Frank Lloyd Wright: functionalism, territory and the ... - IFL

Soeiro, Diana. 2012. „Frank Lloyd Wright: functionalism, territory and the
misunderstanding of Modern architecture” in Wolkenkuckucksheim/ Internationale
Zeitschrift zur Theorie der Architektur – Cloud Cuckoo Land: Function –
Purpose – Use in Architecture and Urbanism, (vol. 17, issue 1). Edited by Fakultät
2 - Architektur, Bauingenieurwesen und Stadtplanung Brandenburgische Technische
Universität Cottbus Wolkenkuckucksheim. (Upcoming: May 2013)
http://www.tu-cottbus.de/theoriederarchitektur/Wolke/wolke_neu/Start.html
Frank Lloyd Wright: functionalism, territory and the misunderstanding
of Modern architecture 1
Abstract
The purpose of this article is to show how architect Frank Lloyd Wright
(1867-1959) has evaluated modern architecture emphasizing its relevance to
better understand architecture nowadays. What is apparently an historical
review on a theoretical approach on architecture is intended to have an
impact today in order to change things for the better. We try to achieve that
unveiling Wright’s functionalism as deeply connected to his concept of
Organic-architecture. This concept actually keeps the original meaning of
modern architecture, which for several reasons became identified with
International Style (or contemporary architecture). That is why we propose a
rediscovery of Wright’s writings believing that in them, there are answer’s to
be found. Not only to demystify a misunderstanding of what modern
architecture is, but also to find new solutions for today’s problems: man’s
reconciliation with nature through architecture, in a time where human
dimension seems to be left out of architecture. What are buildings for?
I. Introduction
During the 20 th century a new approach on function, purpose and use
in architecture took place in a movement that became known as International
Style (coined by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson, architectural
historian and architect, respectively). The International Style has its roots in
Modernist architecture having in its front line: Le Corbusier in France, and

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius in Germany. As much as we
can discuss if it’s possible to assert the existence of a “style”, the International
Style movement was grounded in a specific understanding of what Modern
architecture stood for to the extent where, historically, International Style
became a synonym of Modern architecture.
We intend to show that this equivalence between International Style
and Modern architecture is an historical misunderstanding that for specific
reasons, that we will discuss, is sustained up until today to the point where
nowadays there is not even an awareness that it is so. In order to unravel this
misunderstanding, we will focus on the forgotten Frank Lloyd Wright’s writings
– that have long been forgotten precisely because of the above-mentioned
historical misunderstanding - in particular “In Order to Be Modern” (1930)” and
“Organic Architecture Looks at Modern Architecture” (1952).
Theoretically, one of Wright’s strongest arguments is his distinction
between rules and principles: rules can be imitable world-wide because they
can be repeated anywhere reproducing the same (International Style);
principles stand on their own and are impossible to imitate because they
relate with uniqueness (“Organic architecture”). Consequently, both
approaches do relate with territory and with the land in two dramatically
different ways concerning its function and use. This means that in order for us
to think functionalism in architecture we have to think about territory and land.
We will be able to remember that Wright himself asserted the principles
of Modern architecture that due to particular historical circumstances were
“converted” into what became known as International Style that little had in
common with the initial understanding of Wright’s “Modern architecture” – to
the point where Wright changes the name of his architectural approach from
“Modern architecture” to “Organic architecture”. This “conversion” is related
with different perspectives on old concepts widely discussed in any art form:
repetition, mechanics, style and imitation. Concerning architecture these do
end up having a strong impact shaping our daily life’s and that is why it is
crucial to discuss them in order to provide a renovated approach so they can
better serve the public interest, proving new solutions to old problems.
Along with Wright we will look for new solutions in order to approach
functionalism today so that architecture does not dismiss cultural quality and

