I NEED MY ACRE!

POLITECNICO DI MILANO Faculty of Architecture and Society Bachelor in Urban Planning

I NEED MY ACRE!

Frank Lloyd Wright and the American Utopic Dream

Bachelor thesis of:

February, the 24th 2014

Matteo CALATI 767627

Relator:

Prof. Barbara GALLI

A. Y. 2012-2013

INDEX Abstract

5

The role of Utopia

9

Wright and his role in the USA

21

Utopia and the origin of Broadacre

33

Broadacre City

47

Inside Broadacre

61

Other utopias “made in the USA”

91

EPCOT

95

Metropolis of Tomorrow

109

Cloud Nines

121

Conclusion

131

Source of images

135

Bibliography

139

5

ABSTRACT The concept of “utopia” has always been important for me, especially after the university lectures about Ledoux and Boullée; in my opinion, the process of thinking and idealizing more or less possible solutions for the current social problems (talking from a urban planner point of view) is essential not only as a way of stimulating further processes, but a practical way to “solve” the actual issues when any other answer seems possible to conceive at that time.

With the desire to focus on it, I chose the American dimension of this phenomenon during the last century, especially for the more extreme approach of the architects and planners toward this practice; I will

especially focus on the activity and the project realized by architect of the twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright and his Broadacre City, probably the most famous and articulated American utopic case.

From this subject, spreading between books of the architect himself and other authors, essays and web articles, I will complete the United States utopic experience with other smaller utopic cases, important to be mentioned - according to me - by their proposing a future American community.

THE ROLE OF UTOPIA

In the previous page: global view of the White City, 1893

9 In order to begin my analysis of the American utopias, I thought it was essential to of the concept of Utopia, in the far away XVI century.

The term itself of “utopia” is a neologism created by Thomas More in 1516 in his most important book, simply titled as Utopia. Assuming that the meaning of the word in Greek is “no place”, the topic of the novel of More was a critic to the current society, describing in his novel a different good one, without the existence of private property but a sense of community and family based, with a rigorous model of education and interpersonal relationships.

The fundamental step in the origin of the utopian culture was the passage from the “dream” to the project of a physical spatial model: people had no longer the perception

of a mere textbook with impossible visions but of a real (or at least possible) variation of the actual social situation.

The demand of new utopias (and utopians) increased in a brief time, following the model of More’s Utopia.

Reaching the twentieth century, with disagreements between utopianism and the new political ideals like Marxism1 and the projection toward artistic movements about alternative universe important utopic architects and planners were Ebenezer

1

Even if is common to consider

Marxism divergent from the utopic theories, it was not against the radical simplistic approach of utopian architects Cfr. T. Eagleton, “Utopia and Its Opposites,” Social Register 36 (2000): 31-40

10 Howard, Le Corbusier and, obviously, Frank Lloyd Wright, who realized projects that were distant from the current negative meaning of “Utopia” - like something unrealizable and impossible, - but as programs and actions that had the possibility to solve the breaks in the structure of the society.

Nevertheless, the increased desire and hope toward these utopic visions decreased soon, because of despotism and censorships implemented in the Soviet regime, together with new aspects of society like standardization, acculturation and collectivism, which leaded to the birth of a new architectural literature: the anti-utopia.2

Because of the changed perception of the utopic projects, the previously mentioned architects were highly criticized for their poetic and deceptive quality: once realized, their opera maxima missed all their values because based on idealistic situations that were impossible to achieve, implemented in the society and the realization of the designed buildings.

But criticisms went further, since utopian citizens lived in a strictly closed environment where external inputs or variations were not allowed, enclosing themselves in a time capsule and avoiding any kind

utopia. Cfr. “Dystopia,” Encyclopedia.

2

Anti-utupia (bka. Dystopia):

com, accessed January 7, 2014, http:// w w w. e n c y c l o p e d i a . c o m / t o p i c / Dystopia.aspx#1

11 of evolution according to time changes: lasting stable and resulted unsuccessful and authoritarian.

In this critical moment for visionary proposals, only few international groups of architects had the possibility to realized projects as a critic to utopia, like Archizoom,3Superstudio4 and

3

Archizoom: group of Italian

architects founded in Florence in 1966, famous for their “Superarchitecture” Cfr.

Archigram.5 Anyway, after the 1960s there were no more such important utopic proposals as in that decade.

*

Focusing now on the American case, it’s not so easy to determine a clear beginning of the urban and architectural utopic projects in the United States because, since its origin, America was already considered as a Utopia for European travelers: a new country, far away from the old continent and without any

R. Gargiani, (Milan: Electa, 1982) neutra (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2007)

4

5

Archigram:

group

of

Superstudio: another Italian

architects founded in London in 1960s

group founded in Florence in the same

with Futurist and anti-heroic principles

with them, known for their conceptual Cfr. P. Cook and Archigram (Group), Archigram (New research “Continuous Monument.” Cfr. G.

York: Princeton Architectural Press,

Pettena, Superstudio, 1966-1982: storie,

1999)

12 kind of rule, perfect place to build up your ideal city and society.

If then we move to the internal situation of the states in the the spark that leaded to the dream of the American citizen of living in a more adequate society.

The still existing ideological separation between the northern and the southern of the XX century seems to be one of the factors that determined the formation of utopic ideals in the USA: the debate between the Old South, with its secessionist project and the conservative northern Republicans, strictly linked to the program of the New Deal.6

The South was characterized by the presence of some leading white politicians which wished «to not only limit black civil rights, but also free private property from effective regulation, substitute market dynamics for democratic processes, and cut the ground from under challenges to this extreme make-over of the nation.»7 This was a leading decision for the consecration of the South as a utopia based on an agricultural-oriented

Cfr. “New Deal,” Encyclopedia.com, accessed January 13, 2014, http://www.encyclopedia. com/topic/New_Deal.aspx#1

7 Confederacy

N.

MacLean, against

the

“NeoNew

Deal: The Regional Utopia of the Modern American Right,”

6

New Deal: domestic reform

, ed. J. Crespino and M. Lassiter (New York: Oxford University

in 1932 with the purpose to raise again

Press, 2007)

13 society: a model of the actual conservatism approach joint with unconditioned property rights, public religion and a hierarchical social order.

Inside the idealistic southern cities, «classes never clashed, whites took care of blacks, planters shared the interests of city dwellers, men presided over orderly households, and liberalism and modernism were foreign imports that attracted no local buyers;»8 lands where the landowners were devoted to the protection of all their possessions. These elements were the base for a movement that led in the mid-1950s the transformation of the country, following the conservative utopic approach of the South.9

8 9

Considering instead the activity of American architects and planners, the great period of the utopic projects started in 1893 with the Chicago World Fair, mainly known as the World’s Columbian Exposition: a memorial of the 400 years from the discover of America.

The leading planner of the event was the architect Daniel Burnham10 who, together with

Cfr. “Utopian Communities,” America and the Utopian Dream, accessed January 13, 2014, http://brbl-archive. library.yale.edu/exhibitions/utopia/ utopcom.html

10

Daniel Hudson Burnham:

one of the most important American architects, he had a leading role in the reconstruction of Chicago after the

Ibid.

were founded during this period are/

plan in the United States, for the

were small groups of people or families

transformation of Chicago of 1909.

Cfr.

“Burnham,

Daniel

Hudson,”

Encyclopedia.com, accessed January

Portrait of Daniel Burnham

15 other American architects, displayed a model city of giant scale, known as the White City: in his proposal, «there were no beggars or garish signs, and the streets were immaculately clean. Picturesque walkways and waterways connected the

with the newest inventions of the age: among them, electric kitchens, calculating machines, and a gadget for viewing motion pictures, Thomas Edison s Kinetoscope.»11 It was the expression of how a city should look like, especially during a complex period like that for the United States, where «many 28, 2014, http://www.encyclopedia. com/topic/Daniel_Hudson_Burnham. aspx

11

“The White City,” Annenberg

Americans saw their country s future bound up with the future of its industrial cities, and these cities appeared to be feared that the unsettling changes urban growth had brought with it: socialism and labor unrest, spreading slums, waves of Catholic and Jewish immigrants, and a new and freer morality, were tearing apart the old Protestant republic.»12 Soon many people asked why other American cities couldn’t be made like White City; from that moment, numerous American architects tried to propose their own view of a living utopic city but one single man emerged for his surprisingly detailed and functional project: Frank Lloyd Wright.

Learner,accessed January 9,2014,http:// www.learner.org/biographyofamerica/ prog15/transcript/page05.html

12

Ibid.

Areal global view of the White City, 1893

WRIGHT AND HIS ROLE IN THE USA

In the previous page: F. L. Wright at his studio in Taliesin

21 «What is architecture anyway?

Is it the vast collection of the various buildings which have been built to please the varying tastes of the various lords of mankind? I think not. No, I know that architecture is life; or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived...So, architecture I know to be a Great Spirit.»1 Frank Lloyd Wright, having been born just after the American Civil War, had the lucky possibility to embrace all the new ideas and ideals the gained American freedom gave to the citizens of the twentieth-century.

Wright

1

“Frank

Lloyd

Wright

Foundation,” accessed November 6, 2013,

http://www.franklloydwright.

org/about/Overview.html

mainly distinguished himself from all his American colleagues - who refused the enormous changes brought with the new technologies - thanks to his incredible interest toward the products the new century proposed.

