Summary: William J. R. Curtis Modern Architecture since 1900 - Chapter 7. The architectural system of Frank Lloyd Wright
In Curtis’s seventh chapter in the book Modern Architecture Since 1900, Wright’s early architectural career is outlined that led him to become a master architect. Frank Lloyd Wright, according to Curtis, embodies a traditional yet individualistic and uniquely democratic American ideal in architecture. But, a contrasting view of Wright's’ vision is iconoclastic. Both views make sense, and it is possible to see an artist as both polarities "in a single outlook.” Born in 1867, his father was a preacher, and his mother believed in his architectural aspirations.
Wright wanted to harmonize modern spaces with nature. His work focused on homes, especially in Chicago suburbs. Even his house, which he designed in 1922, would infuse his innovative ideas into the modern American home.
The project that firstly gave him the claim was Winslow house 1893. The front façade is symmetrical around the front door set into a stone panel brought a bit outward from the main wall plane. Wright, influenced by the ideas in the book House Beautiful saw the house as a sacred institution, and viewed the dwelling concept in moral as well as religious terms, which has led some commentators to conclude that Wright read the institution of home both in terms of freedom and its dependence on family life.
Wright was a popular architect during his active years, and he was able to give his clients value for their money, while still maintaining natural forms and giving function to the rise of the automobile by making addition of the garage to his typical carriage house design.
Wright’s houses conformed to the desires of his clients, giving them expansive living rooms and making the design fit into the landscape. Wright paid painstaking attention to detail, not only designing the building, but also the furniture and the incidentals that make a house a home. His innovative introduction of the pergola to his house design, gives his prairie houses a nice formal blend with the nature around it as well as function in that it gives both shade and a sense of intimacy to the structure.
Wright built on his designs through the years, and since he was an artist who could innovate through a central design was able to explore his “ideal type” by also discovering new meaning in each commission. For example, the Robie house is a great example of Wright’s houses by giving his client the ability to be seen and not seen by designing the spaces to attenuate both private and public space.
Wright understood that the building is an “architectural system” and its use of main forms, must conform to the overall formula to be successful but with each new unit a new unity could be found. For example, in Robie house there is a modern sense of space married to the Japanese garden style, and Wright’s work after his focus on houses also led innovation to how he infused “functional and expressive” touches in his larger buildings.
Wright was able to extend his career beyond domestic projects and began working on bigger building for commercial contracts. His work for the Larkin mail order company building has an open atrium that gave it a look of a cathedral. Wright would continue to expand on his designs, even when tragedy struck, as when his fabled Taliesin house burned to the ground. By the end of the First World War, Wright had set the stage for establishing himself as a masterpiece architect who would go on to design such marvels as Falling Water and the Guggenheim Museum.
References
William J. R. Curtis, “Extension and Critique in the 1960s,” in Modern Architecture since 1900,
William J. R. Curtis.