user experience, reflecting on where does the functionalist quantitative
approach has its roots, why was art rejected as a surplus and why was is it
that the functionalist approach was not only criticized by theorists but also,
strongly, by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Accordingly, a renewed interest in
understanding the development of terminologies in the 20 th century is
essential.
II. On International Style
In it’s founding year 2 , in 1929, Alfred Barr (1902-1981) invited Philip
Johnson (1906-2005), to be head of Department of Architecture and Design at
the Museum of Modern Art (New York), though Johnson declared knowing
nothing about architecture. For the next two years both Johnson and Barr,
along with Hitchcock (1903-1987), travelled all over Europe by car educating
themselves on architecture. The experience culminated in an exhibition at the
Museum of Modern Art in 1932, titled “International Style” from which resulted
a book. Reflecting back on what happened, says Johnson in 1995:
“The International Style had a longer life, it seems to me now, than
ever it deserved”. 3 The reason for Johnson to believe so is that though
the exhibition didn’t have much public (and media coverage almost
null) “its impact was huge in the architectural world” causing “endless
discussion and fights within the profession”. 4
The method preceding the exhibition could hardly be more modern
since it dismissed everything that happened before, looking at the present as
if everything that ever was, was contained in a “now” moment.
As they stated back in 1932, the strongest opposition to the Style came
from the commercially successful modernistic architects who had the cult of
individualism (particularly the American ones). 5 As Johnson states in 1995,
one of the most discussed topics was the fact that they had stated that the
Modern movement was a “style” similar to Gothic or Baroque. 6

“In the nineteenth century there was always not one style, but “styles”,
and the idea of “styles” implied a choice. The individualistic revolt of the
first modern architects destroyed the prestige of the “styles” but it did
not remove the implication that there was a possibility of choice
between one aesthetic conception of design and another. (…) Today a
single new style has come into existence.” 7
At this point we are able to get that Johnson and Hitchcock’s point is
that, though one of the characteristics of modernity is to each individual his
style, in reality, if actual structures are carefully observed with an
archaeologist’s eye, it is possible to describe similar underlying principles of
growth structure. 8
What they are both trying to do is to look forward as if they’re looking
back, in an effort of trying to anticipate “something”, that they identify as a
“Style”, which they also refer to, several times, as: “contemporary style”.
At this point we will stop to try to understand what is at stake in
Johnson and Hitchcock’s proposal. On one hand, “International Style” and
“contemporary style” 9 are therefore used as synonyms; on the other hand,
“International Style” is what unveils what modernity truly is.
Several questions surface: does this mean that modernity never
existed and it was all the time, a style (an international one)? And if that is so,
what is modernity, ie. why was it ever possible to define modernity as such if
there were only individualists? Why should the tag “International Style” be
more accurate to use, historically, than that of Modern? To this, authors say:
“This contemporary style, which exists throughout the world, is unified and
inclusive, not fragmentary and contradictory like so much of the production of
the first generation of modern architects.” 10
Historically, this will generate a grounding misunderstanding on what
modern architecture was meant to be, what it was, and how it historically
gotten its definition. And that’s where Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) writings
can be helpful.
Frank Lloyd Wright is not an architect’s name only. It also stands for a
great theorist of architecture. Moreover, his written work is essential to fully
capture his architectural practice. It is not the case that one is only able to

grasp his work if one has already read something by Wright. But he had a
vision and a concept of what Architecture should be and has taken the time
and effort to put that into words - and that is also part of Wright’s work. That
fully enables us to experience the Art of his Architecture as a whole, then and
now.
Having started to defend Modern-architecture (approached directly for
the first time in a short article “In Order to Be Modern” (1930)) Wright’s
concept will slowly shift over the years towards a different concept: Organic-
architecture. The shifting is related with what Wright considers to have been a
misunderstanding and a misuse of what Modern-architecture stood for.
Therefore, defending the same principles, he decides to rename his concept
of Modern-architecture and called it Organic-architecture instead. This shift
can be observed in his writings over the years. In 1952, around twenty years
later after his 1930 article, he writes “Organic Architecture Looks at Modern
Architecture” (1952) explaining in what way Modern Architecture has become
Organic Architecture and also why he, Frank Lloyd Wright, refuses to be
referred to as “modern”. Why is “modern” architecture not Modern-architecture
anymore?
We will now focus almost exclusively on Wright’s words since
references supporting this concept of modern architecture are hard to find.
Full-attention is given then to the author himself.
III. What is Modern-architecture
In 1941, Sigfried Giedion (1888-1968) wrote a book that become a
reference on the history of modern architecture “Space, Time & Architecture:
the growth of a new tradition”. In it, Giedion dedicates a long chapter to
Wright’s architecture covering the beginning of his career, how his idea of a
house that spread from a central core always remained throughout his career,
how he used the cruciform and the elongated plan, what was Wright’s
meaning of organic, the importance of his relation with nature, and his
influence in European architecture. Later on, in 1952, Wright would write in a
letter to the acclaimed north American architecture critic Lewis Mumford
(1895-1990):