Distant from the imported, historic European classicism beloved by his contemporaries, Wright tested along his career the adoption of glass and wood with different manners and functions, espousing a high attention in the smallest details and in his “organic” style in architecture, a linkage the humankind should have with the surrounding nature.

This perception gave him the possibility to exploit technologies of the XX century without loosing the spiritual and romantic values of the just overcame period.

He materialized such

F. L. Wright at the age of twenty

23 behaviors into marvelous environments composed by elements based on a geometric and colors together with the integration of his product with the site through the main adoption of natural materials and adequate construction methods. He was also one of

precisely and integrated in each single part of his projects.

It is comprehensible now to state that “Nature” exists in all his works, being his focal point and his muse too, where humanity and environment could live in harmony: «Using this word Nature...I do not of course mean that outward aspect which strikes the eye as a visual image of a scene strikes the ground glass of a camera, but that inner harmony which penetrates the outward form... and is its determining character;

that quality in the thing that is us,–what Plato called (with reason, we see, psychological if not metaphysical) the eternal idea of the thing.»2 By 1901, after his entrance in the architectural world with the professional studio of Louis Sullivan3 (considered by Wright himself as a father),4

2 3

Ibid.

Louis Sullivan: American

architect at the Chicago School and . Cfr. M. Kaufman, (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1969)

4

and life in Chicago. Cfr. D. W. Hoppen,

24

his autonomous role in the American architecture was signed by what it become known as Prairie style5, a scholar movement that became widely diffused in the States in the following years, based on the realization of single story homes with low roofs, open interior spaces and whenever possible long windows, built only with local available materials and wood, for the realization of residences and public buildings in the land around Chicago between 1893 and “open plan� architecture, remembering his strong connection with Nature and

a New Appraisal (Santa Barbara, CA:

the Japanese architecture on Wright.

Few decades after, parallel with the idea and development of Broadacre, Wright moved to another perception of dwelling with the so called Usonian Houses6: always with mostly without basements, with walls made of layers of wood siding, plywood cores and building papers, features Wright adopted since the early twentieth century. These houses were conceived as a new style of residential for the suburban areas around the cities, and intended to be designated to middle-class customers, adapt for the usage without servants (differently

Capra Press, 1993), 13-15

5

C.

6

Lind, (Portland, OR:

Pomegranate, 1994)

Usonian

C. Lind, Houses

Pomegranate, 1994)

(Portland,

OR:

25 from most of American households) thanks to their reduced dimensions and smart disposition of rooms: a new model for independent living, allowing his client to live in well designed houses in a relatively low cost, together with the desire of Wright to create a common modern American house style.

Together with architecture and design, Wright had also – more than – an important role in site and community planning, involving himself in theories of urban planning from 1900 until his death. His further view, related to the concept of decentralization (now badly known as “sprawl”7)

7

and elaborated with his initial works, was completely theorized and explained with the project of the previously quoted Broadacre City.

The theory of Wright for a modern American planning was a decentralized community, away from the city and supplied with all the required services and facilities, reachable by the emerging automobile vehicles that were strongly promoted by the architect himself; that, in 1991, the American Institute of Architects named Wright the greatest American architect of all time, while Architectural Record published several of his masterpiece in

Urban sprawl:

housing development over a wide area, Cfr. “Urban Sprawl,” Encyclopedia.com, accessed January 28, 2014, http:// www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Urban_ sprawl.aspx#1

26 the list of the one hundred most important buildings of the previous century.

Interesting to mention is the “dislike” of Wright toward another – or “the other” great architect of his period, Le Corbusier.8 He was in contrast with the ideas and style of the Swiss planner, considering him as a rigid and intellectual designer without human feelings, with the only desire to propone his modernist solutions and theories, substituting the existing architectures and the human perception with new canons and rules.

Wright strongly criticized Le Corbusier’s proposal of City of the Future, as lines of identical high apartments with repetitive patterns,

8

Ref. “Utopia and the origin of

Broadacre,” 40

resembling «a computer circuit board.»9 Despite that concept was poor of attentions toward human needs, it was widely adopted by major cities for urban renewals, like London, Paris and New York.

*

The formation of Wright wasn’t only academic, but as many of the most important minds of the past, a strong role had the decisions and teachings gave by their parents. Anna Lloyd Jones, his mother, was fundamental in his formation, surrounding him during his childhood with architectural pictures, something it could his future occupation: «during the nine months she cut out

9

D. W. Hoppen,

(Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1993), 80

27 every picture of a house that she d and mounted them on the walls;»10 not only images, but also myths and legends were narrated by his mother, between stories like the Arabian Nights, the Bible, The Knights of the Round Table and Celtic folklores (Anna was from Wales), world beyond worlds and adventures of the human spirit, they increased the imagination of Wright, recreated than in his works and especially in the structure of Taliesin itself.11 When he moved with his family in to Weymouth, near Boston, in 1874, at the age of seven with the greed system, he further used to establish a

10

D. W. Hoppen,

(Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1993), 10

11

Ibid.

pattern in his architectures, and two years later the sense of modular-tridimensional forms thanks to the Froebel geometric blocks and its related philosophy of abstract and different shapes.

To be mentioned is also the fact that the family of Wright was a member of the Chicago’s Hull House, an opened-doors settlement house dedicated to house the new immigrants from Europe: it was a helpful orientation that formed Wright’s attitudes and the basis for the idealization of Broadacre City.

Richard Lloyd Jones’ house

UTOPIA AND THE ORIGIN OF BROADACRE

In the previous page: F. L. Wright with a model of Broadacre City

33 «The modern city is a product of man’s mind, a concrete example of greed, commerce and soulless c reduced to gridlock, its air polluted, its ghettos breed crime and the homeless. […] Perhaps because modern man in the city is isolated from nature […] his ancient sensitivities […] have atrophied. He has been alienated from the landscape and its gods».1 The Great Depression2, started in 1929 with the stock-market

1

D. W. Hoppen,

(Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1993), 81

2

Great Depression: the longest

worldwide economic crash that affected

. Cfr. “Great Depression,” Encyclopedia.com, accessed November 18, 2013, http://www.encyclopedia. com/topic/Great_Depression.aspx#1

crash that damaged all the American citizens, moved Wright to work with more emphasis on his utopic city project, thinking for a radical change in both physical and economical organization.

The complete project of his future American community, collected in his book The Disappearing City, took its title from his perception that once the great urban centers didn’t just “disappeared”, but they already stopped to exist: an inevitable doom, according to Wright. The great American cities, with the appearance of technologies such as the telephone and the automobile, stopped to be “modern” because of the mere reason of existence of the new technologies - link together what is distant – so that the condensed and chaotic metropolis had no longer meaning to exist.

34 Again, there were no further reasons to live in large cities with a centralized structure, described in the same book as «some tumor grown malignant […] a menace to the future of humanity,» referring than to the citizens who «has lost sight of the true aim of human existence and accepts substitute aims as his life.»3 The diffusion of cars would have allowed the comparison of independent farmers and proprietors, owners of lands and buildings spread over the countryside, promoting the exploitation of distant areas without any kind of displacement problem: the whole society

may be born to put his feet on his own acres, the democracy will have been realized.»4 He also predicted that people would choose to change their old city in any time, because they could “bring” their own city with them: «so the city is going where and as he goes, and he will be gone where he may enjoy all that the centralized city ever really gave him plus the security, freedom and beauty of the ground that will be his.»5 Wright was sure that the current perception (and shape) of the existing cities was going to disappear: «we are witnessing the acceleration that precedes dissolution.»6

transformations, socially and politically, such as «when every man, woman, and child

4

F. L. Wright,

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 119

5

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

Payson, 1932), 30

3

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

Payson, 1932), 21, 24

6

F.

L.

Wright,

Modern

Architecture, Being the Kahn Lectures for 1930 (Princeton: Princeton University

35 This “speed-up” process, as he thought, was the leadings transformation for a free future society: «for many years motoring, tele-transmission, steadily proceeding, have given back to man the sense of space, free space, in the sense that a great, free, new country ought to know it-given it back again to a free people.»7 The structure of the current cities suffers similarly because of a complex plan that is just a rigid the possibility to expand or change inside, while Wright known that: «in ancient cities, like Sienna, the city plan was as instinctive and organic as the arteries of a living organism.»8 Press, 1931), 69

7 8

Id., 63 D. W. Hoppen,

Wright thought that Broadacre City - and possibly many other “Broadacre City,” - would be realized over all these needless cities, since most of them were bigger ones badly overbuilt by the capitalistic centralizing market, which of the “indispensable” overcrowding of towns. These will disappear, substituted by Broadacres where and congestions would be nonexistent.9 Another fact he analyzed from the current urban society was the strict relation between the holding of a determined good and its related price – of the same to afford it, - a negative reality he simply

(Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1993),

9

81

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 151

F. L. Wright,

Ink drawing for the site plan of Broadacre City, ca. 1934

37 called “Rent:”10 it is one of contributor of the city, which mainly caused poverty and unhappiness of the people by the increasing value and cost of lands inside municipalities, higher and higher according to the dimensions and richness of the city itself. For these reasons, Wright thought it was essential simply not to apply the Rent method in Broadacre City.

