photo by Jeff Kubina
The first architect I discovered and got excited about was Frank Lloyd Wright. Over the years I have studied his work to understand better what makes it so wonderful. And I’ve also come to see what aspects I would not want to emulate.
What I see when I look at Frank Lloyd Wright houses is a blend of relaxed openness to the outdoors, natural materials, and puzzle geometry. My favorites often have long low sheltering roofs extending far from the walls. On the street side the walls are private with only a narrow perforated window strip near the top. On the private side they are light weight wood-framed screens of glass.
photo by Zol87
Inside his houses Wright kept bedrooms and bathrooms compact. And made the living area expansive, varied, and intriguing. A brick or stone fireplace under a low ceiling in the heart of the house gives the safety of a cave. And higher ceilings leading to windows and doors into the yard give views of nature beyond.
Wright didn’t like paint. Natural looking wood, brick, stone—these were his palette of materials. And light-colored concrete as a modern shapable stone. And, of course, glass.
photo by Pablo Sanchez
I’ve always had an interest in geometric puzzles like the Soma Cube (though I can’t finish the Rubik’s Cube!) For a while as a child I drew mazes. Wright was brought up with geometric blocks. So clear geometric grids became the organizational pattern underlying everything he ever designed. The results are fascinating to look at, though perhaps in a way too rigid for some to live with.
His designs are incredibly intricate and thoroughly worked out, like a giant live-in Chinese puzzle. This approach produces a sense of harmony among the parts of the house, but makes it nearly impossible to imagine changing anything. Even if I could produce a house as tightly woven I would prefer living in one that’s looser and comfortably allows remodeling.
The way Wright contrasts massive fireplaces with thin wood walls, deeply tucked away nooks with wide open living areas, broad horizontal bands and eaves with tall chimneys and even spire-ish antennae, and then blurs inside and outside with walls and floors that slide past a sheet of unframed glass—all of this is wonderful to me!
photo by Harvey Barrison
Hundreds of books have been written on Frank Lloyd Wright. I’m always on the lookout for those very few who try to understand just what he was doing. The rest are mostly pictures, but of course those photos are the closest most of us will get to his buildings, so I love the good coffee table books too.
What do you think of Wright’s houses? Too modern? Too out of fashion? Too strange? Or just right?