“I am beginning to feel that HISTORY – at best – is made by some man
studying a profile seen from where he sits. At worst it is likely false. (…)
Such history as I’ve read (by Gideon 11 [sic], say) and from many pens
is so specious a pretense of knowledge – that my gorge rises as I read.
(…) History? A post-mortem. Of course. (…) The truth of the whole
affair is so encrusted with Bauhaus, Museum of Modern Art, Hitchcock
and Johnson, provincial imports from abroad and commercialization of
the original ideas that any post mortem held by anyone (except one in
the know by experience like yourself) is phony or bogus.” 12
What was it that they had gotten wrong, considering that Giedion, not
ironically, presents him as a genius of architecture? 13
Wright defines for the first time what Modern-architecture is in an article
titled “In Order to be Modern”, published by Architectural Progress, in
December 1930. In it, he creates the concept of modern by opposing it to that
of “the Past of the Past”. What defines this architecture of the Past? “Post and
Beam, Weight and Mass, [where] they are one and one that makes two”. And
what about Modern-architecture? Modern Architecture is “the one plus one
that still makes one” resulting as a “plastic Whole”. 14 What sense can we
make of this?
One key element in Wright’s concept of modern is his understanding of
what a wall used to be (in the Past) and what a modern wall is: “Walls as solid
walls are vanishing”. In his own words, in the Age of Democracy, men does
not need to ““box up” or “hole in” for protection” because there are no Slaves
and Masters and we are no longer Savage animals. We should therefore
“master lightness – openness” and exert “true sun-acceptance” instead. An
Architect is also encouraged by Wright to see “the Earth as a poignantly
beautiful place for human Life” and everything that Man builds should be
“inspired by Nature in this sense”. 15
Also in 1952, reflecting on modern architecture, Wright declares:
“Modern-architecture is the offspring of Organic-architecture: an offspring,
already emasculate and commercialized, in danger of becoming a Style”. 16
Between 1930 and 1952 Wright slowly develops the concept of Organic-

architecture while criticizing strongly the orientation modern architecture is
taking. In this same article, published by The Architectural Record in May
1952, “Organic Architecture Looks At Modern Architecture”, Wright describes
the change that the term “modern” has went through, becoming
unrecognizable to his own eyes, to the extent that a new concept is
demanded in order to replace its initial meaning: Organic-architecture.
But what was “modern architecture”?
IV. What is “modern architecture”
“Modern architecture” is what Wright briefly names as “the box nude”,
the architecture that has become a style and has been commercialized
(lowering its quality standards becoming a mass architecture). His point is that
Modern-architecture between 1893-1900 appeared as a great negation of
European influences fully embodying America’s character. It had
characteristics that were original and appealing: startlingly clean and “stream-
lined” “effects”. A few years later, by 1910 these principles were seized upon
in Germany, more notably by Bauhaus movement. Bauhaus embodied these
principles of American architecture but has expressed them at its worse,
resulting as the opposite of what Modern-architecture stood for, that is, as
Fascism: “The streamlined novelty of the original negation became fit for
Fascism”. 17 Why? Because it was a two-dimensional architecture using a bare
facade, the “box nude”, “dedicated to the Machine”. 18 The Machine
symbolizes in Wright’s language the process where the easiest, fastest and
cheapest way of making a structure is what decides how the structure ends
up being, instead of the other way around. Not that the structure has to be the
most expensive one, but firstly, the architect conceives a structure according
to function, site, harmony with Nature, taking the most of natural resources,
etc and only then he should take time to adjust it to budget issues pondering
on eventual technical difficulties. Because each structure is a challenge - and
not a mechanized repetition where the uniqueness of an architect’s gesture is
lost or where the individual is not the architect’s first priority.
What happened to Modern-architecture? Wright calls it a “sterilization” -
political and economically profitable both for politicians and architects:

