THE WRIGHT STYLE - Softcover

THE WRIGHT STYLE

Frank Lloyd Wright's Architecture Was Rooted In Nature; He Called it Organic. At the Heart of His Work Was Simplicity, Harmony, Unity, and Integrity. He Tossed Out Our Boxlike Spaces, Forever Changing the Idea of What a House Could Be.

ORIGINS

There is a certain irony in talking about a "Wright style," because the uniformity this term implies probably would be viewed negatively by Wright himself. To Wright, the inherent differences in each building, designed to fit the needs of each client and the attributes of each site, defied grouping it into a category. The only "style" involved was how well a building was designed to serve its own purpose. Wright suggested that "as humanity develops, there will be less recourse to the 'styles' and more style...that quality in each that was once painfully achieved by the whole." His own work clearly reflected this attitude. Each Wright-designed structure was unique and vital. That was his style. Yet there is an undeniable commonality about the vast number of designs that burst forth from this artistic genius.

Frank Lloyd Wright's creations were based on a life philosophy that was undeniably rooted in his childhood. Further shaped by his life experiences, his designs developed distinct attributes that, when repeated, pushed some of his buildings helplessly into sub-styles such as Prairie (1901-1913), textile block (1917-1924), and Usonian (1936-1959), terms used by Wright himself. While useful, these terms do not do justice to the individuality of each building, and they do not describe many of his designs that cannot be neatly labeled. Like any great artist, his work has been grouped into periods to denote shifts in his personal and professional direction. Such categories, like his buildings, are not boxes; instead, they are open and informal shelters. Wright called the totality of his work organic architecture. This concept provides the breadth and flexibility required to define Wright's style as he and his followers have practiced it for the past century. It is far more enduring than the term "style" implies.

To Wright, standardization was useful but should not limit the architect's vision. In fact, his fascination with technology and his desire to bring good design into the homes of average Americans led to several production-line projects, for prefabricated houses, glassware, fabrics, wallpapers, and furniture. By agreeing to design lines of interior furnishings, he was certainly selling his "style," because for the most part they would not be used in buildings he designed.

Many fibers in Wright's life were woven together to create a unified, ideological tapestry just as all of the elements in his buildings were combined and interrelated to yield a complete composition for living. Wright acknowledged that some of the fibers contributed more to the ultimate fabric than others.

UNITY

The origins of Frank Lloyd Wright's aesthetic sensitivity can be traced to his youth. His mother, Anna Lloyd Wright, the child of tough, Unitarian, Welsh farmers, introduced her son to many of the experiences that shaped his life. Anna Lloyd-Jones was raised in the Wisconsin River Valley near Spring Green, Wisconsin, and she loved the earth. Wright described her as being "in league with the stones of the field." Anna had a vision for her son -- that he would become a great architect. Thus, his early education, at home and at school, was directed toward this goal. She provided a simple but stimulating environment for his learning. Her maternal influence was augmented by the dominating Lloyd-Jones family. Wright frequently visited the Wisconsin farms of his uncles and learned firsthand about hard work, simplicity, and self-confidence.

The concept of unity was a compelling early lesson. So intrinsic was it to the Unitarianism of his family that it must have played an indelible role in creating his world view. As he recalled in his autobiography, "Unity was their watchword, the sign and symbol that thrilled them, the Unity of all things!" Wright's grandfather, father, and uncles were powerful preachers who pounded the concepts of their faith into the depths of the soul of the child. Unity -- a oneness with the world, with God, with all forms of life. Truth, truth above all, truth against the world, the beauty of truth. This refrain also echoed in Wright's young world. How could these concepts be forgotten as he forged his own philosophy? They could not. They became its foundation.

