Reading Response 12: 4/11/11

A Man of Natural Architecture
Frank Lloyd Wright was one of few architects that was more concerned with working side by side with nature rather than beating in into submission.  His work can be divided into several different phases:

• The time between when he opened his office in 1893 to the building of the Robie House (1908-1910)
• The Taliesin Phase (1911-1914)
• The time between the design of the Imperial Hotel to the construction of Fallingwater in 1934 and Taliesin West in 1938
• The time between the construction of the Johnson Wax Administration Building in 1936 to the building of the Marin County Civic Center in 1957
• He died in 1959

Frank Lloyd Wright

The buildings he designed include four hundred houses and about a dozen other major buildings.  Wright liked to break away from tradition and create his own personal stylistic development and he was always looking for ways to further abstract his architecture.  One idea that is carried out in all of his residential buildings that we have looked at is that the fireplace/hearth is the heart of the home located at the very center and the rest of the house unfolds from there. 

The Robie House

The house stretches horizontally across the rectangular lot that it is contained in and has several separate horizontal bands that lead your eye across the front of the building.  The walls that run across the front of the house almost make it seem like a guarded fortress but at the same time with the long horizontal bands across the house it reflects the horizontal linearity of the street and the sidewalk running across in front and on one side of it.  He also used different colored mortar in the brick work to make the horizontal lines stand out while the vertical ones seem to melt away into the same color as the bricks to emphasis the horizontal nature of the structure.  Wright purposefully hid the front door in this building so that you would have to walk around the front of the house and experience the architecture before entering the structure.  Every aspect of this house was designed by Wright him self right down the to the carpet and the windows.  The windows of which were artistically designed almost like stained glass so that they would allow for light to enter the space but at the same time allow enough privacy so curtains would be unnecessary.

The Robie House

Robie House Vs. Steiner House

The Robie House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright has many similarities to that of the Steiner House by Adolf Loos.  However, most of these similarities are hiding beneath the blatantly obvious.  Both buildings have an interior that is 

• intimate
• richly detailed
• crafted down to the simplest of details

However, the clear difference between these two buildings is there relationship to the world outside the building.  The Robie House has a lot of porches and platforms extending off front the house where as the Steiner House has all exterior detail stripped away to give a very simple exterior.  

The Robie House

Steiner House

Taliesin East

Wright designed this house after a trip to Italy in 1909.  It was first intended to be a retreat in Spring Green, Wisconsin and then he transformed it into a home instead.  Its name comes from the Book of Taliesin, which is a collection of poems and prophecies attributed to a 6th-century Welsh court poet.  This building represented to drastic changes away from his earlier architecture which had to be built on a certain size lot in a suburban neighborhood and were designed to gradually move from formal spaces to informal spaces within the building.  This house was built on the top of a broad hill and had plenty of space to expand into and lacked this clear division seen in his previous buildings.  Wright designed this building with what he though was a uniquely American receptivity to the landscape around the house.  He said it was not "on" the hill but "of" the hill,  for it was not easy "to tell where pavement and walls left off and ground began," because of gardens with low walls and stone steps leading from them up to the house.  The low horizontal roof reflects the low and slowly rolling hills of the landscape and the rough stone walls that are clearly manufactured seem to still have a natural experience to them.  All of these aspects of having the house be "of" the hill give people inside of the house a sense of being embedded in the landscape.  Wright described this house as a "natural house" in that it is "native in spirit."  This house is a reflection of the things that Wright saw in his visit to Italy, such as the great Renaissance, the Baroque villas, and the gardens.  Taking what he saw in Italy he designed this house to be not only a house but also a country estate, a farm, a studio, a workshop, and a family seat all wrapped up into one.

Taliesin East

Robie House, Taliesin East, and Fallingwater

In looking at all three of these houses Wright designed in all different periods of his career you can still see the underlying themes of what was important to him in his designs that never really changed much but that he expanded upon and worked them further to get exactly the effect he wanted in his buildings.  For example, all three of these structures are focused on a horizontal form, the hearth is the heart of the home at the center, and he found it very important to work along side with nature rather than over powering it.  This idea of working with the natural aspects rather than demolishing them is what I think makes his architecture so enjoyable and interesting.  Fallingwater and Taliesin East represent this idea better because they were not as restricted as the Robie House was in its design but he still worked with that building to make it reflect the landscape around it even though the landscape around it was not as natural.  

The Robie House

Taliesin East

Fallingwater

Information from Ching Textbook

Images from Google Images