Casele de prerie și reflexiile europene ale domesticității americane

#6
The Prairie Houses and the European Reflections of American Domesticity
#6
Robert McCarter, Frank Lloyd Wright, Phaidon Press, 1997
Donald Langmead, Donald Leslie Johnson, Architectural excursions: Frank Lloyd Wright, Holland and
Europe, Greenwood Press, 2000
Vincent Scully, Modern Architecture and Other Essays, Princeton University Press, 2002
H. Allen Brooks, “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Destruction of the Box”, JSAH, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Mar.,
1979), University of California Press
Louis Sullivan
1856–1924

1906-1907 National Farmers Bank, Owatonna, Minnesota

Louis Sullivan
1856–1924

1906-1907 National Farmers Bank, Owatonna, Minnesota

Louis Sullivan
1856–1924

1906-1907 National Farmers Bank, Owatonna, Minnesota

Louis Sullivan
1856–1924

1914 Purdue State Bank, West Lafayette, Indiana

Louis Sullivan
1856–1924

1914 Merchants National Bank, Grinnell, Iowa

Louis Sullivan
1856–1924

1914 Merchants National Bank, Grinnell, Iowa

Louis Sullivan
1856–1924

1914 Merchants National Bank, Grinnell, Iowa

Louis Sullivan
1856–1924

1918 People's Federal Savings and Loan Association, Sidney, Ohio

Louis Sullivan
1856–1924

1901-1902/1918 Kindergarten Chats

1924 Autobiography of an Idea
Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1889-98 Own House and Studio, Oak Park, Chicago, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1889-98 Own House and Studio, Oak Park, Chicago, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1889-98 Own House and Studio, Oak Park, Chicago, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1889-98 Own House and Studio, Oak Park, Chicago, Illinois

The Prairie School

“What was the matter with the kind of house I found on the prairie?” he asked, “Just
for a beginning, let’s say that house lied about everything. It had no sense of Unity …
To take any one of those so-called ‘homes’ away would have improved the landscape
and cleared the atmosphere… My first feeling therefore had been a yearning for
simplicity.”

— a new way of living away from 19 century aesthetics, away from historical styles,
linked to the American landscape, suitable for the traditional house, in tune with its
environment (its place, time and scope)
The Prairie School
Percy Dwight Bentley
John S. Van Bergen
Lawrence Buck
Ransom Buffalow
Barry Byrne
Alfred Caldwell
Alden B. Dow
William Drummond
George Grant Elmslie
Marion Mahony Griffin
Walter Burley Griffin
Edward Humrich
E. Fay Jones
Henry John Klutho
George Washington Maher
John Randal McDonald
Dwight Heald Perkins
William Gray Purcell
Isabel Roberts
Robert C. Spencer
Francis Conroy Sullivan
Claude and Starck
William LaBarthe Steele
Trost & Trost
Andrew Willatzen
Taylor Woolley
The 'Home in a Prairie Town' was formed
from long low horizontals stretching
parallel to the flat land of the site. The
sprawling roofs extended to the
surroundings and drew the porches, the
porte-cochère and the main volumes into a
vital, asymmetrical unity. Windows were
reduced to simple screens – there were few
solid walls – and the spaces inside were
linked together. Much of the furniture was
built-in and the character of the interiors
was commodious yet elegant. At the heart
was the hearth and all the diverse spaces
of the house were placed relative to this
centripetal element. There was still axial
control and hierarchy, but the rotational
and asymmetrical were combined with this
in an architecture of sliding and
overlapping planes enlivened by an
intense rhythm.

William J. R. Curtis, Modern Architecture since 1900,

Phaidon Press, 1982, 79
Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1893-4 William H. Winslow House, River Forest, Illinois

First. To reduce the number of necessary parts of the house and the separate rooms to a minimum, and make all come
together as enclosed space — so divided that light, air and vista permeated the whole with a sense of unity.

Second. To associate the building as a whole with its site by extension and emphasis of all the planes parallel to the
ground, but keeping the floors off the best part of the site, thus leaving that better part for use in connection with
the life of the house.

Third. To eliminate the room as a box and the house as another by making all walls enclosing screens — the ceilings
and floors and enclosing screens to flow into each other as one large enclosure of space, with inner subdivisions
only. Make all house proportions more liberally human, with less wasted space in structure, and structure more
appropriate to material, so the whole more liveable.

