There's an excellent book The Wright Space? It's the one that talks about Wright using the 2nd floor space under the roof as the main living space and that being one of his major contributions to residential design.

I see, I will check that book out. I fought out that in a book called American Architecture History, Richardson's idea on architecture plays some part in influencing Frank's Prairie houses. In fact, according to the book, the open plan idea was taken from Richardson's idea. Richardson has been heavily associate with the Romanesque architecture revival in America in the 18 century. He's so famous that an architecture movement known as Richardson Architecture had came about. What intrigues me is the certain things that Frank Lloyd borrow from Richardson; Open plan and Focal fireplace idea. So, if someone can share their knowledge about the open plan (while I will try to look for the recommended book in the library) and also more about Richardson Architecture , it will really be appreciated.

kken -

you owe it to yourself to simply look at as many wright plans as you can. analyze them yourself to see what it means.

if you've already covered le corbusier at all, you'll see that 'open' for wright was a lot less open than 'open' for corb. starting around the turn of the 20th c, though, (before corb) wright was opening rooms to each other in a way that was uncommon in the 19th c. rooms flowed from one to the next and he suppressed corners between them or dividers so that a wall could run continuous from one space to the next. this doesn't mean the floor space was wide open. there was often a centerpiece or a spatial change - something flow around.

anyway, like i said, look at some plans, some pix, don't depend too much on others' analyses.

I agree with Steven's comment above about visiting some of Wright's houses, then compare them to the more traditional plans of the early to middle 20th Century.

When I think of a Wrightian open plan, I think of sets of horizontal window panels that can bring the outside into a room, rooms that partially open onto one another through partial walls, walls that can give you a glimpse of what's beyond.

For my 2 cents, Wright was creating a flow or progression of spaces, allowing the occupant to have hints of the adjacent spaces, as opposed to walking through a door to enter the building, walking though another door to enter the next room, etc.


I'll admit though, living in Wisconsin has spoiled me a bit, since there are several great examples of Prairie and Usonian buildings nearby. I'm also a bit biased, since I spent about a month living at Wright's Taliesin.

One of the better descriptions and analyses of Wright's spaces is found in Grant Hindebrand's "The Wright Space," mentioned by make above.

But Steven is right; looking at the plans and comparing them to earlier house plans is the best way into the subject.

Richardsonian Romanesque is the accepted name for work built by H H Richardson and his followers.

"something flow around."

think pinwheel, that might help,, alot of his plans are composed like variations on a pinwheel

I had the book, "Wright Space" given to me a couple of years ago and I did find it a most interesting read. I would say you can read about them you can talk about them but you must walk thru a few of them inorder to get the full experience. Every house I have been in designed by Wright has a different feel. We all have our favorites...mine happens to be one of his Phoenix Houses located in the Biltmore Estates. I never remember the owners name other than Phebe....I was given a full tour of the house with my boss and an another guy I worked with one friday afternoon. My boss lived a couple houses down the street so he knew Phebe as a neighbor. It was a grand experience. Even with all the Mock Spanish dryvit crap which has sprung up around the house, she still has an undisturbed view of Squaw Peak from the second floor bedroom.

Could this be the house you visited, snook ?

What I find entirely interesting about Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas on open plans and juxtapose them over his conceptual "Broadacre City."

The open plan blurs property lines and personal spaces "presenting" no real barriers. The open plan essentially destroys all concepts of privacy and possession through preventing the development of any sort of boundary.

But for a man who preached organic forms, openness and eliminating barriers... Broadacre City was the exact opposite of that which was developed later in his life. In was between the 1910-1930s, that more and more of his designs started featuring fences and carports.

Privacy, defense, segregation and the looming racism of the time rapidly changed his views. He was a supposed abuser, a supposed drug addict, a known adulterer and somewhat of an asshole. Right after he got pushed out of America, all of his designs rapid reflected on this need for intense isolation and segregation of himself from others. It becomes pretty obvious that he changed towards designing everything that fitted his need and ability to continue being scum.

His design show that and his designs were the basis for the suburbanism we feel today. Many of the point people use to articulate the pros of suburbanism are literally quoting him during his "open space" days. For someone so interested in traditional living and family, ditching the whole eurocentric concept to revolutionize America by giving it an image born from one of the darkest periods in american history sounds like a great idea. Not.

I mean I appreciate his work but the twisted reality born from it is something I do not and this is what I see as a reflection of almost all his houses.

sdr....that is the one. Nice Photo

Jorgine Boomer residence, 1953

An earlier view. The house looks north, away from the sun. . .






Rockandhill is the only one I've read, so far, who "supposes" that Wright was a drug addict or an abuser. There are other problems with his message, as well: Wright's open interior plan extended only to the public spaces, so to claim that this innovation "essentially destroys all concepts of privacy and possession" is off the mark. Further, there is nothing contradictory about opening (private) interior space while protecting that privacy at the boundary of the residential property -- is there ?

And when was it exactly that Wright "got pushed out of America" ?

Perhaps rockhill needs to return to the library for some more reading on Wright . . .?

sdr: the plans are flipped from the elevation from right to left and top to bottom. The elevation as you see it is taken from what is now the street which runs by the house. There is another Wright house on the same block. There was a Wright House at the enterance to this subdivision which burned to the ground. There was a Will Bruder house built in the same area as that house which was also burned to the ground.

Right, right and right. The nearby Wright is the Ben Adelman "Usonian Automatic" of 1951, much enlarged. The burned Wright was the Rose Pauson house, 1939, below.





Bruder rocks.

