Video: "Frank Lloyd Wright’s Design Process"

[DavidC]

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Design Process - (7:48)


David

[SDR]

Thank you. One watches with trepidation architect after scholar after enthusiast presenting his (sorry, ladies; where are you ?) interpretation of Wright's words and works. Sometimes there are grimace-inducing reinventions of Wright's stated intentions; at other times we have fresh ways of looking at the work if not the word.

Following the linked video (in my YouTube feed, anyway) is another, which along with yet another novel personal interpretation of the troublesome and weighted word "organic," provides some new insights into Wright's house plans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEtb6QoyzRg

Wright is shown claiming that the "box" as a living space is a "fascist symbol." Thus (at last) I have a hook upon which to hang the odd concept that a good architecture for America is a "democratic" one. Whew ! (At least we have a break from "organic," for a moment . . .)

S

[Roderick Grant]

This is largely meat and potatoes FLW 101. However, I believe (and Geiger agreed with me on this point) that the evolution of a FLW plan being based upon the interior arrangement only, with the exterior following suit, is exaggerated ... by FLW, himself, who didn't want people to figure out how he did things. A study of the Oak Park home shows that a great deal of thought went into the design of the roof, which in turn determined the exterior walls, which reflect the interior arrangement of rooms. It could even be argued that the choice of roof type - gable, hip, gambrel, helm, cone - preceded the planning of the interiors, especially before the flat roof, which is the most easily adapted to whatever is under it. "From the ground up, from the inside out!" is an oversimplification of his methodology.

FLW hated dormers (for some reason?). An interesting detail can be found on Blossom on the west (back) facade which has the only dormer that he designed for the house ... not the "wart" on the south side (Mono 1/15). The main roof was narrowed and extended slightly on the NW half of the backside (before the SW enclosure of the balcony off the master bedroom). To blend that roof with the main portion, he designed a dormer gracefully incorporated into the two portions of the roof to integrate them rather than simply have the roof seemingly arbitrarily narrowed. Of course, one would have to have some distance and elevation from the house to see it, but that wouldn't have bothered FLW. That dormer is not just a reflection of the interior arrangement of a third-floor room; it is a design choice that determined the nature of the room within.

Roofs can be noisome things if the building underneath hasn't been organized properly. FLW's roofs are invariably elegant and well thought out as part of the overall process.

[SDR]

Of course. And the same might be said of the exterior appearance of his buildings as a whole, which was I am certain equally as important to him as was the interior spaces. There is ample evidence of that, at any stage in his career; the carefully studied and made presentation perspectives are one proof, as are any number of practically unnecessary moves visible upon approach to a Wright building: the extensive use of hardscape like long low walls, as well as the strategically placed roof overhangs which are made most dramatic where they extend from both walls at the corner of a house, multiplying their projection to the maximum extent.

This is only one aspect of the case where a diagonal view of a Wright house most pleased its architect.

The genius of Wright is the construction---in his mind, on paper, and then on the ground---of buildings that are (mostly) contrived with utter honesty such that both the exterior and the interior solve all of his practical and aesthetic goals at one and the same time.

S

[jay]

Interpretations are a dime a dozen....but my reading of "from the ground up" and "from inside out" suggests, more than anything, a movement within the architecture.

Movement (in art) requires a temporal scheme. What is developed in one moment is built upon in a narrative continuation, or melodic continuation, etc. Thus a denouement only works because of prior narrative developments.

For literature and music, this is pretty obvious stuff. But architecture is considered a spatial art, and not generally a temporal art..... Architecture as sculptural object....

Wright's crafted experience of movement through his spaces are almost akin to a performance. How his spaces set up the following spaces, and how an individual moves through them, is what sets Wright so far apart from other architects, in my opinion. So many of his works become both spatial and temporal artworks. And when he calls them "musical", and cites Beethoven and Bach as influences, one can admit that there's a philosophical way of accepting these claims.

While I agree that Wright cared as much about exteriors as interiors––it's all "part of the whole"––I again assert that Wright's aforementioned quotes are validly important lines of study for his work....if one is indeed interested in that slippery question of "why?"

And as to those quotes being oversimplifications........what slogan isn't?

[SDR]

All well and good. But Wright's architecture is not---cannot be---unique as to its temporal qualities, as every building larger than an outhouse or a tool shed---or a bare-bones warehouse or barn---is and must be experienced moment by moments as one moves into and through it.

Beyond that, it may very well be that Wright brought something new to that temporal experience. I doubt that; the difference between his works and others in that regard is more likely a matter of degree rather than of kind. And, to me, a phrase like "out of the ground and into the light" can refer as easily to a static object as to one which itself moves, or into and through which an observer moves ?

