The Natureof Frank LloydWright

Louis Henri Sullivan stated "Iorm

follows function". but the phrase became

much abused and taken Irom its' originai

context. Frank Lloyd Wright refined this.

saying "form is function", meaning lormand lunction are one. Further note must

be made; form is function and lully

realized when in ccnscious harmony with

the human sell and embracing nature intimeless fashion.

The work of Frank Lloyd Wright is

synonymous with "organic" architecture.

Wright was a mOOernist whose

philosophy was based on designing with

and as part of nature. He spoke of the

land as the beginning of the architecture,

One has to remember that Frank Lloyd

Wright's roots were in southwesternWisconsin. Born in 1867 in the small

town 01Richland Center. Wisconsin, he

spent his early formative years working

on the farms of his uncles near Spring

Green, some 50 kilometers west of

Madison. the state capito!. This is a land

of rolling hills studded with oak trees and

rich lertile valleys paralleling theWisconsin River.

Clear instinct was Frank Lloyd Wright's

manner. Beginning his own practice of

architecture in 1893. after being

discharged by Louis H. Sullivan to whom

he was chief draftsman. Wright's first

project was the William Winslow House inRiver Forest. Illinois. The Winslow House

was an architectural grammar with new

delinition. Contrary to the Queen Anne.

Shingle Style and Victorian style

neighbors. Wright's design had

emphasized the horizontallandscape of

the Chicago suburbs' prairies. The

masonry ground floor firmly tied thehouse to the land while the textured

plaster emphasis of the second level was

accentuated by a hovering roof with

eaves of nearly one meter to shade the

house during the Midwest summers. It

was 01a grammar that Wright was to

begin using ... the horizontalline. with

clarity.

As Frank Lloyd Wright described his

own home Taliesin in Spring Green.

Wisconsin. clearly he lelt the embodiment

of the surrounding nature and the

heritage 01his lamily in each elemenl:"Yes there must be a natural house.

not natural as caves and log cabins were

natural but native in spirit and making.with ali that architecture had meant

whenever it was alive in times past.

Nothing at ali that I had ever seen would

do. This country had changed that into

something else. Grandlather and

Grandmother were something splendid in

themselves that I couldn't imagine in any

period houses I had ever seen. But there

was a house that hill might marry and live

happily ever after. I fully intended to lind

il. I even saw, for mysell. what it might

be like and began to build it as the 'brow'of the hill ...

This modest human programme in

terms of rural Wisconsin arranged itself

around the hilltop in a series 01four varied

courts leading one into the other. courts

together lorming a sort of drive along the

hillside flanked by low buildings on one

side and by flower gardens against thestone walls that retained the hill crown on

the other.

Then stone, stratilied, went into the

lower house walls and on up into the

chimneys from the ground itself. This

native stone prepared the way for the

lighter plaster construction of the upperwood walls. Taliesin was to be a

combination of stone and wood as they

met in the aspect 01the hills aroundabout. The lines 01the hills were the lines

01the rools. The slopes 01the hills their

slopes. the plastered suriaces 01the light

wood walls. set back into shade beneath

broad eaves. were like the Ilat stretches

01sand inn the river below and the same

in color. lor that is where the material that

covered them carne Irom.

The linished woOO outside was the

color 01gray tree-trunks. in violet light.

The shingles of the roof suriaces were

left to weather. silver-gray like the tree

branches spreading below them.

.. ,The piace was to be sell-sustainingif not self-sufficient and with its domai n of

two hundred acres. shelter. foOO. clothes

and even entertainment within itself. It

had to be its own light-plant, fuel yard,

transportation and water system .....• 1 wanted a house where icicles by

invitation might beautify the eaves. So

there were no gutters. And when the

snow piled deep on the roofs and laydrifted in the corners. icicles came to

hang staccato from the eaves. Prismatic

crystal in pendants sometimes six feet

long, glittered, between the landscape

and the eyes inside. Taliesin in winter

was a lrosted palace rooled and walled

with snow. hung with iridescent fringes.

the plate glass of the windows delicately

lantastic with Irosted arabesques. A

thing of winter beauty. But the windows

shone bright and warn through it ali as

the light 01the huge fireplaces lit themlrom the liresides within and streams of

wood smoke lrom a dozen straight uptowards the stars ...

... A house 01the North. The whole

was low, wide and snug. a broad shelter

seeking fellowship with its surroundings.

A house that could open to the breezes

of summer and become like an open

camp if need be. With spring camemusic on the raofs for there were few

dead raof-spaces overhead, and thebraad eaves so shelter the windows that

they were safely left open to the

sweeping, soft air of the rain. Taliesin

was grateful for care. Took what

grooming it got with gratitude and repaidit ali with interest."