SDR:

"Local gossips noticed Wright's flirtations, and he developed a reputation in Oak Park as a man-about-town. His family had grown to six children, and the brood required most of Catherine's attention. In 1903, Wright designed a house for Edwin Cheney, a neighbor in Oak Park, and immediately took a liking to Cheney's wife, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah Cheney was a modern woman with interests outside the home. She was an early feminist and Wright viewed her as his intellectual equal. The two fell in love, even though Wright had been married for almost 20 years. Often the two could be seen taking rides in Wright's automobile through Oak Park, and they became the talk of the town. Wright's wife, Kitty, sure that this attachment would fade as the others had, refused to grant him a divorce. Neither would Edwin Cheney grant one to Mamah. In 1909, even before the Robie House was completed, Wright and Mamah Cheney eloped to Europe; leaving their own spouses and children behind. The scandal that erupted virtually destroyed Wright's ability to practice architecture in the United States."

From Wikipedia. I mean, you don't even have to go very far to find this sort of stuff. There's more of it out there. a lot of his clients and people he associated weren't the most prudent people either.

SDR, here's a review written on a book that's about Wright's little side party life:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/books/review/Ouroussoff.t.html

"... virtually destroyed Wright's ability to practice architecture in the United States."

Odd, then, that he continued to practice, in his home territory and elsewhere in the US, for the next half century ?

Everything in the first quote is absolutely true -- and certainly not news -- up to that last sentence.

Don't believe everything you read. . .especially on Wikipedia ?

I really like this article by Konig and Eizenberg about the shape grammar of his prairie houses.

excellent read

http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=b080295

Wrightian plan = exploded box

SDR:

I mean all the things he claimed influenced his design and thing he thought his design could didn't have the best track records.

His flagship project which was a culmination of his ideas, Taliesin, didn't end to well. If you're talking about creating perfect environments, an environment where your "man servant" goes crazy, burns down half the house and chops 7 people into pieces with an axe while it is burning doesn't sound like the design worked.

He didn't really pull any significant work after his first affair and there's a period of about 10 years between 1909 and 1919 where nothing significant happened for him. I didn't say it effectively ended his career but he never really returned to Chicago afterwards. It's pretty easy to assume he shot himself in the foot because he couldn't keep his dick in his pants.

I was just pointing out that all of these things completely warped his open space plans drastically between when they were started and when his second wife ended up being red confetti.

rock and hill....I think the man servant was a bit touched in the head.

Right. And the architecture at Dachau and Bergen-Belsen was so atrocious that it drove the Nazis to genocide. Say, you may be on to something. . .

da Uni-bomber comes to mind.....didn't he live in a one room shack in montana......you think maybe he listened to Zappa....and all he really wanted to be was a Dential Floss Ti....? rock and hill damn you are on to something.

I think what's really interesting in a lot of FLW houses, which I think is maybe what rockandhill is very poorly trying to get at, is the juxtaposition between open, flowing spaces and boundaries or thresholds. The Zimmerman House in New Hampshire, which was just up the road from where my mother used to live, is a great example. While small, the spaces of the living room flow around the fireplace and into the dining room, and from there out to the terrace and yard quite seemlessly. The windows of the living room are composed of operable panes framed within a panel of glass with no trim that dies into the posts, roof and a planter that exists both inside and outside the house. It's a really nice example way of making the indoors blend with the outdoors, but also calling attention to the division between the two. Furthermore, while the back of the house is very open, the front is nearly windowless and gives no impression of the interior spaces really. There's the carport, and the short entry doors, but then it's just a brick wall with a ribbon of very small, square windows running above. It's very beautiful, but it is a fortress against the outside. And what's so wrong with that? I don't think there's any contradiction in allowing the spaces of the private, interior world to flow into the space of private world of the yard, while still seeking a shield against the public world.

wow, there's a lot of interesting points there, except FLW scandals. lol. I think I finally understand the term open plan, but a new question arise. What does plasticity mean? I read up in a book but don't really understand it's interpretation. Can someone who has better insight of this idea explain to me?

wow, there's a lot of interesting points there, except FLW scandals. lol. I think I finally understand the term open plan, but a new question arise. What does plasticity mean? I read up in a book but don't really understand its interpretation. Can someone who has better insight of this idea explain to me?

Plastic: that which can be molded or shaped. Examples of plasticity in Wright's work might be:


Interior space flows in this plan, swelling in the living room (bottom), squeezing past a pier and flowing diagonally into a transitional space (center), flowing around a section of wall into the dining room.



The axes in this plan shift; the axis of the symmetrical living room (bottom) is countered by a chimney mass, also symmetrical, off-center to the left. The opening to the dining room marks yet another axis, and finally the windows in that room shift the axis diagonally toward the corner.



The planes of this building exterior demonstrate formal plasticity. Window arrays fold around corners and walls turn up into soffits. This quality is emphasized by boldly marked corners and edges.

More precisely, the edges of planes are strongly delineated, while the vertical corners are carefully kept free of moldings, to emphasize the folding of those planes.

Wright also used the term continuity in this regard, and pointed to poured concrete, which he employed during this early period in his work at, for instance, Unity Temple, as an ideal example of continuity in both form and material.

damn sdr....your good!

Unity Temple....let me say the worship area is wonderful. The day I walked thru it was with and a Talisen trained architect who was also minister...who had spoken from the pulpit... I loved the space almost as much Southern Florida Chapel.

Nice job, SDR. Unity is considered to be one of the real masterpieces, if not THE masterpiece of his pre-1909 career, because that which encloses it is also the structure. That's Wright's very basic definition of the organic. Compare this to the Chicago School which was all post and beam. Wright's building is plastic as he can shape it and make the enclosure. He lets light in from the roof...

Wright has a very special relationship with reinforced concrete.