*

Studying the structural plan of his city, Wright assumed that one acre was the democratic minimum dimension for a family land in order to acquire an adequate life style11 - that’s

10

where the name “Broadacre” comes from, - and with that intent, in April 1935, he detailed scale model of Broadacre City at the industrial art exposition of Rockefeller time his decentralization idea of future cities (far away from the gigantic scale of New York or any kind of agglomeration bigger than a rural county) with no need of any form of urban center, answering to one of his biggest question: «how can freedom and democracy be preserved in an industrial society?»12 Five years after, in 1940, when he presented the model at Pittsburgh, he stated to all the present citizens: «in all probability [their city

R. Fishman, (New York: Basic

Books, Inc., 1977), 124, 125

11

F.

L.

Wright,

Press, 1931), 74 Modern

Architecture, Being the Kahn Lectures for 1930 (Princeton: Princeton University

12

R. Fishman, (New York: Basic

Books, Inc., 1977), 159

Detailed site plan of Broadacre City

40 would] have to be abandoned, eventually to be rusty ruin and tumble into the river, staining the waters with oxide of iron for another half-century.»13 In Broadacre, the adoption of the current technologies - according to the theories depicted in the various manuscripts of Wright14 was essential also for the realization of houses and all the commodities surrounding them. He subdivided these technologies into three points: , thanks to the modern innovations, could reduce drastically the distances as far as human communication can go, together with the electric light that would allow continuously

13

F. L. Wright, ed.,

vol.

1 (Scottsdale, AZ: Taliesin Fellowship, 1940), 31

14

F. L. Wright,

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 64

illuminated rooms; mechanical mobilization, given by airplanes, steamships and automobiles; organic architecture, with natural buildings, determine the nobility of man toward the surrounding, being creative entities instead of mere consuming creatures.

The demand of organic architecture was always higher in the United States, and the competitive architects had to follow the requests of a more and more “organic society.”

*

Wright’s whole project could be considered as a reply to Le Corbusier’s plan, and even if it’s clear the relation with Howard’s Garden City, here the concept of decentralization is stringer than ever, even separate from his own expression «marriage of town

41 and country.Âť15 For an external observer, it is possible here to think that the presence of a

work of a common planner/ man in a natural environment.

That’s because the intent of Wright was exactly to erase the distinction between urban and rural in a planned setting, as it is common to perceive: this give the right to the settler to use as much land he can afford and to be effectively a part-time farmer.

Yes, as it resembles, Wright designed a city that was a return to a rural vision of the Machine Age, far from the collapsing society of metropolis and centralized institutions: he saw the big

15

R. Fishman, (New York: Basic

Books, Inc., 1977), 92

city as a constellation of built environments that demolish the human capability to produce and its virtues; the only way to cure the human being was a return to the Age, between natural homes and lands to grow. City and society evolve consequently, with low-scale schools, stores, factories and cultural centers spread all over the county and linked each other with an extended network of highways, countering any possible creation of a central point. This extreme decentralization proposed

by Wright was something inconceivable for someone like Howard at his time: while in a possible Garden City a man had to determine the right distance between parts of a town by his own foot, the presence of motor vehicles and speed highways

42 of Broadacre City allowed to connect between them pieces of a same community distant several kilometers in the same amount of time, with the result of the same perception of city like before but in a wider area: «travelling at 60 miles per hour [they] could reach any of his 30,000 neighbors in »16 the society instead, while for Howard it was based on cooperation, in the city of Wright had its belief in individualism, based on the Jeffersonian tradition of American self-reliant rural proprietors.17 critics - about the extension and future applications of Broadacre City arose but Wright smartly answered: «I do not wish to ‘disperse’ any city; decentralization is not

16 17

Id., 127 Id., 94

dispersal - that is wrong […] it is reintegration. […] You must not think the kind of building we have now are going to remain, or that community needs […] will remain as they are now.

They are all going to change as in a freer community […] [one] more of the country, is grouping up. The more of such buildings we have in the country the more beautiful community life will become and the less you will be aware of the fact that buildings are there at all as intrusion.»18

18

F. L. Wright, An Organic (London: Lund Humphries,

1939), 33-36

43

BROADACRE CITY

In the previous page: F. L. Wright’s pencil drawing of a Broadacre City, ca. 1950

47 «A good plan is the beginning and the end, because every good plan is organic. That means that its development in all directions is inherent and inevitable.»1 After Wright worked deeply in his project for the Usonian City2, in the late 1920s he become to think about a completely different society to study and develop, plan included. He started to study different texts about social theories and economics, focusing on government, education, religion, and houses

1

F. L. Wright, “In the Cause

as a fundamental element for the social organization to create, with the intent to turn element into an essential part of the environment, a natural feature of the landscape. prototype

of

Broadacre

support of Edgar J. Kaufmann,3 allowing Wright - between 1934 and 1935 - and his student apprentices at the Taliesin Fellowship to produce such detailed model. It was composed by four sections

3

Edgar J. Kaufmann: Jewish

of Architecture-The Logic of Plan,”

and

Architectural Records 43 (January 1928):

philanthropist who spent a span of 25

49

2

Usoninan City:

planning for the future landscape of

of Fallingwater too. Cfr. L. R. Cleary, F. L. Wright and Heinz Architectural

.

Center, Merchant prince and master

Cfr. A. Rosenbaum, (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1993)

(Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Museum of Art, 1999)

Detail of the plastic of Broadacre City presented at Taliesin in 1934

49 that represent four square miles (10,4 km2) of the idealized city, «built to a scale of and in actual sixe it measured somewhat more than twelve feet square»4 on a conceptual sketch by Wright, meant with the scope to exemplify the kind of development required within a similar countryside. except for a hill section on the corner, with a wide range of public and private buildings were spread all over the plan and ordered by a simple orthogonal grid of roads. The main arterial was designated for the high-speed monorail trains to the center, while to the lower lanes to permit a comfortable vehicular

4

D. G. De Long, , (Milan: Skira

editore, 1998), 28

Aerotors helicopters to substitute the airplanes) were expected shipments in the air, used by the common citizens. He explained that his provided example of Broadacre City mustn’t be considered as think that it was something had been «built carefully not an interpretation of the changes inevitable to our growth as a people and a nation.»5 The complete model was further exhibited (together with a rendered site plan) at New York, Madison, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C. and later in Wisconsin and

5

F. L. Wright, “Broadacre City:

A New Community Plan,” Architectural Records 77 (April 1935): 254

50 Michigan.6 Over his lifetime, Wright produced more than 1300 designs of single elements fundamental for Broadacre, from a gas station to a mile high tower.7

*

The Usonian house8 become in the proposed vision of Broadacre City the main residential unit (tilted at 30 degrees to admit the sunlight to come inside to more rooms),9 and because

6

A. Alofsin, “Broadacre City:

The Reception of a Modernist Vision, 1932-1988,” Center: A Journal for Architecture in America 5 (1989): 8-43

7

D. W. Hoppen,

(Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1993), 82

8

Ref. “Wright and his role in

the USA,” 24 note 6

9

D. W. Hoppen,

of his strong hopefulness over the role of the own home, Wright decided that factories and other economic institutions were simply designed as “support units” for the family. These houses would be realized distant one from the other (avoiding neighbors and inconvenient proximity)10 and surrounded by spacious outdoor gardens.

Factories could be private or cooperatives, but in any case they were small and located along the main streets and at an adequate driving distance from the residential blocks - Wright always preferred the private enterprises because of his individualistic idea but he was against to the centralization of them, harmful for the availability of householders. Houses

(Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1993),

10

82

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 133

F. L. Wright,

51 were obviously meant to be car-friendly, spreading from houses” but weren’t allowed in his city families too poor for the lower category or richer than the highest, resulting that «there is nothing poor or mean anywhere in Broadacres.»11 The abolition of the “Rent” over the land ownership mentioned in the previous chapter12 was regulated in order that everyone had the right to use and improve his own area, but with a «legislation that would expropriate all landholdings larger than any one family would need. Neither banks nor the government could challenge the individual’s

11

F. L. Wright, ed.,

vol.

claim to his homestead.»13 There must be no longer any distinction between urban and rural life, and Broadacre City was planned because every house, factory, store, center were both inside forests and farmlands. To for a society without working specialization, subdividing the citizens in workers, factory workers and bankers, with the value added possibility to share mental and physical labor in everyone’s quotidian occupation. The incomes from the part-time farming and work would than be used to afford or to self-made enlarge their house, following the personal aspirations, family needs and the available piece

1 (Scottsdale, AZ: Taliesin Fellowship,

13

1940), 5

12

Ref. “Utopia and the origin of

Broadacre,” 37

R. Fishman, (New York: Basic

Books, Inc., 1977), 127

Example of a Usonian house in concrete

54 of land.

The meaning of all his decisions was the challenge to eliminate the shattering of the modern life: «Eternally fettered only to a single little fragment of the whole, man fashions himself as a fragment; ever hearing only the monstrous whirl of the wheel he turns, he never displays the full harmony of his being.»14

this process introducing a particular monetary system already proposed by the Swiss economist Silvio Gesell in 1930s, based on the decreasing value of notinvested money that spurs the businessman in spending his capital and reduce interests to a minimum;15 Wright was so sure of his generated socioeconomic society that, once

As I mentioned before with the available occupations, there were no need of a government regulation in Broadacre to be managed, but

implemented, he stated that «Broadacre City could replace all existing cities in three or four generations.»16 What about market system?

Again, not a department store or condensed blocks of shops, but a permanent “County Fair” at the junction of two

to administer the economy of the city. Everyone could view himself as an independent land-worker or free-employer and Wright encouraged

15

S.