Frank Lloyd Wright's respect for the

land and its' physical nature was

instinctive. Realizing the vast differences

of Midwest prairies and ralling hillsides,

Wright addressed the arid nature of theCalifomia coast with a much different

attitude. The Califomia sun and Santa

. Anna winds keep the coastal area hotand arido Materials of the Midwest did

not fit the nature of the landscape. To

create a more fitting vocabulary for

Califomia architecture, Wright used the

mass of concrete block construction,reinforced with steel bars in both

directions, to pravide pratection fram the

intensity of heat and light. "La Miniatura"

for Mrs. George Millard (1921), the Or.

John Storer House (1923) and the

Charles Ennis House (1926) were

undertaken with the concrete block

system he called "textile block". In a

manner similar to Unity Tempie, Frank

Lloyd Wright merged structure,architectural aesthetic and omament into

the materia!. The material selections for

the Califomia houses met the demands

of the climate. Easily handled on the job­

sites, the concrete block houses fended

off the daytime heat, held the warmth of

the sun thraugh the night and required

little, if any continued maintenance as

would be expected of a house of woodframe.

In the autumn of 1936, Wright, beganto work on the first house for Herbert and

Catherine Jacobs. The design broke

with conventional trends and instead,

became the prato-type for the American

ranch house. Wright eliminated the

damp and smelly basement in lieu of a

small room only for the boiler and water

systems. The concrete mat ground floor

was poured over a half -meter bed of

gravel with the re-circulating hot water

heating pipes laid directly below the

concrete slab. This radiant heating

system, Wright contended, kept the feet

warm and thus the body as the heat rase

naturally from the floor slab. The house

was tumed inward with floor to ceiling

windows facing the east and south,

catching the winter's morning suno Wide

eaves protected the house fram that

same sun during the summers. The 120

square meter, three-bedroom house was

organized about the kitchen and centrai

fireplace. The kitchen (or workroom as

Wright termed it) flowed into the dining

space that flowed into the living area,

while the bedrooms occupied a wing oftheir own.

This was the time, too, of the designfor the S.C. Johnson & Son

administration building (1936). Rejecting

Frank Lloyd Wright's suggestion of a

pastoral site outside the Racine,

Wisconsin, city limits, Herbert F. Johnson

required the building site be on land in

the midst of his manufacturing facilities.

Wright took the directive in stride and

tumed the building in on itself. Rather

than expanses of glass looking out to the

industriai area, Wright tumed the building

in on itself. Entrance was through the

covered carport, always keeping people

out of the Wisconsin weather. The main

structure was made up of radical calyx

columns, rising up fram a small brass

foot and spreading out at the top like the

leaf of lily pads emerging from the pond.

Each column, as witnessed by the test

columns demanded by the State, carried

thrice their required load. The "raof" and

building edge were laid with Pyrex glass

tubing providing a natural refracted light

from above. The naturallighting of theroof reduced the amount of artificial

lighting required, particularly in the main

two-story workraom of the offices.

Roughly ten years later the Johnson

Company asked Wright to undertake

design of the research tower adjacent the

administration building. Drawing fram

nature, Frank Lloyd Wright's structural

design premise for the tower is exhibited

in the structure of the pine tree with its

deep tap raot extending down fram the

core. Every other floor of the tower

reaches out to the outer brick half wall,while the intermediate floors are held

back from touching the perimeter face of

the building. Again, Pyrex tubing is used

for it's refracted light and by holding the

intermediate floors back from the face of

the building naturallight penetrates the

laboratories much deeper.

Taliesin West in the Sonoran desert of

Arizona must be considered the greatest

marriage of building and land. No other

building so embraces nature, becomes

so much a part of it as Taliesin West. But

to truly recognize the thoughtful

dimension of Wright's palette and

pattems forTaliesin West one has to look

back ten years to his earlier recognition ofthe Arizona deserto In 1928 Frank Lloyd

Wright first visited Arizona's "Valley of theSun" as Albert Chase MacArthur's

"consultant" for the use of Wright's"textile-block" construction in the Arizona

Biltmore Hotel. During that first visit

Wright had the opportunity to meet Or.Alexander Chandler, who was also

contemplating the construction of adesert resort hotel. Following initial

discussions and subsecuent agreement

of the client/architect arrangement,

Wright began work on designs for "San

Marcos in the Desert Hotel", again usingthe "textile-block" method he had

developed for California. As the project

began, Wright felt it irnportant to be on

the site and suggested in January of1929 to Or. Chandler that his troupe of

farnily and draftsmen build a " carnp ofwood and canvas on suitable site".

"Ocotillo", Frank Lloyd Wright' s first

desert carnp, was cornpleted in Febrùary

1929. His description of the carnp and

surrounding land of this desert region

reinforces his recognition of nature as theinitial element of his work.