“Architectural careers (...) became quick. The true amateur, sterilized
owing to this revival of the box-facade by accredited schools – and
names – is thus made “safe”. Grateful for this sterilization, if for no
other reason, our leading universities together with realtor “developers”
and our swelling bureaucratic government are all ready to take over
“Modern-architecture””. 19
“Modern-architecture” is “the box nude” in the sense that originally,
Modern-architecture came as the negation of the architecture of “the Past”,
namely European architecture, where solid walls took central role (eventually
with ornament). The two-dimensional bare facade takes the clean and
streamlined “effect” 20 of Modern-architecture (bringing back “the box”) using
the features that initially made Modern-architecture truly original, truly
American, truly Democratic, privileging the human scale, all different kinds of
people living together, the environment and the American open horizon. “This
mixture of negation with negation is, as of today, what is called “Modern-
architecture””. 21
There was the European box; then Modern-architecture rose in
America redefining the concept of wall by intercepting different horizontal
levels creating clean, streamlined, three-dimensional structures (negating the
box); and then with Bauhaus movement the box appears again, this time
completely bare. Not only bare, but white. And America embraced it for
economical and political reasons.
The extensive use of the colour white was also questioned by Wright
since he faced this ever appearing feature as a way to emphasize “the fact
that it did not intend being a becoming feature of the ground upon which was
put”. The relation with the ground and the Earth was a distant one. White was
again one more feature that blurred individuality mechanizing the Art of
Architecture “maintaining a white sepulture for unthinking mass-life”. The
Machine was served by Architecture once again being so useful to
commercial purposes: “no such cliché could have been made so useful to our
American mass-education or serve our standard practice of quick
commerce”. 22 The “modern” “old Box – undressed” is set up in any place,
“regardless”, with a lid on top 23 and painted white. That is why it is so easy to

teach architects doing it and that is why it is Fascist. It does not challenge the
architect to make better Architecture, it does not distinguish people or sites
and it disregards Nature (the ground). The feeling of conceiving each
structure as unique, almost hand-made like, is lost in “modern architecture”.
Architecture becomes a Style, an “international style”. 24 One fits all.
As Wright puts it: “ ”Less is more” unless less, already little, becomes
less than nothing at all and “much ado about nothing” ”. 25
In Johnson and Hitchcock’s book, a book chapter is dedicated to
functionalism and it refers mostly to the way critics perceive the interaction
between functionalism and aesthetics. They view is that the aesthetic
dimension has been put aside in modern architecture:
“modern critics and groups of architects both in Europe and in America
deny that the aesthetic element in architecture is important, or even
that it exists. All aesthetic principles of style are to them meaningless
and unreal. This new conception, that building is science and not art,
developed as an exaggeration of the idea of functionalism. (…) The
doctrine of the contemporary anti-aesthetic functionalists (…) [basis’] is
economic rather than ethical or archeological.” 26
The statement is puzzling in the sense that it seems to go in the same
direction as Wright goes. The (short) chapter continues with a strong critic on
the growing dismissive role of aesthetics by critics. In the following chapters
they declare three principles as those that characterize International Style:
volume; regularity instead of symmetry; and the avoidance of applied
decoration. Judging on each one’s description, they would fit the modernism
label and that is when it occurs: do the authors intend to say that modernism
should be replaced by International Style? Hitchcock gives us an answer that
may clarify it when he refers to the “obituary aspect” of on International Style.
“When did it died?” As we have seen before, just like in early modernism, the
International Style was not yet clearly visible, the International Style is what
characterizes later modern architecture – and that, according to the author’s
words one does not get exactly when did it end, except that in the late 60s it is
still a valid label. 27