Gesell,

Economic Order (Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owen Publishers, Inc., 1958)

14

F. Schiller, Sixth Letter on

16

R. Fishman, (New York: Basic

(Munich: Hanser Publisher, 1966)

Books, Inc., 1977), 133

55 main streets, where each producer has its own stand selling the products of his lands or crafts: a place where buying and selling become not only a functional activity but an entertainment in a place where there’s no sense of poverty, discrimination, or solidarity and a strong sense of community. This wasn’t the only meeting place Wright designed for Broadacre: it was the “Community Center,”17 an automobile-friendly zone composed by a golf course, a racetrack, a zoo, an aquarium, a planetarium, an art gallery, theatres and restaurants.18 The real matter was, at this point, the authoritative

17 18

Ref. “Inside Broadacre,” 78 F. L. Wright,

Builds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945), 97

organization of the city, a role that Wright always felt himself a good democrat), but that he always criticized because the modern institutions always tent to and symbol of mediocrity.

Afraid for the administration, in Broadacre City the county a high building along a lake, and the County Government is the only government in the city, specialized in the direction of basic services. there isn’t the comprehension of people and their participation. Wright highly worked on this subject, making the whole existence of Broadacre City depending on education and the study of appropriate economic principles necessary for the citizens’ everyday life;

56 schools, anyway, weren’t the solution for this problem because mere “knowledge factories”, with a standardized teaching method that creates «perfectly good plums into perfectly good prunes,»19 focusing only in creating specialized independent experts that contaminate the city. The education in on decentralization; the elementary schools - each one with a limited number of students – would focus on individual activity and the alternation of handworks and brainworks - something Wright saw disappear inside the industrial society. Another form of education was the Design Center, a place where every artist could experiment

19

F. L. Wright, (New York: Duell, Sloan &

Pearce, 1949), 31

the usage of advanced industrial techniques for local factories, in order to preserve the artist’s capability over the machine.

After this overall overview of the plan of Broadacre City, I’ll focus on the next chapter what kind of buildings actually Wright planned to realize inside his utopic city.

57

INSIDE BROADACRE

In the previous page: grid pattern of the center of Broadacre City

61 «Imagine now, freeways broadened, spacious, welllandscaped highways, grade crossing eliminated by a kind of integrated bypassing, over – or cultivated or living areas made gracious by landscaping […].

Imagine these great highways of generous, safe width and always easy grade-roadbeds concave instead of convexcool with shade trees, joined at intervals with modern aircontained mechanical unitssafe, noiseless transport planes, radio-controlled, carrying neither engines nor fuel.»1 This is how Wright envisioned Broadacre City when he was talking about his Usonian

vision.2 He imagined the public service stations as good architectures, including all kind of merchandise, along the roads for the travelers.

Along these streets, different kinds of units would be visible, from small farms to markets, from garden, schools to spacious dwelling places with their own cultivated ground.

He also imagined any kind of service and entertainment in the radius of ten to forty minutes from any house,3 reachable by the private car, plane, helicopter or other fast public vehicle. The architects, in this new city, will develop creative buildings not only in coherence with the surrounding, but mainly according to the personal

2 1

F. L. Wright,

Ref. “Broadacre City,” 47 note

2

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 126-

3

27

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 127

F. L. Wright,

Projects and model of high-traf c roads

63 needs of the nearest owners, all different one to the other and realized only with local materials, taking full advantage from Nature.

Transportation, obviously, would be a focal element in all Broadacre Cities, being itself the fundamental reason for a so spatially widespread community: «There may be many minor transient stations instead of a few major ones because ‘the great stations,’ owing to lack of the great concentration, is no longer air-rotor or helicopter depots will be connected with the crosscountry rights-of-way on which once were laid the hard rails, trucks now running each side these rails. Railway cars would not run by noisy ‘trucks’ but slide down shallow skids, the cars mounted upon them being light cylindrical tubes-perhaps jet-powered. […] The major

either gathering or distribution of freight, [are] now free to go from rails to house or hand to hand.»4

*

BUILDINGS FOR COMMUNAL WORK Frank Lloyd Wright cultivated in his life a religious conception of work, of something to perform deeply and open-hearted, thanks as itinerant preacher and musician, together with the farm activity operated by his mother’s family. This is appreciable from many of his earliest architectural projects, with the environments for work, worship and other communal activities interlaced in the same place

4

Id., 148

64 (as what he did at Sullivan’s studio), forming Wright to the realization of spaces for families with work, community and spirituality as essential components; elements that he manifested in the design of communal works through his whole life.

Always looking for airy locations, Wright designed communal buildings in order to have as much as natural light coming inside the working spaces, together with wide windows for views of the surrounding environment; when more conventional constantly tried in each proposal to give a sense of especially in tall buildings.

In any case, they were always realized adjacent to their related productive space, thus in Broadacre City they were built inside the houses, such

as families with their own farm or small factory had a home-ground shop together with dwellings on top of it: distributive,

administrative:

they belong to function as units of whatever industry they represent and be found there where actual production is taking place.Âť5 Even though in XIX century the realization of tall buildings was at his climax, Wright was repulsive to this new application because he related it to a mere graphical representation of human characteristics as greed, vanity and competitiveness, forgetting the human scale and the balance between built

5

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

Payson, 1932), 67

65 and natural environment6.

The only project he proposed of tall building was at a press conference in 1956 explaining: «this is the future of the tall building in the American large green, like Central Park, and erect a few of these well spaced apart and you have the congestion desired by city work and city life, but surrounded streams.»7 And what about bank system? As soon as part of the population - according to Wright - should be bankers,8 the related buildings

6

J. Quinan, “I: Buildings for

Communal Works,” in , ed. D. G. De Long (Milan: Skira editore, 1998), 76

7

should be located along the main road junctions and assimilated in a strong social credit system. In this way, bank would no more be seen as a “place for divinity,” but as something integrated inside the community; something without the negative effects of exploitations by brokers because, having no money except for currency (no would have their credits just inside their own hands: a bank for people, not individuals.9

*

BUILDINGS FOR COMMERCE The American dilemma – shared with the same Wright, - was the lodging of motorized vehicles in commercial

B. B. Pfeiffer, (Tokyo:

9

F. L. Wright,

A.D.A. EDITA, 1988), 268-269

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 183-

8

84

Ref. “Broadacre City,” 51

Model of a market and prospective drawing

67

of these buildings for Wright comes from the towns he visited in his youth, typically made of a line surrounded by a variety of commercial blocks with any kind of products and services necessary for the citizens.

Been built in the nineteenth century for horse-drawn

by his great collection of expensive vehicles, used to cross the States in all his working and pleasure travels. About these lasts, he had also the opportunity to practice numerous treks, helpful for his formulation of «a critique [about] the automobile and its relationship to American architecture.»10

now they were dotted by the the World War I, constrained to drive in cities not adapt for vehicles with that power, size commercial malls of 1940s helped to clean up the small other related problems.

Even if he always worked for pedestrian-based environments, the shifting to motor vehicle ones wasn’t casual in his case: his love for cars and modern

future motorized cities was in his Princeton lectures of 1930 and 1932, saying: «In the gasoline service station may be seen the beginning of an important advance agent of decentralization by way of distribution and also the beginning of the establishment

10

J. Quinan, “II: Buildings for

Commerce,” in , ed. D. G. De Long (Milan: Skira editore, 1998), 91

68 of the Broadacre City.»11 The Broadacre City of Wright, made of small settlements linked each other by superhighways, was the best solution for the incapability of the American cities to expand and manage cars: each commercial building was designed to be vehicularfriendly. As I explained in the previous lines, Wright had the capability to foresee the importance of cars in the American culture and to implement it in his utopic project, combining the love for vehicles with the deep regard for nature.

An example of how would be a commercial building in Broadacre City come from a project (never realized) commissioned by one of

his dearest clients, Walter V. Davidson, for which he realized one of the celeb Prairie Houses12 in 1908.

The requested work was an organizer of warehouse goods, imagined as a farm market system: «both Davidson’s and Broadacre City were dependent upon the production, marketing, and movement of goods at a local level, and upon highway systems, but they eliminated brokers, supermarkets, and other costly intermediaries.»13 This was an important step for Wright toward the designing of low-cost housing and retailing.

* 12

Ref. “Wright and his role in

the USA,” 24 note 5

13

J. Quinan, “II: Buildings for

Commerce,” in

11

F. L. Wright,

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 168

, ed. D. G. De Long (Milan: Skira editore, 1998), 92

69 BUILDINGS FOR WORSHIP Even if a religious man, for Wright the “religion” matter was a complex argument to include inside his utopic project for the same reasons explained in the previous between individualism and institution but in a stronger way; all the existing churches propose a different religious comprehension related to their own dogma and felt faith.

