building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

Several architects of the twentieth century, who did actually look to the desert to
establish a special relationship between architecture and the landscape, suffered
the same fascination felt by the pioneers of the Old West before them. For
instance, the book Frank Lloyd Wright: Design for an American Landscape, 1922‐
1932 137 (1996) edited by David G. De Long (catalogue published for the exhibition
held at the CCA [Canadian Centre for Architecture] in Montreal and at the Library of
Congress in Washington) reconstructed Wright’s links to the desert landscape with
an analysis of five unbuilt projects: Gordon Strong Automobile Objective, Sugarloaf
Mountain, Maryland (1924‐25), Lake Tahoe Summer Colony, Emerald Bay, California
(1923), Doheny Ranch Development, Beverly Hills, California (1923), A.M. Johnson
Desert Compound, Grapevine Canyon, California (1924), San Marcos in the Desert,
Chandler, Arizona (1928‐29). It was Wright, who came to comprehend the desert by
means of new means of transportation. If the architecture of the pioneer of the
nineteenth century was subordinate to carriages, cattle and the horse, Wright’s
integrated the landscape, architecture and the automobile on a vast scale. These
projects of the 1920’s were to provide the conceptual premises for the birth of
Broadacre City. Furthermore, in this decade when he was achieving minor
professional goals, he concentrated on the meaning of architecture and on the
value of the materials used, by writing a series of articles In the Cause of
Architecture 138 , published on the pages of The Architectural Record.
As Wright himself said in his autobiography, it was Mr A.M. Johnson 139 , the sort of
man who was “a strange mixture of the fanatic and the mystic” 140 , who offered him
the opportunity of a reflection on the desert landscape: “He drove his own car, a
137 DE LONG, David, (ed) Frank Lloyd Wright: design for an American landscape, 1922‐1932, New
York, Harry N. Abrams, 1996
138 See in Italian: WRIGHT, Frank Lloyd, Per la causa dell’ architettura, introduction by Paolo
Portoghesi, Rome, Gangemi, 1989; In English see: GUTHEIM, Frederick (ed.), In the Cause of
Architecture: Essays/ by Frank Lloyd Wright for Architectural Record 1908‐1952; with a symposium
on architecture by eight who knew him by Andrew Devane, Victor Hornbein, Elizabeth Wright
Ingraham, Karl Kamrath, Elizabeth Kassler, Edgar Kaufmann Jr., Henry Klumb, Bruno Zevi, New York,
Architectural Record, 1975
139 A.M. Johnson was the client of the unbuilt Skyscraper for the National Life Insurance Company of
Chicago (1924). This project is dedicated to the memory of the Lieber Meister, Louis Sullivan, who
died in the same year, shortly after seeing the drawing of Wright’s building.
140 WRIGHT, Frank Lloyd, An Autobiography, New York, Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1943, p. 255 (Italian
translation by Bruno Oddera, Una Autobiografia, Milan, Editoriale Jaca Book, 2003, p.238)
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