To Wright, though his vision on functionalism is visible, first of all he’s
not referring to architecture critics but to architecture. Secondly, the label
International Style is incorrect in the sense that is unnecessary in order to
describe the modern movement. Architecture should focus on principles, not
in rules (functionalism) or Style. The architect should look around in order to
make the best possible architecture he can do, according to his and Nature’s
own principles.
We will now approach Wright’s conception of Organic-architecture in
order to unveil what is the functionalism concept that is at stake in Wright’s
perspective.
V. What is Organic-architecture
Organic was already a feature of Wright’s concept of Modern-
architecture by 1930. The thing is that this feature was precisely the most
affected by the Bauhaus interpretation of Modern-architecture (imported
promptly by America). This is why Wright abandons the term “Modern-
architecture” and replaces it by Organic-architecture.
What defines Organic-architecture?
“Roofs either flat or pitched, hipped or gabbled”, “wide flat eaves”,
ornament non-existant unless integral, walls become screens, the new
open-plan spreads upon a concrete ground-mat. In short, “the whole
structure intimate and wide upon and of the ground itself”. 28
The uniqueness of Organic-architecture was its depth, its three-
dimensional character where continuity played a key role. No more attics or
basements. A new sense of space appropriate to human scale. “The interior
space to be lived in became the reality of the whole performance. Building, as
a box, was gone.” 29 The Machine dedicated to Architecture and not the other
way around. This three-dimensional character was the main statement
against Past architecture, the essence of it negation. This is why “the box
nude” is, in Wright’s view, not only a violation of what was previously defined
as Modern-architecture but also a receding towards the evolution of

Architecture – and Man itself. After slavery being abolished and we no longer
need to protect ourselves from other animals, why go back? If in an era of
Democracy man can elevate Architecture to an expression of Art why should
it not do so?
Wright gives an acute answer. Organic-architecture is profound – “too
slow for popular purposes”. Consequently, the “preparation for architectural
practice would be not only slow but far too difficult. Also, a discerning client
was needed rather than a fashionable one”. 30 This shows Wright’s awareness
of the complexity that Architecture involves. It is not just about buildings. It is
about economics, politics, bureaucracy, architects, architecture students,
architecture teachers, clients and business. But somehow, Architecture as an
Art cannot get lost in the middle and an architect should be taught on how to
remember this.
What Wright understands is that when that is forgotten space looses its
magic and man becomes a beating heart in the middle of “mechanized”
concrete. Like if one was walking through a “plan-factorynds”. 31 That is why
“Modern-architecture is Organic-architecture deprived of a soul”. 32 As for the
original concept of Modern-architecture Wright considers that it was
“camouflaged or betrayed”. 33
Sterilized, mechanized and white architecture became therefore a
Style. And despite Wright’s vision on “any “international style” [that] would
probably be a cultural calamity fit for Fascism but intolerable to democracy”
that has bear out to be true.
What Frank Lloyd Wright was aware of is that Architecture depends on
a cultural frame of mind, because many different people and areas intersect.
But at the end of the day, whether is money or fastness that moves you, you
(we) are the one that has to live space and either it protects you and cares for
you, or not. Maybe Wright was right and “a cultural organism (like any other
true organism) must grow. Growth is slow. It cannot be had like a box nailed
up by the tyro internationally”. But more than fifty years have gone by since
this statement and still it is pertinent to ask “why should a Get-rich-quick
Society like ours take time and the extreme pains necessary to make an
organism of anything”? 34