Fourth. To get the unwholesome basement up out of the ground, entirely above it, as a low pedestal…

Fifth. To harmonize all necessary opening to ‘outside’ or to ‘inside’ with good human proportions and make them
appear naturally […] Usually they appeared as ‘light-screens’ instead of walls […]

Sixth. To eliminate combinations of different materials in favour of mono materials so far as possible: to use no
ornament that did not come out of nature of the materials to make the whole building clearer and more
expressive as a place to live in […]

Seventh. To incorporate all heating, lighting, plumbing so that these systems became constituent parts of the building […]

Eighth. To incorporate as organic architecture – as far as possible – furnishings, making them all one with the building
and designing them in simple terms for machine work. Again all straight lines and rectangular forms.

Ninth. Eliminate the decorator. He was all curves and all efflorescence, if not all ‘period.’

in William J. R. Curtis, Modern Architecture since 1900, Phaidon Press, 1982, 80-81
Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1901 Ward W. Willits House, Highland Park, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1902-4 Susan L. Dana House, Springfield, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1902-4 Susan L. Dana House, Springfield, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1902-4 Susan L. Dana House, Springfield, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1902-4 Susan L. Dana House, Springfield, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1903-5 Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1904-06 Larkin Administration Building,

Buffalo, New York
Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1905-08 Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois

© Xavier de Jauréguiberry, www.divisare.com

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1906-8 Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1906-8 Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1906-8 Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1906-8 Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1906-8 Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois

Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

1908-12 Avery Coonley House, Riverside, Illinois

Portofoliu Wasmuth
1910–1911
— 100 de litografii cu planuri, secțiuni, perspective ale lui FL Wright acompaniate de o monografie
— mai mult de jumătate atribuite lui Marion Mahony Griffin, fost asistent al lui Wright
Robert van’t Hoff
1887 – 1979
Villa Verloop, Huis ter Heide, Utrecht, 1915-16
Robert van’t Hoff
1887 – 1979
Villa Henny, Huis ter Heide, Utrecht, 1915-19
FL Wright
1909-10: Hotel, Mason City, Iowa
Walter Gropius, Adolf Meyer
1914 : Model factory for Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition
Walter Gropius
When the Academy of Arts in Berlin arranged an exhibition of. . . Wright's work in 1911 and
[Wasmuth] subsequently published a portfolio of it, I first became attracted to his strong, imaginative
approach. . . . I was impressed by the Larkin Building in Buffalo and bytheRobiehouseinChicago....
MyacquaintancewithWright'swork...helpedmeto become more articulate in defining my own design
philosophy.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

Here finally was a master-builder drawing upon the veritable fountainhead of architecture. . . . The
more deeply we studied Wright's creations, the greater became our admiration for his incomparable
talent, for the boldness of his conceptions, and for his independence in thought and action. The
dynamic impulse emanating from his work invigorated a whole generation. His influence was strongly
felt even when it was not actually visible.
Donald Langmead, Donald Leslie Johnson, Architectural excursions: Frank Lloyd Wright, Holland and Europe, 28,30.
Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

(from) H. Allen Brooks, “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Destruction of the Box”, JSAH, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Mar., 1979)
University
8 of California Press

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1867–1959
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Frank Lloyd Wright, Ward Willits house, Highland Park,
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a Wright house,form,one roomthispenetratesinto the other, usually at the corners, with each relinquishingpart of its space
at thecorners. to the other. Sometimes this occurs at different levels creating
creates a balcony (Roberts,Baker, Millard at Pasadena)
A, B, and C show the
or COLD and varying floor and ceiling heights. The
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A comparison of thethree
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heights
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which,
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Fig. 6. Robert Frank Lloyd Wright, Ward Willits house, Highland Park,
Fig. 5.Home
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the Nature of Materials).
5 and 6).
Frank Lloyd Wright
1867–1959

(from) H. Allen Brooks, “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Destruction of the Box”, JSAH, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Mar., 1979)
University of California Press
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the s
Figure io-B (AusgefiihrteBauten. i9i). mas
Fig. io. A: typical room with walls joined at four corners. B: Fig. 7. Frank Lloyd Wright, Unity Temple, Oak Park, IL, 90o6,
Wright'sfirst step: eliminate the corners, thus turning the walls interiorpier(JohnSzarkowski). look