MUSIC

Wright's father made a lasting impact on the architect's aesthetics, although some historians have considered him, unlike Wright's mother, an insignificant and somewhat temporary influence. Like the Lloyd-Jones family, William Russell Cary Wright also was a Unitarian, a minister as well as a lawyer and musician. From him, Wright discovered his passion for Baroque music. As a child, he would lay awake listening to his father playing Beethoven on the piano. The interplay of the notes, the minor themes and major themes, the harmony, the building, the movement from general to particulars, all deeply affected the way he viewed his world. Music did not merely entertain him but also enriched his life in many ways. It provided an analogous system that he could use to help translate his ideas into another art form, architecture. In his autobiography, Wright described the commonalities between an architect and a musician: "the striving for entity, oneness in diversity, depth in design, repose in the final expression of the whole. I am going to a delightful inspiring school when I listen to Beethoven's music."

In a special edition of House Beautiful magazine published in 1955, Wright, then eighty-eight, wrote:

What I call integral ornament is founded upon the same organic simplicities as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, that amazing revolution in tumult and splendor of sound built upon four tones, based upon a rhythm a child could play on the piano with one finger. Supreme imagination reared the four repeated tones, simple rhythms, into a great symphonic poem that is probably the noblest thought-built edifice in our world. And architecture is like music in this capacity for the symphony.

To Wright, both music and architecture were sublimated mathematics. He credited his father with making the comparison by referring to a symphony as an "edifice of sound."

NATURE

Nature, above all else, was Wright's most inspirational force. He advised his students to "study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." His childhood experiences on the family homesteads in the rugged, driftless area of southwestern Wisconsin put him in touch with the rhythms, patterns, colors, and systems of nature. The simple concept of the interdependence of all living things was absorbed at an early age. Nature was synonymous with God to Wright, and it was his greatest teacher. Through his mother, Wright also learned to appreciate the work of the naturalist writers of the time: Whittier, Lowell, Emerson, Blake, and Thoreau. Their writings encouraged him to find wisdom in the natural world.

In 1953, in one of his Sunday morning spontaneous talks to his students, Wright advised them:

The place for an architect to study construction first of all, before he gets into the theory of the various formulas that exist in connection with steel beams, girders, and reinforced concrete, is the study of Nature. In Nature you will find everything exemplified, from the blade of grass to the tree, from the tree to the geological formations to the procession of the eras beginning with the first from the sea downwards....

That doesn't mean you are to go out and just look at the hills and the ways the animals conduct themselves....The study of Nature, Nature with a capital N, Nature, inner Nature, Nature of the hand, of this apparatus, of this glass. The truth concerning all those things is architectural study.

He did not suggest copying nature but, instead, allowing it to be an inspiration, understanding the fundamental principles and elements -- its essence. The visual delights that nature provides became a part of his designs as well. The sympathetic relationship between site and building, the easy transitions from the inside to the outside, the gardens and planters all illustrate a respect for the natural world that is compelling. It is difficult to visit one of Wright's buildings and not interact, in a memorable way, with its setting. He built homes around trees, rather than remove them. He used the sun's power to help warm the rooms and provide an ever-changing pattern of light and shadow. He framed views, both nearby and distant. He borrowed nature's devices to provide repose using the line of the horizon, to extend reach using the cantilever like a branch, to create protective shelter like a natural cave. The interplay of people, building, and site was harmonious and masterful.

GEOMETRY

As a result of Anna Lloyd Wright's continuous search for educational techniques that would encourage young Frank's creative skills, she discovered the Froebel blocks. These teaching tools for Friedrich Froebel's kindergarten education program introduced Wright to geometry, spatial relationships, and systems in a fundamental way. The program's basic theme was that child's play could be gently guided, using specific techniques, toward a greater appreciation for the elements and laws of nature. The tools were simple, pure shapes, unlike the gawdy, frivolous toys of the period.

It is from the Froebel "gifts," as they were called, that he learned the basic forms of nature -- geometric forms -- in two and three dimensions. First, he worked with colored yarn shapes, then smooth maple blocks in cubes, spheres, and triangles, then colorful cardboard shapes made into patterns on a tabletop grid. Each exercise was a new problem that challenged the budding designer. As a child, he spent hours with these gifts, later attributing to them a formative and lasting influence on his architecture. Their impact was apparent in every building Wright ever desig...