Anyway, the buildings for worship had on Wright a

career wonderful buildings with radical and visionary designs, formal, symbolic and often technologically innovative, based on a long and rich history of religious architecture. The structures he preferred were based on simple shapes and geometries, like squares and circles, together with the insistent use of reinforced concrete on economic grounds; organic buildings were more suitable for modern feelings.15 Whatever was the design of the building, church, synagogue, chapel or memorial, Wright always applied a perception

passion of his mother for prints of medieval cathedrals.14 The strong faith he obtained from his family together with the belief in unity and solidarity allowed him to produce in his

feelings because they were realized for the joyousness of humanity and their spiritual desires – so, not just buildings

14

15

Ref. “Wright and his role in

the USA,” 26

F. L. Wright,

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 201

70 but places for the spirit.16 Looking to the future cities he was planning, the concept of “religion” came out a bit dubious, because the faith of the new generations of American people was less steady as then and before – especially because of the - and «the surviving church[es] would be likely to take on some non-sectarian devotional form.»17 Despite this, he envisioned for Brodacre City a central-cathedral, recalling the design of the never built Steel Cathedral:18 «it consisted in the tabernacles of the major

16

F. L. Wright, “Is it Good-By to

Gothic?,”

17

(May 1958): 229

faiths grouped around a central courtyard. […] There the universal religion of Broadacre City would be celebrated with from the four elements;»19 «the Broadacre City Cathedral, this unhistorical plastic cathedral for the fusion of all that is best in historical religions, would be the greatest single modern feature of Broadacre City.

Worship would again become more nearly universal because erected once more in modern times by and for Free spirit of

in the nobility and beauty of which human nature is divinely capable when once men are truly Free.»20

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

19

R. Fishman,

Payson, 1932), 76

18

J. A. Ramírez,

(New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1977), 141

20

F. L. Wright,

(London: Reaktion Books, 2000), 112-

Builds (Chicago: University of Chicago

114

Press, 1945), 27

71 Like all the other main buildings of the city, the cathedral will be not in a central position but placed in Center, like he showed in the tridimensional model.

*

BUILDINGS FOR LEARNING Wright was always clear about this topic: he disliked the academic instruction and it ways of teaching, preferring autodidact to it.

His intellectual curiosity, selfdiscovery and self-expression were results of his belief in a different learning technique, method that he completely applied in 1932 when he founded (and designed) his school of architecture, the Taliesin Fellowship.21

21

Universities had a special setting, adequate for the unique environment of Broadacre City: «here in quiet retreats made beautiful and concentration there should be rendezvous for groups of developed individuals in noble storehouses where all that mankind has produced in science, art and philosophy would be a matter of record, or model available for free study.»22 Students are no longer required to accomplice their role to become mere “specialists,” but to extend their interests to many other Architecture, Philosophy and Science; not intensive

(Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 1999)

22 M. A. Marty and S. L. Marty,

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

Payson, 1932), 73-74

Drawings of a little school

73 studiers, but people excelling in the qualities of leadership.23 The attention to this scope was not only oriented toward the higher levels of education, but his interest started from the bottom, with the children schooling and kindergartens imagined as microcosms of a perfect community, sharing the same purposes and aims. He thought that a person couldn’t be considered “educated” if he doesn’t know the properties of line and color, the good design, what constitutes a good building, the origin of the food he eats, the nature of his body functions.24 Wright’s educational dogmas into the design of buildings and schoolhouses and

23

F. L. Wright,

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 206

24

Id., 204

his pedagogic interest in education - together with the necessity of an integrated attitude to study and work - resulted in the realization of large areas for physical activities, stages and theaters rather than anonymous spaces, together with the weight of healthcare and feeling of community. All these schools in Broadacre had been planned to be settled as a “Taliesin Equivalent”: «any school in the Broadacre in the choicest part of the countryside […] never more than one story high, fashioned of metals and glass for young life in sunlight. Divided into smaller buildings, each unit might contain not more than ten children. Say, forty children would be a large school. A gymnasium and common hall, a modeling and drawing room, a kitchen and a dining room. The

74 group in composition materials and glass, or perhaps metal arranged about interior and exterior courts.»25 The nature of self-expression and self-discovery in his works within the structured environment were the manifestation of his desire in a democratic freedom in American culture, enforcing the ideals of fellowship, work and self-creativity in every American citizen.

*

ones with the most common characteristics and shapes, often sharing the same spaces as in Broadacre City.

Wright expressed the passion for the arts in all the designed spaces and buildings in his life: theater, music, dance, plastic and graphic arts, with the exclusion of the opera.26 His real problem rushed in the interaction with the clients, because less

Between the architectures realized in his life, the buildings for Arts, Recreation and Community were the

and “futuristic” designs; he needed to wait the evolution of the perception of people in arts before he could properly express his architectural solutions and the increasingly exploration of “community” in architectural design. In order to avoid it, Wright always

25

26

BUILDINGS FOR ARTS, RECREATION COMMUNITY

THE AND

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

Payson, 1932), 79

F. L. Wright, (New York: Horizon Press,

1971), 64

75 tried to integrate art in his architecture, in a progressive process to let it view of organic architecture easier to be understood. The new theatre, for example, would be shaped differently from the ordinary: inside, various mechanical elements characterize not only the aspect but also its possible functions, something that already happened in cinemas; the architecture of this civic building would be probably settled underground, where residents could become themselves performers instead of hiring new ones.

The scope of recreation for Wright was always based, the use and exploitation of the modern motorized vehicles, real revolution of the century and focal element in the progression of the American society;

it’s redundant to say that the role of automobiles was fundamental inside Broadacre City, with the realization of an adequate settlement and a new conception of cultural life. As I explained before, in Broadacre cultural and social activities coexist in the same environment, and for this reason they have to share the same architectures focused on designed features. Wright’s early works in this case appears as “sub-urban” realms, located along the boundaries of the traditional cities, physically and experientially dependent upon it.

The buildings he realized for recreation were studied as a tentative to increase the interchanging relationship between nature and architecture, leader to the process of decentralization, but not just a reconceptualization

The new theatre

77 of the connection between human culture and nature; «[they] will be developed as automobile objectives, and at such recreation grounds would center the planetarium, the racetrack, the great concert hall, the various units of the national theater, museums, and art galleries.»27 In this way, they are units for different leisure that come together as a general type, something like it happens for the buildings for the arts, structures designed for short visits rather than lengthy stays.

Talking about the buildings for community, even if Wright was used to build single-houses for residential purposes, for his utopic city

27

F.

L.

Wright,

Modern

Architecture, Being the Kahn Lectures for 1930 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1931), 76

he planned the realization of large-scale structures for a communal utilization, civic functions or community activities and with the same complexities of the buildings for arts and for recreation, responding to the impact of cars in the American culture of 1930s. Nevertheless, most of his community works are postdated the idealization of a more mature social vision.

All Wright’s community buildings in Broadacre explicit his always-stronger fascination for circles, spirals and hexagonal forms, from 1925 on. The characteristic curves of some of these buildings are determined by the presence of internal ramps necessary for the entrance of cars, or, more interesting, to guarantee an always-thesame vision of the façades of the building, to be easily

78 recognizable from a moving motor vehicle. Moreover, the adoption of particular colors and decorations allowed a more and more “readability” of the building at any position ad distance from it.

When he came to describe the Community Center in 1932, Wright wrote: «Each would be an automobileobjective situated near some major highways or in some nook of the countryside where are inspiring and nature loveable. […] Golf courses, racetrack, zoo, aquarium, and planetarium will naturally be found at these places grouped in architectural ensemble with a botanical garden. […] The art gallery, the museum would be there. […] There would be no commercial or humdrum. […] All common excitement could be reached, further on, at the service station. But the various community centers

should be quiet places for study, comradeship.»28 Similar inventive programs were for the hospital: «Broadacre hospitals would be sanatoriums of many types. Sunlit clinics connected together in natural ways or by artfully made parklike fountain-gardens, each building especially planned for individual privacy instead of the much too much generality and promiscuity of the usual hospital. Homelike residence would be so arranged in them (and for them) that no disabled or sick person need see another disabled or sick person (patient) unless either so willed.»29

28

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

Payson, 1932), 74-75

29

F. L. Wright,

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 203

79

*

BUILDING FOR INDIVIDUAL DWELLING When Wright become to practice his activity independently in 1893, he started to design his building as a sort of opposite to the skyscrapers realized by his mentor Sullivan in Chicago, contrasting them with the horizontality of the singlefamily houses he started to produce, with the William H. Winslow’s house in Chicago suburbs before and with the sequence of Prairie Houses after, built on suburban sites and surrounded by nature. before the conception of Broadacre City, Fallingwater,30

the house realized for Edgar J. Kaufmann in 1935-37,31 with it’s vertical stone face behind a natural waterfall and immersed in a wild vegetation, represents Wright’s entry in the formal world of the future American city he will further plan.