All this is not to decry the points Jay makes; rather, it attempts to qualify them---and perhaps brings fights of fancy a bit nearer to the ground, when the land-lubber (me) can squint more closely at them ?

S

[jay]

Surely all space is experienced by moving through it moment by moment. Can't argue there. But we don't call that art. We call the aesthetic organization of moments a craft of "duration" which then amounts to a temporal 'work'.

Or..... in a typical house, rooms are side by side, with no aesthetic sequence connecting them. They exist side by side incidentally, for a house simply needs its rooms. Therefore, there is no artful "duration" between room A and room B.

Do other projects of satisfying architecture sequence a "duration" in their spatial experience––therefore creating temporal art––as well? I'd assume so. But I've never seen anything like the way Wright did it.

Also, no need to squint. As I said at the head of my comment, interpretations are a dime a dozen.

[SDR]

Well said---as usual. I suppose I have reached the point where the (ac)counting of angels dancing on the head of a pin no longer moves me as it might once have done. There is surely no shortage of interpretations of Wright's art.

What I suppose we could use more of are new and more accessible ways of experiencing these architectural wonders for ourselves---perhaps (as is the century-long trend) from the comfort of our own quarters, if not within the confines of museums or galleries. The 3D modeling of built and unbuilt Wright designs now taking place might be augmented with, if not replaced by, holographic walk-through exhibits, or virtual-reality hardware and software ?

The aim might be, as we move (apparently) from coherent use of language to some future world of grunts and peeps, to provide art experiences which do not depend on verbal or written language at all . . .

S

[Matt2]

It's fun to try and work out a process for any design. What I do think we can say about FLW's process is that it went from large to small. In that way it was fractal with a larger form or module guiding ever smaller details, right down to stained glass, perforated board, etc. IMHO, once that large gesture was established, the rest must have flowed quickly and inevitably.

[SDR]

Heh. As a designer I can say that the usual sequence is from large to small; nothing special in Wright, there. But we like to think (because he liked to say) that the whole was echoed in its parts, faithfully and as if by some special magic. Maybe yes, maybe no. If the parts were truly a fractal-like reduction of the plan or the section or the elevations (which ? all ? some ?) each stained-glass "light screen" pattern would belong inherently and inevitably to its parent structure---and that is not typically the case. We continue to search the glass or the fabrics, the decorative copper fascia or the perf designs, for source matter that would marry each design to a particular house---and we fail. It just isn't there. The closest I've seen to glass matching house design is at Robie, where the repetitive slope of cames seems to match the hipped roof pitch.

It is even true that separate decorative schemes and geometries can co-exist on the same building. In a Prairie-period or a Usonian house there can be multiple motifs occurring simultaneously. The Robie house living room is an example: window glass does not match the wooden fretwork beneath the concealed lighting above, nor the cast metal light fixtures adjacent to those, nor the carpet pattern. It's true that the window patterns are all related, and that the driveway gates derive from the same geometries. See Hoffman, pp 59, 72, 78-9.

As for flowing "quickly and inevitably," I'm sorry to say that's very unlikely. The drawn evidence suggest that Mr Wright toiled endlessly over details, no doubt with the pleasure that any designer feels as one solution suggests three or five or eight other possibilities (a really strong idea, when it comes, tends to do that); the agony would come in choosing which ones to proceed with, which one to settle on. We know that he continued to make changes even when the perfect set of drawings had been accomplished. "There's always a better---or at least another---possibility, one which might please me even more . . ." he seems to be saying. He may have justified such willful variety with the canard that he was practicing "form and function being one"---but in the case of the Robie living room at least there is nothing inherent in each of the parts mentioned that would have prevented the use of matching geometries in the decoration of them. The related window and driveway gate designs, two more instances of translucent or grille-like objects like the light fixtures and the wooden fretwork, serve as the counter-argument.

It might be said that the Robie house was completed while Wright was in Europe, with others in charge of some decorative details. But this masterpiece would not look as it does without Wright's direction and approval, I think we can say. If it were important to him to have the geometries of the decoration relate closely, he would have so directed.

S

[SDR]

Mr Wright was probably pleased to arrive, less than two decades later, at a new place in his work, one that grew nearer to his ideals of structural and aesthetic unity. I'm thinking of Fallingwater. Here there is virtually no extraneous decoration; the window glass is clear and is simply and orthogonally divided, either horizontally (between openings) or vertically (typically at doors and casement sash). The contrasting colors and textures of painted concrete and random-coursed stonework, with random slate floors and restrained walnut casework, provide all the decoration deemed necessary. But even here there can be found idiosyncrasy: what informed the choice of the exterior light fixtures found at the concrete trellis on the main level, shaped as badge-like or emblematic five-sided figures ?

S