building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

In the centre of the town there were lots reserved for school buildings, as suggested
in the model envisaged by the Land Act, whereas in other strategic locations large,
free and/or equipped areas for common use were to be identified [Figure 49].
Much has been written about Broadacre in an attempt to reconstruct the genesis of
this project: from the hypotheses of the contest of the Chicago City Club Quarter
Section (1913) to the project for Ocatillo (1929) [Figure 65], no‐one has ever found
convincing proof that the most radical trait of Wright's proposal was not the
regressive utopia of back to the land, but rather his adhesion to the logic inherent in
the landscape of the American Midwest, which he had studied and reworked. A
comparison of the aerial and satellite photos of the Midwestern States will suffice
to show how the section continues to be the yardstick for the American landscape.
The assessment of this data demonstrates that in the history of town planning
Broadacre cannot be considered an aristocratic refusal of the city and of its
mobocracy. On the contrary, it underlines a certainly utopian attempt to unite the
natural and mechanical worlds. Broadacre is not merely the city of wide open
spaces with vineyards, orchards and farms, but is also a modern territory crossed by
the railroad and the motorway, marked by many factories and modern
telecommunication equipment. Recently, Robert McCarter lingers on those possible
technological inspirations and makes a quick comparison of the ideas contained in
Wright’s project, relating them to their cultural and literary context:
Wright’s concept, which he called Broadacre City in his book The
Disappearing City (1932), was also influenced by a number of other
sources, including Fields, Factories and Workshops (1898) by the
anarchist Peter Kropotkin, a Russian prince in exile, who predicted the
impact of electrical and communication grids and high‐speed motorways
leading to the merging of city and country; Progress and Poverty (1879)
by Henry George, who called for the removal of land from private
ownership and the single tax system; and Anticipations of the Reaction
of Mechanical and Scientific Process upon Human Life and Thought
(1901) by H.G. Wells, who predicted the diffusion of the population
across the countryside, and their accommodation in what he called the
‘pratically automatic house’. 89
89 McCARTER, Robert, Frank Lloyd Wright, London, Reaktion Books Ltd, 2006, p. 125‐126 (Italian
translation by Vito Calabretta, Frank Lloyd Wright, afterword by Roberta Martinis, Torino, Bollati
Boringhieri, 2008, p. 137)
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