In 1930s his housing development come to the series of Usonian Houses32 that the conception of Broadacre, with «the dynamic and moving sense of an architectural composition set free of the city and tied in its natural site.»33 In the same decade, he realized his own graphical language

31

Ref. “Broadacre City,” 47 note

3

32

Ref. “Wright and his role in

the USA,” 24 note 6

30

D. Hoffmann,

33

J. M. Desmond, “VIII: Buildings

for Individual Dwelling,” in (Mineola, NY: Courier Dover Publications, 1993)

, ed. D. G. De Long (Milan: Skira editore, 1998), 204

80 for plan drawings.

one-car house, a two-car house,

Now his architectural idea for dwelling was a place

car house.»36 In any case, the “farm unit” was the base for each house: «this composite little-farms building would be a group building not of one type only as here shown but of as many types in various materials as there are bound to be endless

well incorporated within the working space and built next to a small-scale farm, considering the home in Broadacre City as the only and the real center in the city.34 Being a city with a precisely designed democracy and social classes determined by aptitude and 35 Wright subdivided the dwellings in: «the professional’s house with its laboratory, the minimum house with its workshop, the medium house ditto, the larger house, and the house of machine-age luxury. We speak of them as a

purposes and his ground.»37 Wright designed different types of dwellings, diversifying them by their purposes and place for the individual development, where

he

considered

the

“different individuals who require different buildings.”38

36

F. L. Wright, (Scottsdale, AZ: Taliesin

34

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

Fellowship, 1940): 49

37

F. L. Wright,

Payson, 1932), 80

(New York: Horizon Press, 1958), 162

35

38

Ref. “Broadacre City,” 51

F. L. Wright, “In the Cause of

81

*

BUILDINGS FOR COMMUNAL DWELLING

development of communal dwellings came at the beginning of his career in 1900, when working in his studio in Chicago he considered numerous versions of a “Quadruple block” plan for a suburban residential development: «a static view of the relationship of the individual to nature determined by adherence to the grid and the assumption of civic priority that comes with it.»39 Years after, the plan for Broadacre City of 1934 was based on a similar Architecture,” Architectural Records 23 (March 1908): 221

39

J. M. Desmond, “IX: Buildings

for Communal Dwelling,” in , ed. D. G. De Long (Milan: Skira editore, 1998), 245

concept of multiple squares at different scales. In this new map however, the squares are replaced with a network of roads over an inner square, one quarter the dimensions of the overall project; inside it, there are most of the individual houses with its own acre of land.

The use of concentric and repeating squares in the structure of a plan was an historical method in the planning of American towns.

Even if these schemes were adopted by Wright in many stand-alone projects he was commissioned for cities and countryside, he had been requested also to realize plans for communal-scale towns with as base the already well readable idea of Broadacre City: the disposition of buildings is related to the entire group, and a twodimensional geometric

“Quadruple block” projects

Model of a high-rise apartment

85 pattern plan is adopted to give the required isolation and autonomy to each building.

It’s important to consider that Wright never asked for the development of individual dwellings: he always preferred the conception and realization of grouped houses, attached houses and apartment buildings of different dimensions because more functional and suitable.

The presence of a sense of private space was in any case needful, with the disposition of walled gardens or just private accesses. Despite his indifference in tall buildings, for these purposes it was necessary the realization of multi-stories houses, in particular apartment towers: «tall buildings are not barred, but having no interior courts, they must stand free in natural

parks,»40 while «the tall apartment buildings will go to the country […].»41 After all, he still hesitated to consider such dwellings as permanent arrangements: «this now distributing tall building step toward urban rescue […] becoming a greatly improved ary for the »42 even if he slightly changed his mind toward the end of his career.

Following the concept of common dwelling, he considered suitable for this role also buildings like resorts and hotels, emphasizing on private space as architectural setting that could become

40

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

Payson, 1932), 45

41 42

Id., 70 F. L. Wright,

Builds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945), 95

86 regenerative for the nature.

He described these buildings like: «each [hotel] would probably be a group of small cottages related to a general unit comprising the rooms […].

These would be found where Nature had ‘staged a show’ with which they might harmonize and which they could well employ for recreation and recuperation by wise building.»43 The previous quotations suggest that Wright, year after year, had a continuously evolving perception of the role of buildings, while his observations on architecture became more and more poetics, nearing the end of his life: «you will wish to become aware of what might well be better tomorrow than today; and what it is that will keep

you continually alive, alert, and conscious; let’s say creative.»44

44

F. L. Wright, “The Eternal

Law,”

43

F. L. Wright, (New York: William Farquhar

Payson, 1932), 71

(Fresno, California 1989): 130

State

University

CA: Press,

87

OTHER UTOPIAS “MADE IN THE USA”

In the previous page: artwork of the international shopping center inside EPCOT, 1966

91 Wright and his Broadacre City was absolutely the most important and functional American utopic project proposed in the last century - as I widely explained in the previous chapters – but obviously he wasn’t the only architect who tried to make real (or at least to show) his own view of a future alternative America. The following pages will depict other three utopic city proposed by different American architects and designers.

What differ in these cases with the one proposed by Wright is not related to the importance of the same architect or not but on functional, structural and contextual matters: while Broadacre City was based on an agricultural-oriented lifestyle for the current society tired of the actual situation and generated over existing abandoned

cities or open spaces, the following examples consist on more common urban metropolis for the future of the American people, with structures, shapes, functions and dimensions impossible to be realized in that period implemented nowadays, too.

From a different point of view, they actually appear as dreams of the same designers, full of hopes and ideals for the America of the XXI century.

That probably won’t be.

EPCOT

In the previous page: night time in EPCOT

95 Walt Disney,1 the great American dreamer who created Mickey Mouse and its fantastic world, was not only a simple cartoon drawer but also someone really interested in the pleasure of people. He realized with his homonymous company a gigantic and marvelous theme park, but his “thirst” of creating something good for people and the community lead his mind to the conception of one of his not often mentioned projects, something he named Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.

EPCOT (this is its brief and most known name) was planned in early 1960s, together with the airport and the transportation system

1

Cfr.

“Walt

of Disney World in Florida and over a land owned by the Disney Company; it had the ambition to be the culminating work for his future community project.

In the company-owned land in Osceola County, Florida, Disney envisioned not only to develop a theme park and the already mentioned airport and infrastructural system, but also a convention center, an hotel, an industrial and a commercial area and a community of 20.000 people.2 of EPCOT happened on 27th October 1966 as the central element of Disney’s project for the State of Florida: «EPCOT will be an experimental prototype community of tomorrow that

Disney,”

Encyclopedia.com, accessed January

2

S. Mannheim,

15, 2014, http://www.encyclopedia. com/topic/Walt_Disney.aspx#2

(Adlershort, GB: Ashgate, 2002), 14

W. Disney during the presentation of the project for EPCOT, 1966

97 will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise. I don›t believe there›s a challenge anywhere in the world that›s more important to solutions to the problems of our cities. […] I twill never cease to be a living blueprint of the future, where people actually live a life in the world.»3 Disney wanted

3

“Walt

Disney

but persisted in a state of continuous development.4 EPCOT would have been the central attraction for the Disney World theme park: tourists arriving at the Disney World airport, after every aspect of their stay had been planned, they would had been boarded again into the monorail to EPCOT, visiting before its would have been occupied

by American corporation

Quotes,”

JustDisney.com, accessed January 15, 2014,

urban problems of nowadays employing the recent technologies and aiming at the pleasure of residents… but like all the experimental approaches in urban planning,

4

S. Mannheim,

http://www.justdisney.com/

walt_disney/quotes/quotes02.html

(Adlershort, GB: Ashgate, 2002), 3

Center of EPCOT with the Cosmopolitan Hotel

99 producing facilities for the same EPCOT city. The transportation system here was very important, leaded by the monorail that, already present in Disneyland since 1959, it would have crossed through the center of EPCOT, connecting the northern and southern extreme point of the Disney World property.

For internal transports, instead, a totally different technological concept was adopted: the .

It was a transportation system always moving, with motors in the tracks instead of being inside the vehicles, transporting people from the center the proper residential zone. In this way, residents didn’t need their own car and in any case streets for cars were placed underground the city, separate from the main pedestrian ones in order to avoid the risk of accidents.

Exploiting a simple but functional radial shape, Disney designed to place the downtown and the commercial areas of EPCOT in the core of it, while the residential areas would have been located away from it, surrounding and enclosing the city center. Just around the 30-storey-tall Cosmopolitan Hotel in the center of the city, there would have been shops and restaurants, designed each one according to the style and theme of a different country, looking like exotic locales. To separate the highdensity area with the lowdensity one, it was designed a wide “green belt”, used for the city services, churches and playgrounds.

The external single-family house neighborhood was displaced like “petals” around the city, with houses disposed along

Plan of EPCOT, showing its radial shape and the surrounding residential areas

102 the rims of each and supplied with the PeopleMover to reach easily the city without cars.

Differently from the Broadacre City project of Wright, in EPCOT no one would own his own house or land, and neither voting rights or possibility to propose your own ideas: this was because Disney absolutely wanted to realize a successful project, and to afford it he decided to control the community and creating special laws for inhabitants and tourists. People living in these neighborhoods were selected by the Disney Company in order to create the best community possible for the prototype town, with some further requirements: «It will be a planned, controlled community, a showcase for American industry and research, schools, cultural and educational opportunities. In

EPCOT there will be no slum areas because we will not let them develop. There will be no landowners and therefore no voting control. [...] There will be no retirees; everyone must be employed. One of the requirements is that people who live in EPCOT must help keep it alive.»5 Unfortunately Disney died in the same year of the public presentation of the project, when studies were still at a preliminary phase.

The architectural elements but according to the existing drawings, while the central buildings had a more futuristic look, the neighborhood-

5

K.

