memorial and testament to the life and work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Completed between 1937 – 1959, Taliesin West was the winter home to Wright and his wife’s summer home.
First conceptualized in 1927 to escape the harsh winters of the Midwest, Arizona’s arid desert climate proved to a place that could inspire Wright and his apprentices.
Wright found that the atmosphere of Scottsdale’s Sonoran desert was a perfect place for a residence, a place of business, and most importantly a place to learn stating: “Arizona needs its own architecture… Arizona’s long, low, sweeping lines, uptilting planes. Surface patterned after such abstraction in line and color as find “realism” in the patterns of the rattlesnake, the Gila monster, the chameleon, and the saguaro, cholla or staghorn – or is it the other way around—are inspiration enough.” After four years of bringing his apprentices to Arizona during the harsh Wisconsin winters, Wright and his wife finally made the trek to Arizona to take up residence in the expansive landscape on the southern end of McDowell Range that overlooked Scottsdale’s Paradise Valley in 1937. At the time, Wright paid $3.50 an acre for what would become the Taliesin Fellowship and the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture main campus. Taliesin West is not only a symbol of Wright’s versatility and influential expansion throughout the United States, but it marks a moment in his career where context and [southwestern] vernacular begin to integrate into Wright’s formulated Prairie Style.
“The prairie has a beauty of its own and we should recognize and accentuate this natural beauty, its quiet level. Hence, gently sloping roofs, low proportions, quiet sky lines, supressed heavy-set chimneys and sheltering overhangs, low terraces and out-reaching walls sequestering private gardens.�
TALIESIN WEST IS LESS OF A SINGULAR BUILDING AS IT IS A SERIES OF SPACES THAT ARE CONNECTED THROUGH TERRACES, GARDENS, AND POOLS.
Similar to his other projects, Wright takes special interest in locally available materials and applies them in similar fashion to his other Prairie Style projects, employing low level, horizontal planes that keep the house and studio low to the ground to insure effective natural ventilation and protection and shade from the intense desert sun. During the construction of Taliesin West, the house and studio were merely a series of “sleeping boxes� that were clustered around a central terrace for Wright and his apprentices.
FALLINGWATER INTERIOR, 1963
DRAWINGS 0/3
TECHNOLOGY COULD AND SHOULD BE EMBRACED AS A POWERFUL TOOL FOR A WIDE VARIETY OF CREATIVE AND STYLISTIC EXPRESSION.
Fallingwater, Pennsylvania
Wright embraced change, forever pushing the conceptual and technological frontiers of his field. Though he went to great lengths to make his buildings conform to his vision, he was not afraid to test his materials to the brink of failure. His continual over-reaching—with its sporadic structural shortcomings—reveals that, for Wright, the perfection of his buildings was secondary to their communication of an idea that would persist in “the mind’s eye of all the world.”
Fallingwater, 2nd Floor