1943

The figure of Frank Lloyd Wright Whltmanesque genius, chansrnauc

master, prolific creator of a self-described Amencan architecture looms over
the post-World War II penod even more Imposingly than the earlier par of the
century Infact. Wnght born In 1867 was continuing to proselytize, Inhis
burlomqs, wntrnqs. and teac lng, the very same Ideas he had first articulated
half a century before As early as 1894he had wntten an article exhorting
architects to "bnnq out the nature of the rnatenals." Ttus theme, closely linked to
his Idea of organic architecture Itself derived fromhis "heber Meister" l.oms
Sullivan would preoccupy himfor the rest of his life. In 1928Wnght wrote an
eloquent senes of articles for Architectural Record under the title "In the Cause of
Architecture" ocusmq on the respective charactensucs of drlterent matenals
stone, wood, tile and bnck. glass, concrete, metal: "the logical matenal under the
circumstances," hewrote succinctly, "ISthe most natural one for the purpose It
usually ISthe most beautiful. "Not surpnsmqly. In 1940, for the large
retrospective of his work held at the Museumof Modern Art InNewYork he
chose the same theme "The Nature of Matenals, ' a title that also served for the
comprehensive volume by Henry-Russell Hitchcock that appeared two years
later as an ex post facto catalogue The credo that follows here, compnsing a
section of Wnght's Autobiography as published In 1943,does not diller In
substance fromthese earlier pronouncements
On the other hand, Wnght's Impact at a moment when orthodox modernism
was underqomq revisionwas enormous. HIs Indictment of the functionalist
"box" "a white sepulture for unthinking mass-life" reversed the equation of
what he sawas an architecture dedicated to the machine Withthe alternative of a
machine technology Inthe service of architecture an architecture whose values
were, above all, "humane. HISmajor accomplishments of the middle to late
1930s the completion of the J ohnson Wax Building InHacme, Wisconsin, and
of Important residences like the Kaufmann house at Connellsville, Pennsylvania
("Falling Water"), as well as hrselaboration of the Usoruanhouse type and ItS
suburban extension. Broadacre City amply demonstrated the fertility of the
architect's vision Inrus sixthdecade If earlier he could be relegated by a
modern movement that did not knowhowto subsume himto being "the last
great nineteenth-century architect," or by an Anglo-Saxon world remembenng
the reception of the 1910Wasmuth edition of ruswork to being "Germanic," by
68-69 the 1940s he would appear prescient and fullyoriginal. For Bruno Zevr, who
would return ame to ItalyWitha transliterated concept of organic architecture
after spending the war years InAmenca, and for the streamof architects who
would seek out tile architectural cult at TaliesmWest, Wnght's thought
represented a powerful antidote to the dispersed and war-damaged culture of
Europe
It may be helpful to Identify t e "five newresources" on w rchWnght's
argument below ISpredicated, as these get somewhat buned Inthe
Idiosyncrasies of hrswntrnqstyle Theyare spatial, an mtenor concept of room-
space: matenal, the advent of glass as a "superrnaterial" atlowmqmaximum
penetration of light and the disappearance of the wall, structural, "tenuity" or
continuity of structure, especially through the use of steel and plasncs:
constructionel. Ird IItyInbUilding to the Inherent qualities the nature of
rnaterials: expressive. Integral ornament, the giving of "natural pattern" to
structure.
From Frank Lloyd Wnght. An Autobiography (New York Duell, Sloan and Pearce
1943), pp 337 49 Copynght 19';3by TheFrank Lloyd Wnght Foundation
31