Wonderful

World

Shortsleeve, of

“The

Depression:

Disney, Despotism, and the 1930’s. Or, Why Disney Scares Us,” the Unicorn 28.1 (2004): 16-17

103 areas around it were more traditional, even romantic and 30’s style for someone, like peaceful sensations of the environments proposed in Disney’s movies and theme parks.6

projects: EPCOT-Center, part of the theme park and deformed into a showcase for modern technology, and the town of Celebration, near the park itself (whose houses started to be sold in 1995 by high demand).

stage of the “Florida Project” opened with the name of Walt Disney World theme park. This was because before Disney’s death the planning team of EPCOT was coordinated by the only Walt Disney and the new managing team was as result unfamiliar with plans and previous required control skills.7 Consequently, the plan was divided into two separate

6 7

The company-owned town of Celebration can be considered as a condensed version of Disney’s dream, smaller and with fewer of the designed buildings but containing Disney’s main ideas: «Celebration is the culmination of a dream Disney had decades ago: to build a town, where people would live, work and play in an environment that embraced new technology.»8 Lots of people wanted to

Id., 10 S. Mannheim,

8

C. Wilson, “Mickey Builds

a Town: Celebration Puts Disney in (Adlershort, GB: Ashgate, 2002), 127-

Reality’s Realm,”

128

1995): 01A

18 (October

Aeral view over the city of Celebration, Florida

105 move there, mainly because attracted by the Disneyimage of the surroundings in the town: «Dissatisfaction with traditional cities and suburbs led residents to move to Celebration, Florida. [...]

Perhaps most important, Celebration was designed for pedestrians rather than automobiles with the hope that through increased face to face contact a stronger community would develop.»9 The main similarity between the two parts of the original project is the number of inhabitants: the 20.000 people imagined for EPCOT were targeted in Celebration but the

in the formed community.

Celebration, after all, was a success, basically for the effective presence of traditional housing with the commodities of modern technologies, with access limited by the price of the real estates, 35% more than the average.10

for residential, including the previously described airport and industrial areas, missing

9

10

A. Ross,

P. M. Fotsch, “The Politics of

Neighbours,” (2000): 783

52.4 (New York: Ballantine, 1999), 35

METROPOLIS OF TOMORROW

In the previous page: the business center

109 Another important American architect of the beginning of the XX century was Hugh Ferriss.1 After his degree at Washington University in 1911 and one year of apprenticeship, he moved to New York with a draftsman position at the Gilbert; just few years after, in 1915, he decided to establish a career as independent architectural delineator. This in the world of American architecture, producing paper-and-charcoal drawings of existing or to be realized buildings required by different clients or architects, most of them published in magazines and newspapers. It is in 1921 that Ferriss become quite well

known in America, thanks to his characteristic black and white illustrations of tall structures, shaded like they were in-between the fog of metropolis like New York… and it’s right this city the “muse” for all his projects and analysis, thanks to the enormous dimensions of its skyscrapers and the zoning laws2 applied to them. It is from the “Big Apple” experience that Ferriss spread

2

Zoning:

ordinance of 1916 over an extended area

to the other according to the use the area is allocated for. Furthermore, this

so on again depending on the destination

1

Ferriss,”

of the selected area. Cfr. “Zoning,”

Encyclopedia.com, accessed January

Cfr.

“Hugh

Encyclopedia.com, accessed January

16, 2014, http://www.encyclopedia.

20, 2014, http://www.encyclopedia.

com/topic/Hugh_Ferriss.aspx#1

com/topic/zoning.aspx#1

Bird’s eye vision of the Metropoly of Tomorrow

111 his interest in the evolution of structures, beginning to realize drawings of future cities with megastructure buildings and their functions, in a utopic metropolis collected in the book The .

In his manuscript, he look at a futuristic unknown city from the sky, a bird’s-eye view, and he can only recognize the top of the giant buildings between the fog of that morning. The disposition of these towers is different respect to a common metropolis: even if numerous, they are widely distant one to another - almost a kilometer, - but still placed according to the probable citywide plan.

The skyscrapers, if further more checked, rise «thousand feet from the ground» and other still more while, looking at the bases, the differences with the common buildings are visible:

«their foundations cover three or four city blocks,» while the tallest «must cover six or eight blocks.»3 Between these buildings, a wide area covered by smaller constructions, of about six stories, are not taller than the width of the street in front of them (a basic role of the zoning technique recently applied), allowing also to see from their roofs an uncommon vegetation covering the streets.

This spotting of giant structures in a wide and different form what appears in a common zoned city, but the fact of the wide distance between the skyscrapers means an enormous surface

3

H. Ferriss, (Mineola, NY: Dover

Publications, Inc., 2005), 109

112 covered by the city, promoting functional and aesthetical solutions that differ from the existing American cities.4 Streets are wide sixty meters and placed about a kilometer apart; their intersections are the points where the high buildings rise. We can say that this is a superhighways system across the city and that the tower buildings are rapid

element in a unit can no more be related to a simple construction, when it assume the function of the whole municipal body. That is why it is better to consider them as “centers.”5

*

these districts, smaller street are articulated (twenty meters width), just for local usages.

The “mountains” that grow in the middle of the “plain” are the center with the fundamental functions for the directly surrounding elements, again following a still common zoning function but this time the concept of ”building” is not enough, because such important

is a structure – or complex of – in which the business activities of the city are taken, together with the political legislative function, judiciary and executive. The structure, composed by a central tower, is enclosed by smaller vertical elements that cover altogether a surface of over eight blocks, with related supplementary twelve-stories buildings.

Energy is produced here, in a concrete structure that still use coal as combustible.

About a mile from the

4

5

Id., 109-10

Id., 111

113 Business center there is the Art center. The area here is completely different from before, because of the free access to light and air from each building, indifferently they are high or low; similar are results for the smoke prevention, thanks to green roofs for all the buildings of the area, cultivated and with trees on it.

Not so far there is the Science center, similar at the previous for the high central element supported by lateral structures, made to contain

In Business zone the naturally larger buildings are predominant over the area; in Art zone more open and green spaces are allowed; in Science zone the charm of modern materials prevails: ÂŤBuildings like crystals.

Walls of translucent glass.

Sheer glass blocks sheathing a steel grill.

No Gothic branch: no Acanthus leaf: no recollection of the plant world.

A mineral kingdom.

Gleaming stalagmites.

Forms as cold as ice.

6

structure is wider to allow the passage of more vehicles under it.

These three are the main districts of the city; actually we can say that the city is subdivided into Business, Art and Science district.

The secondary towers attached to the center are allocated for the secondary functions of the same district.

For example, in the Business zone there is a connected

6

Id., 124

On the left: looking west from the business center; on the right: building for religion

Detailed map of the Metropolis of Tomorrow

117 zone with the structures of the Financial center. In each of these buildings there are a set of facilities necessary for an all-day long stay: «post gymnasiums and so on. Each is, so to speak, a city itself.»7 Religion in of Tomorrow is still present and it’s strictly similar to the “buildings for worship” of Broadacre City,8 achieving a status of harmony and recognizing churches only as the place where their activities are accomplished.

The structure resembles a medieval castle with a great altitude; three towers are visible around this buildings, and symbolically represents the virtues of the Christian religion: Faith, Hope and

7 8

Id., 128 Ref. “Inside Broadacre,” 70

Charity.

Once we consider the general map of the metropolis, we can appreciate that, between the three districts, there is a enormous circular space, where all the main roads converge creating parks, playgrounds and the openair space of the city: the Civic Circle, opposite to many other utopic projects where the green open space is place all around.

CLOUD NINES

In the previous page: B. Fuller with a model of one of his light-weight structures

121 Buckminster Fuller1 was a visionary American architect and engineer active in the XX century. After a particular academic period (expelled twice from Harvard University for “lack of interest”2) and a more complex situation between a lost job, the death of his daughter and a tempted suicide in 1927, in the same year he decided to completely change his life. After few years spent with modest works and humanitarian intents to show his capability in designing futuristic architectures and structures, from buildings to vehicles.

What is important to say about Fuller is not only his

1 Fuller

extraordinary approach to architecture but the strong upcoming generations of architects at the end of the century, more than other illustrious colleagues: the the light-weight structures he adopted in his projects were the philosophical bases for all the ideas in the computerage of the conceptual Great estimator of the products of Fuller was the previously quoted English group 3 Archigram, whose “Walking City” was completely based on the post-apocalyptic idea of a whole city realized inside a giant moving structure,4 as

3 Cfr.

A.

Explanation

Edmondson, (Pueblo,

A

5

CO:

4

EmergentWorld LLC, 2007)

2

M. Pawley, Buckminster Fuller

(New York: Taplinger, 1991), 13

Ref. “Role of Utopia,” 11 note K. Frampton, Modern (London:

Thames & Hudson Limited, 2007), 281-82

Top: B. Fuller with a Geodesic Dome and other models; bottom: people working on a Geodesic Dome

123

Fuller I will further explain, he simply called Cloud Nines.

The basic idea of his project that fascinated Fuller himself, fundamentally related to the fact that an enough large spherical structure, with the adequate temperature the sky, allowing buildings to be realized inside and people to live inside too.

His envisioned structures, designed between 1930s and 1050s, are characterized by some peculiar elements and functions such as today we would call them as “green”

resembling a half-cut sphere composed by triangular elements made of economical and common materials.

The potentiality of this construction was related to a structural principle the same Fuller called “tensegrity”: formed by the words tension fact that the structure, made of tight and light materials, could support elevated weights compared to the little mass of the construction itself, thanks also to the geometrical disposition of the structural elements that give rigidity to

and its diffusion in the following

example between these was the Geodesic Dome,5 a structure dome in 1954. Cfr. “Geodesic Dome,”

5

Geodesic Dome:

Encyclopedia.com, accessed January 20, 2014, http://www.encyclopedia. com/topic/geodesic_dome.aspx

Photo-montage showing a possible aspect of a Cloud Nines

126 the same structure.