In 1966, Hitchcock acknowledges Wright’s Organic-architecture as a
strand that has retained some independence of International Style (along with
a few other movements) that he considers both to have complicated and
enriched the architectural scene. 35 It is therefore puzzling why in the 1932
exhibition, organized by Johnson, he decided to show the work of Le
Corbusier, Oud, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and, by contrast, that of Wright
occupied the principal place in the exhibition.
Wright’s concept of functionalism is related with that of territory and
land (ground) being both closely connected with his belief that it was not
possible to think architecture without considering its relation with Nature. Any
structure is sustained by the ground and is inserted in a specific context that
allows space to become a territory because of that a structure placed there.
Due to his mother’s influence Wright was a Transcendentalist 36 and an
avid Emerson reader that highly valued Nature and man’s relation with nature.
On Emerson says Reginald L. Cook:
“Unlike Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Locke, and Kant, Emerson had no
formal metaphysical system, and he was indifferent to dialectic and
controversial argument. He cultivated disciples nor proselytized, but
aimed his thought to arouse. When he referred to the
transcendentalists as “collectors of the heavenly spark with power to
convey the electricity to others,” he characterized himself. He was more
assertive than speculative, more affirmative than skeptical, more
suggestive than explanatory. By temperament he was seer-like, in
expression oracular, in tone scriptural.
No slide rule can measure Emerson’s mind. It was as capacious as a
pocket in a Yankee greatcoat and full of transcendental notions like
Polarity, Compensation, Circles, the over-Soul and the Self-Reliance.”
37
In his essay “Nature” that Emerson has published anonymously, de
defends a new vision of Nature strongly sustained by the vast American
territory and landscape: Nature is itself a divinity and men knows since ever
its principles because he has the ability to find them within himself; therefore,

Nature it is not one more component in the world, ruled by an universal law,
about which new principles can be taught. 38
An earlier but also significant influence on Wright’s architecture was
Fröebel according whose principles Wright was raised on since his mother
was an attentive reader of his manuals. Friedrich Fröbel (1772-1882) funded
in 1837 the Kindergarten concept. Fröebel, after having studied for several
years botanic and biology (which he started early in his youth and has
continued all his life) defended that education is like a natural process; that
the child is an organic whole that develops through his/ her creative activity,
according to natural laws; also, that the universe, as a while is an organism
and that the individual is an organic part of society; and that the universe as a
while is an organism from which all smaller organism belong to. According to
Fröebel, man is a self-expressive being that has to follow his inner calling. In
order to bring that out in a kid, he has created “Fröebel’s presents” 39 , that
seemed to have effectiveness in developing the child’s abilities. 40 Shapes,
colours, cubes, lines and curves allowed the child to develop several diferente
concepts and structures using the same simple elements. Fröebel refers to
education precisely as a discovery of the Unity that the child has within
herself, being the best she can to do is to “imitate nature’s logic”. 41 In that
sense says Richard Maccormac, that Wright’s education has much in
common with a Renaissance architect that conceives his work as an absolute
value and an echo of universal architecture. As Wright states in his essay “In
the Cause of Architecture”, “there is no source so fertile, so suggestive, so
helpful aesthetically for the architect as a comprehension of natural law.” 42
Therefore, what Fröebel and Emerson have in common is that there is
no duality between man and nature (surrounding environment): acknowledge
and respect environment’s integrity, in the sense that it was here before we
were. Wright does identify with this and his creation of the concept Organic
Architecture, against internationalism, not only concerns structure but also a
way of doing “Architecture” in America: “Today Architecture is becoming an
industry; it is no longer a great art. // Architecture is becoming a business in
league with its own government for housing people wholesale – at retail
prices.” 43 Therefore, “Style is and should be the character of what we are, not
what the house-builder boys would have us be. Style is and should be the

