building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

Robert McCarter gives a similar interpretation of this point to the one we have just
suggested: “Broadacre City reflects Wright’s ideal of relating to the land [...] With
this new vision of life in the prairie landscape, Wright also reconnected to Frederick
Jackson Turner’s 1893 lecture establishing the importance of the frontier and
pioneer spirit to American democracy. Wright wrote that: ”. 91
For this reason, Wright refused the idea of today's crowded metropolis far away
from nature, as he had matured a diametrically opposed idea.
On the contrary, the principles of organic architecture actually stem from the idea
that architecture is a sort of extension of nature itself. Furthermore, as Edward
Frank recalls “the ecological relationship extends to man, about which Wright
affirms: ” 92 . Probably such words contain what in the
course of the twentieth century had seemed to be Wright’s remaining romantic
traces and today they reintroduce his modern landscape awareness.
93 .
The grid which had produced New York, a city which embodies Wright's mobocracy,
proved with Broadacre that it could generate from the same scheme a town
founded on much more delicate social links than those imposed by property
speculation. However, Broadacre City actually refused the isolation of agricultural
91 McCARTER, Robert, Frank Lloyd Wright, London, Reaktion Books Ltd, 2006, p. 130 (Italian
translation by Vito Calabretta, Frank Lloyd Wright, afterword by Roberta Martinis, Torino, Bollati
Boringhieri, 2008, p.142). It is important to note that the Wright’s consideration about
“decentralization” are related to the New Deal economic programs sponsored by Franklin D.
Roosevelt in the same years.
92 FRANK, Edward, Pensiero organico e architettura wrightiana, Bari: Dedalo libri, 1978; p. 45
[translation by the editor from Italian]
93 Ibid. p. 107
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