The passage from the futuristic structure to the idealization of a utopic city came after a challenge with the patron Matsutaro Shoriki, which asked Fuller to design a community that could solution for the overcrowded Japanese city. Fuller thought to use his futuristic structures in the Spherical Atmospheric Research Station (STAR), better known as the previous named Cloud Nines: geodesic spheres with half-mile (0.8 km) diameter will be made of light materials and covered in polyethylene, resulting a weight that is one-thousandth of the air inside; in this way, the trapped solar energy and the human activity heated the internal air of just one degree more than the outside temperature such that the sphere would levitate in the

sky as a big balloon. Because the construction increases in strength as it gets bigger, one-mile (1.6 km) diameter geodesic structures could easily carry several thousands of people and their goods, while the Cloud Nines could be anchored to the ground and mountaintops, levitating at the desired altitude allowing people to see the world from the sky or even migrate, like birds;6 it would have been a practical solution if adopted as emergency structure in sites affected by earthquakes,

After all, Fuller’s Cloud Nines was considered by himself not as a “possible utopia� but more like an exercise to stimulate

6

J.

Baldwin,

(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1997), 190

127 the imagination of thinkers, hoping the realization of his idea in a really far future… especially if we consider some criticism about the dubious possibility to have urban fabric inside these balloons and the traumatic social experience of living trapped 7

7

“Floating Cloud Structures,

Or We All Live In A Fuller Satelloon,” greg.org: the making of, accessed January 20, 2014, http://greg.org/ archive/2009/09/13/floating_cloud_ structures_or_we_all_live_in_a_fuller_ satelloon.html

CONCLUSION

In the previous page: F. L. Wright’s pencil drawing of a Broadacre City landscape, ca. 1950

131 After this collection of information from different books and articles, what I noticed is that we mainly think at “utopias” as particular architectural and urban alternatives showing the capability of the architect or designer to imagine a different future for his society. This is partially correct if we think at the European dimension of this practice, where the utopic proposals of Howard and Le Corbusier- among the others - represented a local solution for the ancient and over-urbanized metropolises and cities, suggesting wider spaces surrounded by green or giant vertical cities where all the services and spaces are well disposed in order to be easily accessible. What we had in the American context, however, was a situation where open spaces and recent“well-planned” cities and

metropolises already existed, thanks also to the knowledge the European immigrants brought with them.

The real difference, at this point, mustn’t be searched in the physical structure of utopic cities, but in their interest toward the social dimension: the USA at the beginning of the XX century were a country with a society that suffered for the changes of a place that was looking for its role in the world, spreading between the Civil War, the rights of black people, the Great Depression, a diffused poverty and later the World War II. What the American people wanted during last century wasn’t a city with futuristic shapes, functions or green belts, but a place where they could Dream,” the complete property of a house and of the fertile space around it. The

132 one who really understood the American problem was Wright himself, thanks to a childhood that allowed him to learn the principles of a good family.

Broadacre City was, as I said, the Wright’s tentative to give to the American community the desired freedom and independence from the chaos of the city, with the famous acre per family and the possibility to plunge their hands in the land they own, differently from the desire of “happiness� of Disney and the mere demonstration of in Cloud Nines.

The extension of Broadacre and its separation from the ordinary cities was also a result of the believes in the new technologies Wright always had, especially in the role of motorized vehicles, which allowed to cover in few time long distance that

otherwise would be too much for a one acre-oriented society. As we know, this abuse of vehicles was highly criticized later for the too optimistic ideal of Wright, for the generation of sprawl and, decades later, for the effects of pollution; situation completely opposed to the EPCOT of Disney, where all the movements of people across the city and the residential areas where instead leaded by the only PeopleMover system, declaring that the owning or use of cars were completely useless or designated to people without the sense of community.

Coming back to the project of Wright, it is comprehensible at this point why Broadacre City was the only Utopia that had a positive impact on the American society, compared to the other I depicted in the previous chapters: Wright had

133 the capability to understand what kind of technologies were fundamental in order to design a possible Utopia, focusing his work only on the adoption of buildings and houses in his already tested style, preferring lowraised single homes in empty spaces instead of the abuse of technologies Disney combined inside a single city, Ferriss in the idealization of enormous vertical multi-functional buildings and Fuller in giant

Utopia in America is not Utopia in Europe, and while the old continent is continuingly looking for alternatives, the people in the USA are mainly immigrants escaping from its previous society with the hope of something different.

For this reason, the original principle of Wright prevailed over the other utopias: people

need Nature.

135

SOURCE OF IMAGES BOOKS , 1958

48, 52, 62, 66, 72, 76, 82

Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century, 1977

44, 58, 84, 128

18, 22, 28

Wright, 1993

36, 38

City, 1998 2005

106, 110, 114, 115, 116

WEBSITES www.blog.dwtickets.com

104

www.blooloop.com

16

www.chicagocarto.com

14

136 www.designmuseum.org

122

www.disneyandmore.blogspot.it

96

www.greg.org

124

www.irenebrination.typepad.com

122

www.nateberkopec.me

118

www.studyblue.com

6

www.oobject.com

30

www.pjmedia.com

92

www.sites.google.com/site/ theoriginalepcot

88, 98, 100

137

139

BIBLIOGRAPHY BOOKS Wright, Frank L. for 1930. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1931.

Wright, Frank L. The Disappearing City. New York: William Farquhar Payson, 1932.

Wright, Frank L. An Organic Architecture: The Architecture of Democracy. London: Lund Humphries, 1939.

Wright, Frank L. ed. Taliesin 1 vol. 1. Scottsdale, AZ: Taliesin Fellowship, 1940.

Wright, Frank L. The new frontier: Broadacre City. Scottsdale, AZ: Taliesin Fellowship, 1940.

Wright, Frank L. When Democracy Builds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945.

Wright, Frank L. Sloan & Pearce, 1949.

New York: Duell,

140 Gesell, Silvio. The Natural Economic Order. Katonah, NY: Richard C. Owen Publishers, Inc., 1958.

Wright, Frank L. 1958.

New York: Horizon Press,

Schiller, Friedrich.

Werke. Munich: Hanser Publisher, 1966.

Kaufman, Mervyn D. Sullivan. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1969.

Fishman, Robert. Urban Utopias in the Twentieth Century. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1977.

Pettena, Gianni. architettura. Milan: Electa, 1982.

Pfeiffer, Bruce B. Tokyo: A.D.A. EDITA, 1988.

Pawley, Martin. Buckminster Fuller. New York: Taplinger, 1991.

Hoffmann, Donald.

The House and Its History. Mineola, NY: Courier Dover Publications, 1993.

141 Hoppen, Donald W. New Appraisal. Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1993.

Rosenbaum, Alvin.

America. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1993.

Lind, Carla.

Pomegranate, 1994.

Lind, Carla.

OR: Pomegranate, 1994.

Portland, OR:

(Portland,

Baldwin, James. BuckyWorks: Buckminster Fuller’s Ideas of Today. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1997.

De Long, David G. Milan:Skira editore, 1998.

.

Cleary, Richard L., Frank L. Wright and Heinz Architectural Center.

Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Museum of Art, 1999.

Cook, Peter and Archigram (Group). Archigram. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.

142 Marty, Myron A. and Shirley L. Marty.

Taliesin Fellowship. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 1999.

Ross, Andrew. the Pursuit of Property Value in Disney’s New Town. New York: Ballantine, 1999.

Ramírez, Juan A. Corbusier. London: Reaktion Books, 2000.

Mannheim, Steve. Walt Disney and the Quest for the Community. Adlershort, GB: Ashgate, 2002.

Ferriss, Hugh.

Publications, Inc., 2005.

Mineola, NY: Dover

Edmondson, Amy. A Fuller Explanation. Pueblo, CO: EmergentWorld LLC, 2007.

Frampton, Kenneth.

London: Thames & Hudson Limited, 2007.

Gargiani, Roberto. Archizoom Associati 1966 – 1974: dall’onda Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2007.

143 ARTICLES Wright, Frank L. “In the Cause of Architecture.” Architectural Records 23 (March 1908): 221.

Wright, Frank L.“In the Cause of Architecture-The Logic of Plan.” Architectural Records 43 (January 1928): 49.

Wright, Frank L. “Broadacre City: A New Community Plan.”

Architectural Records 77 (April 1935): 254.

Wright, Frank L. “Is it Good- By to Gothic?.” Together (May 1958): 229.

Alofsin, Anthony. “Broadacre City: The Reception of a Modernist Vision, 1932-1988.” Center: A Journal for Architecture in America 5 (1989): 8-43.

Wright, Frank L. “The Eternal Law.” Crowning Decade, 1949-1959 (1989): 130.

Wilson, Craig. “Mickey Builds a Town: Celebration Puts Disney in Reality’s Realm.” USA Today 18 (October 1995): 01A. Eagleton, Terry. “Utopia and Its Opposites.” Social Register 36 (2000): 31-40.

144 Fotsch, Paul M. “The Politics of Neighbours.” American Quarterly 52.4 (2000): 783.

Shortsleeve, Kevin. “The Wonderful World of Depression: Disney, Despotism, and the 1930’s. Or, Why Disney Scares Us.” 28.1 (2004): 16-17.

MacLean, Nancy. “Neo-Confederacy against the New Deal: The Regional Utopia of the Modern American Right.” The End of Southern History? (2007): 3-4.

145