expression of our free spirits.” 44 Architecture should not ignore History and
culture.
In Wright’s perspective the house, is the main element from which
Architecture grows from:
“A house is a human circumstance in Nature, like a tree or the rocks of
the hills; a good house is a technical performance where form and
function are made one; a house is integral to its site, a grace, not a
disgrace, to its environment, suited to elevate the life of its individual
inhabitants; a house is therefore integral with nature of the methods
and materials used to build.” 45
Wright’s description of “what is a house” explains why is it the basis of
Organic Architecture, being the simplest architectural structure. The word
“Organic” is therefore associated with the concept of architecture, defining it,
and taking as its synonym “harmony”. Organic Architecture is a concept that
states a certain form of beauty, indispensable to any art form, that is thought
but having as its main reference, Nature:
“The plant also builds; growing from seed to root, stem and branch, in
order to carry the exquisite flower and consequent fruit. The tree itself
rises to majesty. Congruity, continuity and plasticity we see as qualities
throughout all natural building. Beauty is due to some mystic innate-
power elemental as life is to life itself. Harmony is organic and comes
forth to the human eye.” 46
To Wright, architecture’s functionalism is architecture and nature,
considered closely together, because they are inevitably entangled. And that
is what Organic Architecture proposes.
VI. Conclusion
Again, Wright asked “why should a Get-rich-quick Society like ours
take time and the extreme pains necessary to make an organism of
anything”? 47 . And he adds: “The answer is yet to come” 48 said Wright in 1952.

And still, we are still waiting for that answer. What is here at stake in this
paper is not an historical revision of Wright’s words but a reminder of a very
sharp description of the state we are in. We claim it as a crucial departure
point to start thinking nowadays about space and architecture in order to find
a new direction where human character is considered.
Nowadays, a new understanding of organic is occurring where for
instance, organic shapes of micro-organism are shaped in computers and
then blown out of proportions and that shape is the basis for a structure. Man
is being expelled out of space by architecture. Useless, large spaces fit for an
alien but now for the human shape where we look and feel like ants. We’re
the new micro-organism. Architecture has made us smaller under the organic
tag, but in order to be organic (in Wright’s sense) the connection with nature
must not cease to exist. In a rapidly growing worldwide urban environment
how can we preserve the connection between man and nature?
We now have fifty years of experience of a “Get-rich-quick-Society”
where architecture has changed a lot becoming a lot of things except slow.
Built space is controlling us and not the other way around. Mechanized
architecture takes place everyday as if no man was supposed to live in a built
environment. Ethics and architecture do have a strong connection because
the way we build can have an edifying effect in ourselves. As human beings
we exist in space and time and architecture shapes them. So in a way
architecture shapes the future of human kind. And if that on one had seems
like a blunt praise on architecture it is also a statement of its serious
responsibility that should not be ignored. The more people are aware that this
is the situation the more able they will be to claim space to themselves, as
individuals. 49
Though this “Get-rich-quick-Society” kind of architecture is being
practiced at its extreme, for instance, in China and Dubai there are
exceptions. Swiss architect Peter Zumthor (b. 1943) seems to be the leader of
this not-openly-expressed movement that is holding several young architects’
attention. His work Vals spa (Therme Vals, Switzerland, 1996) took six years
to be completed and therefore stands as a powerful statement to makes us
understand what “slow architecture” is. Perhaps this is the concept that
nowadays most relates with Wright’s view on architecture. Will this new

