Two years before Frank Lloyd Wright's death, he was on a stage with Mike Wallace, a well-known media personality at the time. It was 1957, and Wallace attempted to get at the heart of Frank Lloyd Wright's worldview. In the middle of the interview, a question about religion quickly revealed Wright's firm-rooted connection to the natural world. Do you go to any specific church?
Yes, I go occasionally to this one and then sometimes to that one, but my church... I put a capital N on nature and go there. Throughout his career, Wright refused to subscribe to the idea that the natural world was a collection of materials that would someday be a home.
Instead, he came to view nature as a place of spiritual reverence. Yet, in spite of this intense admiration for his natural surroundings, there are at times incongruities between the way he valued nature and his actual work. Though Wright's architectural approach sought a harmonious relationship with nature, it was contradicted by his admiration for new technologies like the car, which harmed the very environments he sought to build within.
To evaluate this contradiction central to his work, we should look at Wright's architectural philosophy, some of which is rooted in his concept of organic architecture. This ideology is shaped around a notion that Floyd Hamblin, faculty member of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, describes as This meant designing buildings that were appropriate for the space, rather than just plopping four walls on a hillside. In Wright's eyes, a coffee shop shouldn't be built like a Greek temple, nor should a steel beam be shaped into a flower.
In practice, this idea looked like a functional yet seamless integration of his buildings into their natural settings. Or, as Hamblin puts it, Again, he was trying to really harmonize and connect with nature. He talked about buildings being a grace to nature, or a grace to its surrounding, rather than a disgrace.
And so, he felt that You know, almost any natural environment could actually be improved upon by an appropriate piece of architecture. You can easily spot this idea in buildings like Wright's famous Falling Water. Avery Truffleman, a producer at architecture and design podcast 99% Invisible, attributes this view of integrating nature and architecture to growing up in the hillsides of spring green Wisconsin. And this connection with the outdoors was... really formative for Wright.
He thought that architecture should help people live harmoniously with their environment, rather than shield them from it. The house could become part of nature if it was made with local materials and had big windows and was oriented for just the right amount of sunlight. This philosophy is ingrained in the design of Wright's architecture school, Taliesin. If you look at a lot of the walls here at Taliesin, you have this stone.
This limestone material, which is also the material that you'll see in some of the rock outcropping on the hills. So it was actually built of materials that were right near the site. As well as Wright's designs for his Usonian homes, which were cheap, unassuming homes constructed for the middle-class American. Nestled in the suburbs of Madison, Wisconsin, you can find one of the later built Usonian homes.
known as Jacob's 2. It integrated materials like local wood, faced away from the street and towards the natural expanse behind the house, and forced a less materialistic existence by doing away with spaces like a garage that tend to accumulate junk. Wright even integrated an idea into the house called a solar hemicycle. Architect and Usonian home restorer John Eifler explains that the design positioned the windows of the house in a semicircle. That would capture the sun and it was a way of keeping the heating costs down, the good stuff during the winter.
So the home works as both a highly functional sustainable place for its residents and also a structure that seems to blend in with its surrounding landscape. Today, Frank Lloyd Wright's legacy has definitely influenced modern sustainable architecture, but can Wright's architectural philosophy really be considered sustainable? Let's head back to the Usonian home to Answer this question. Wright went on to design many other smaller homes.
Within the designs of these houses lies the core struggle of Wright's philosophies. Wright envisioned a nation of low-cost, Usonian homes that dotted the country, each with their own land, with the ultimate goal of ridding America of congestion. Then having a great, well, commodity belt around it, for all the trucks and trucking and commercialization.
Mankind would take place, say a mile away, where everybody would have room, peace, comfort, and every establishment would be appropriate to every man. This sounds an awful lot like suburbia. And the crux of this vision would rely on car travel for transport.
But densely packed urban centers, not sprawling communities, are often the most environmentally friendly. A fact which John Eifler confirmed. Cities are a good thing.
I think the point's been made that the person with the lowest carbon footprint probably lives in New York City. However, we shouldn't fault Wright considering the fact that in the early 20th century, Ford's Model T cars were flying off newly built assembly lines, and cars were taking hold of American culture. So in a way, Wright's idea of a nature-filled, Usonian America was progressive. It responded to the promise of the car while also trying to foreground the natural world.
This vision epitomizes Wright's designs because it represents his search for a balance between embracing new technologies like the car on one hand and respecting the natural world on the other. So here's what we can learn from Wright's architectural philosophy. He used new technologies in such a way that his buildings improved both the surrounding landscapes and its inhabitants'lifestyles.
This required not only seamlessly incorporating the structure with nature, but also appreciating the natural world as well. Ultimately, there seemed to be a nod to his natural surroundings in many of his countryside buildings, even though some might have sourced materials from half a country away or encouraged the use of a car. In short, Frank Lloyd Wright straddled the line between incorporating new technologies and a respect for the site in the natural world. At times he leaned to one side or the other, but that's what makes his buildings so captivating. A constant search for the middle ground between comfort, technology, and reverence for the natural world.
A huge thank you to Avery Truffleman, Floyd Hamblin, and John Eifler for making this video work. They were so generous with their time and their knowledge. If you want to learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright, I suggest checking out the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation's website or Avery's podcasts on Usonian Homes.
Both links are in the description, and I will see you next time.