"Unspoiled character should not be

trifled with like this. Arizona needs its

own architecture. The straight Ii~e andbroad piane should come here - of ali

places - to becorne the dotted line, the

textured, broken piane, for in ali the vastdesert there in not one hard un-dotted

line. Arizona's long, low, sweeping lines, '

up-tilting planes, surfaces patterned aftersuch abstractions inline and color as find

'realism' in the patterns of the

rattlesnake, the gila monster the

chameleon and the saguaro, cholla or

staghorn, - or is it the other way around ­

are inspiration enough. But there lie her

great striated and stratified masses, too,

noble and quiet. The great nature

masonry rising from the mesa floor is ali

the noble architecture she has at present.

Pattem of future architecture? The

sahuaro. The sahuaro itself is a perfect

example of 'reinforced' construction.With its interior vertical rods it holds

upright the great columnar mass for sixcenturies or more. A truer skyscraper

than the functioneer builds.

Now the architect and his helpers

working away to build and architect's

'compound', we will cali it, in this

unmitigated quotidian wilderness

unchangeably changing.The 1:2 or 30"-60" triangle was

employed in the design of the whole

arrangement, pian and section andelevation, because it seems characteristic

of the Arizona mountain background.

The cabins themselves are connected

together by a low staggered box board

wall, its horizontal zig zag lines

completing the enclosure. And I foundthe white luminous canvas overhead

afforded diffusion of light within so

enjoyable I now feel more than ever

oppressed by the thought of the opaquesolid overhead of the heavy mid-western

house.

So we cali the camp "Ocatilla" (sic

Ocotillo). Ali this impromptu effort, as you

now see, is a human circumstance as

appropriately 'nature' in Arizona asArizona cacti, rocks and reptiles

themselves. "

Unlike the earlier 'Ocatilla' camp,

Taliesin West was designed as a whole.

"Ocatilla" was a series of individuai cabins

linked by the enclosing board and battenwood wall. Taliesin West was designed

as an integrai form set on a stage,

terracing to the desert floor in eachdirection. As Taliesin in Wisconsin was "

built of local quarried stone, Taliesin Westwas constructed of desert stone

gathered from the immediate area andthe mountains to the north. The stone is

rich in varnished color that takes

hundreds of years to reach such a natural I

patina. Stones with warm tones ofbrown and rust colors were hand-placed

in wooden forms with concrete made

from desert sand poured behind. Pure

. desert masonry, indeed. To accentuatethe strata as seen in rock formations of

the area, Wright added horizontal

chamfers to the sloped stone masses.And to recall the dashed line metaphor,

he placed 2" X 2" dentils, running

continuously along the edges of the

fascias, allowing the sun shadows to add

to the architecture.

The drafting roomofTaliesin West was

first roofed using the while translucentcanvas recalled from "Ocatilla". Wright

noted that he found the top-light thr?ughthe canvas to be so desirable that he

anticipated its' further exploration inTaliesin West. The roof line of the

drafting room rises from the southwest tothe northeast. Had the building been

placed on the direct north-south axis,

Wright explained, the building would

always have a hot south side and a cold

north side. The juxtaposition to the

compass directions allowed sun to play

upon the building and spaces inside.

Equally important was the placement of

operable openings at the base of the wall

to the southwest and similar openings

above the soffit to the northeast, thus

allowing desert breezes to pass through

the drafting room for comfort in the

warmer, late spring days.

The relationship to the desert is unique

as is the form, yet aptly suited for theCalifornia or Arizona environment.

Remembering the intensity of the desert

sun and the directed heat gain with flat

wall construction, the Jester-Pfeiffer

House fends off the greatest amount of

heat gain with its rounded walls. Theconstant movement of the sun on the

circular forms of the house can't produce

a constant heat load on any given spot

for any amount of time. The window of

the house are narrow, placed for viewing

when one is seated, thus cutting down

on the sun's giare. large scale windows

in the living area, dining area and masterbedroom are ali oriented inward to the

trellised garden.

The Walker House juts out into thePacific coastal waters like a small

peninsula. With its stone base, it hugsthe shoreline while its prow breaks intothe vastness of the Pacific Oceano The

living room windows, directed out to sea,

are a reverse stepping, like a corbel in

glass. The flat horizontal pieces are

moveable, allowing for control of breezes

coming in from the west, while the

corbeled verticals drop the mist thataccumulates on their face without

streaking the panes below. Wright didn't­qualify materials as sustainable, rather itwas his architecture itself that is

sustained. Historian Walter Curt

Behrendt aptly in saying of Wright's

buildings, "They are built and created in

three dimensions as coherent organisms.

Of the structure and like a plant, abuilding grows up fromthe earth to the

light" and further reminds us of Goethe's

words "organs do not compose

themselves as if already previously

finished, they develop themselves

together and out of one another, to an

existence which necessarily takes part inthe whole."

This is the architecture of Frank Lloyd

Wright.