generation of architects be able to embody a new vision for modern
architecture and actually turn it into something solid?
Perhaps Hitchcock has declared the obituary of International Style, but
somehow historically, he remains living on ending up having a double and
ambiguous role, representing both contemporary architecture and modern
architecture. What Wright reminds us is that modern architecture never was
meant to be contemporary architecture. Perhaps Hitchcock is right and the
International Style exists no more, but with Wright’s Organic-architecture,
nowadays, we do have a lot to learn and therefore his place among
architecture (theory, history and practice) should be claimed. With him, we
can find out what was modern architecture and use his principles (not rules, or
“Style”) to find new solutions for the future. And that’s Wright’s functionality’s
usefulness: to help architecture finds it’s way again.
1 This article had as its inspiration the third and fourth chapters of my PhD thesis titled “A cor
2 Hitchcock, “Forward to the 1966 edition” in Hitchcock; Johnson, 1995 (1966; 1932), p. 19
3 Johnson, “Forward to the 1995 edition” in Hitchcock; Johnson, 1995 (1966; 1932), p. 13-15
4 idem, p. 15
5 Hitchcock; Johnson, 1995 (1966; 1932), p. 30
6 Johnson, “Forward to the 1995 edition” in Hitchcock; Johnson, 1995 (1966; 1932), p. 16
7 idem, p. 34, 35
8 idem, p. 37
9 At that time the many discussion around “what is contemporary” still had not started yet, so
perhaps we can read it simply as “the style that exists now”, though nowadays an
understanding of the term has become both more confuse and complex.
10 Hitchcock; Johnson,, 1995 (1966; 1932), p. 34, 35
11 Despite the misspelling, as the book editor confirms, Wright does refer to Sigfried Giedion’s
“Space, Time & Architecture: the growth of a new tradition” (1941)
12 Wright; Mumford, 2001, p. 206, 207
13 “Wright had always – up to the last – the inspiration of a genius that reached far beyond his
own generation.” p. 427, also p. 398
14 Wright, 1992a, p. 338
15 Wright,1992a, p. 337
16 Wright,1995, p. 46
17 Wright,1995, p. 48
18 ibidem
19 Wright, 1995, p. 49
20 Wright, 1995, pp. 48, 49
21 Wright, 1995, p. 49
22 Wright, 1995, p. 48
23 Wright, 1995, p. 49
24 Wright, 1995, p. 50
25 Wright, 1995, p. 49
26 Hitchcock; Johnson, 1995 (1966; 1932), p. 50, 51
27 Hitchcock, “Forward to the 1966 edition” in Hitchcock; Johnson, 1995 (1966; 1932), p. 23
28 Wright, 1995, p. 47
29 Wright,1995, p. 48
30 Wright, 1995, p. 49

31
Wrigh, 1995, p. 50
32
Wright,1995, p. 49
33
Wright, 1995, p. 50
34
ibidem
35
Hitchcock, “Forward to the 1966 edition” in Hitchcock; Johnson, 1995 (1966; 1932), p. 23
36
Funded in New England (EUA) by Ralph Emerson with an essay titled “Nature” (1836).
37
Cook,, “Introduction”, in Emerson, 1956
38
Emerson, 1956
39
http://www.froebelgifts.com/
40
MacCormac, 2005, p. 126
41
ibidem
42
idem, p. 127
43
Wright, 1995, p. 239
44
idem, p. 240
45
Wright, 1995, p. 242
46
Wright, 1995, pp. 348, 349
47
Wright, 1995, p. 50
48 ibidem

Reference list
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, Selected Prose and Poetry, (ed. Reginald L. Cook), Rinehart & Co.,
Inc., USA, 1956
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell; Johnson, Philip, The New International Style, New York/ London:
W. W. Norton & Company, 1995 (1966; 1932)
MacCormac, Richard, “Form and Philosophy – Froebel’s Kindergarten Training and Wright’s
Early Work” (1974), in On and By Frank Lloyd Wright - A Primer of Architectural Principles,
Robert Mccarter (ed.) , Phaidon Press Limited, China, 2005
Wright, Frank Lloyd – Collected Writings, volume 1, 1894-1930, B.B. Pfeiffer (ed.), New York:
Rizzoli, 1992
- Frank Lloyd Wright – Collected Writings, volume 2, 1930-1932, B.B. Pfeiffer (ed.), New
York: Rizzoli, 1992
- Frank Lloyd Wright – Collected Writings, volume 3, 1931-1939, B.B. Pfeiffer (ed.), New
York: Rizzoli, 1993
- Frank Lloyd Wright – Collected Writings, volume 4, 1939-1949, B.B. Pfeiffer (ed.), New
York: Rizzoli, 1994
- Frank Lloyd Wright – Collected Writings, volume 5, 1949-1959, B.B. Pfeiffer (ed.), New
York: Rizzoli, 1995
Wright, Frank Lloyd; Mumford, Lewis, Frank Lloyd Wright & Lewis Mumford: thirty years of
correspondence, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2001