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More fundamentally, Wright held to the theory that a house should be
designed to reflect the specific needs and personality of its occupants.
It was a tenet of his notion of “organic architecture”. According to
this mode of thinking, there was no reason for a building to outlive its
owners. Houses should be constructed to function well for forty years or
so and then torn down to make way for new structures for new owners.
This was a way to keep architecture moving forward, to keep on, as
Wright said, “breaking out of the box”. It was also an attitude that may
have grown out of some his personal peeves. Wright hated the English and
described most of their architecture (Edwin Lutyens, the Walter Scott of
English architecture–was a notable exception) as monuments to British
imperialism. He so thoroughly despised the old Victorians that loomed
near his house in Oak Park, Illinois that he built a wall around his
home and studio and designed that house’s curious windows so that he
wouldn’t have to look at the hulking outlines of the older structures.
full:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/09/the-architect-vs-the-fbi-frank-lloyd-wright-at-150/
---
Ken Burns's documentary on Frank Lloyd Wright, that aired over the last
two evenings on PBS, was predictably apolitical. This guy could make a
documentary on the rise of Nazism and spend half his time discussing the
fashion statement embodied in SS uniforms.
That being said, the show did raise a number of interesting questions
that I had never considered before. Although I have toured through some
of Wright's houses, I never gave much thought to what inspired him. As
it turns out, part of the inspiration was the arts and crafts movement
launched by William Morris, the English Marxist, artist and utopian
thinker. (Morris's utopianism was of the best kind. It simply was
presented as a dream about the future.) Morris explained how art and
humanity should interact in "The Lesser Arts of Life":
"You understand that our ground is, that not only is it possible to make
the matters needful to our daily life works of art, but that there is
something wrong in the civilisation that does not do this: if our
houses, our clothes, our household furniture and utensils are not works
of art, they are either wretched make-shifts, or what is worse,
degrading shams of better things.
"Furthermore, if any of these things make any claim to be considered
works of art, they must show obvious traces of the hand of man guided
directly by his brain, without more interposition of machines than is
absolutely necessary to the nature of the work done.
"Again, whatsoever art there is in any of these articles of daily use
must be evolved in a natural and unforced manner from the material that
is dealt with: so that the result will be such as could not be got from
any other material: if we break this law we shall make a triviality, a
toy, not a work of art."
This credo was central to Frank Lloyd Wright's early approach not only
to architecture, but to design as well. He often took pains to design
not only the house in a "natural and unforced manner" but even the
furniture and utensils within the house. For one client's wife, he
designed the dress she was instructed to serve food in, at a dining
table and plates that he also designed!
Wright was also insistent that houses not dominate their natural
environment but meld into them. The documentary quotes his explanation
of why he refused to put one house at the very top of a hill. He said
that the top of the hill belongs to nature and should be enjoyed on its
own terms. The house was placed on the brow of the hill instead.
So it would be fair to say that Wright expresses a certain possibility
for socialist architecture. His designs are an expression of the William
Morris direction in Marxism toward an ecologically sustainable living
environment that abolishes town-country distinctions. Wright, by the
way, was outspokenly anti-urban. He viewed most urban architecture as
hostile to the human spirit.
full: http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/wright.htm
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