FRANK LLYOD WRIGHT

“The good building is not one that hurts the landscape, but one which makes the
landscape more beautiful than it was before the building was built. ”
C O N T R I B U T I O N T O WA R D S H O U S I N G

• He published his book ‘the disappearing

city’ in 1932

• According to him, cities would no longer be

centralized; no longer beholden to the
pedestrian or the central business district.

• Vision of multi-centered, low density

(supposedly 5 people per acre), auto-
oriented suburbia.

• It was both a planning statement and a

socio-political scheme.

• It was exact opposite of transit oriented

development.
C O N T R I B U T I O N T O WA R D S H O U S I N G

• Frank Lloyd Wright Conceptualized the ‘Broadacre City’

(1932-1959)

• Broadacre is a community without experts. Everyone

does everything. Everyone's a farmer - industrial worker -
artist: reminiscence of the "Arts and Crafts" movement
from Wright's beginnings.
The ideal for labour is self-fulfilment.

• Broadacre isn't a city; it is a landscape. Decentralised in

organisation it is self-sufficient in supply, republican in
constitution, and populated by auto - mobile citizens. 

• Centred on the homestead, the single family house, A TRULY

Broadacre sprawls. 
PROPHETIC
• From this milieu emerges the plan for a community laying VISION OF
out their cities according to family values, spirituality and
knowledge.  MODERN
AMERICA
• Everyone owns land for cultivation, at least
one Acre (4046,856 m2, 165 by 264 Feet) The model
plan covers four square miles.
BROADACRE CITY
BROADACRE CITY
The Vision..
. . We live now in cities of the past, slaves of the machine and of traditional
building. We cannot solve our living and transportation problems by burrowing
under or climbing over, and why should we? We will spread out, and in so doing
will transform our human habitation sites into those allowing beauty of design and
landscaping, sanitation and fresh air, privacy and playgrounds, and a plot whereon
to raise things.”
 The Concept

“The broad acre city, where every family will have

at least an acre of land, is the inevitable
municipality of the future..”

• Broadacre’s vast suburban landscape,

seemingly scattered across an entire
continent, anticipates the prevailing urban
context, that eventually will shape the
condition of architecture.

• With his vision about the new city, Wrights

revealed the urban plan with the statement
and a socio-political scheme by which each
U.S. family would be given a one acre
(4,000 m²) plot of land from the federal
lands reserves, and a Wright-conceived
community would be built a new from this.

Early visions of Broadacre City by

Frank Lloyd Wright
The ‘Broadacre City’ is a
urban, sub-urban
development concept.

Each family would be given one acre

(4,000 m2) from the federal land
reserves .

Land would be taken into public

ownership; then granted to families
for as long as they used it
productively.
 The Model

 
12 x 12 ft. model illustrated the Broadacre City concept and it might be applied to a
representative 4 square miles plot of land.
ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPT
 
• Because of technological advancements, Wright came to believe that the large,
centralized city would soon become obsolete and people would return to their
rural roots.

• Wright despised the city, both physically and metaphorically.

OBJECTIVES

• Broadacre City each family is give one acre (4.000 m2) of land on which to build
a house and grow food.

• The city was considered to be (almost) fully self-sufficient.

• “More light, more freedom of movement and a more general spatial freedom in
the ideal establishment of what we call civilization.”
ASPECTS OF BROADACRE CITY THAT BECAME REALITIES
 
• Prevalence of urban sprawl

• Modern suburbia may have many differences with Broadacre, but there are
also many similarities.

• Single-family homes on larger parcels of land with smaller roads connecting to

larger roads connecting to freeways.

• Being able to own land, build a home, and do what you please with it were
important in Broadacre City.

• Wright believed that modern man had the right to own a car and to burn as
much gasoline in driving it as he desired.

• Agrarian Urbanism
BROADACRE CITY LAYOUT
MAIN STREETS AND WAYS
PLACES AND GREEN AREAS
UNIQUE ARCHITECTURE
USED OF SOILS
BROADACRE CITY
LAYOUT
 SINGULAR SECTION

• By 1958 Broadacre remains true to its socioeconomic concept, but generates different images. It
sells via monuments, Frank Lloyd Wright's monuments. The 'air-rotor' [helicopter] becomes a
trademark.

• Frank Lloyd Wright believed that by designing a better city, America's social failures would simply
dissolve.

• Instead of improving social order to achieve happiness for mankind, we apply technology to do
so. Before, the new society guaranteed to handle progress reasonably - now advanced
technology and science (considered an instrument to control these advancements) are trusted to
solve the contradictions of current states. 
 HOUSING TYPOLOGY

• The city starts with the

single family house.

• Due to Broadacre's
economical logic it is
being built by oneself (in
a DIY network). 

• Using standardized
elements and partly
prefabricated building
modules it is fairly
extendable.

• But first of all it is

affordable, although
money has almost no
relevance in Broadacre.

The Usonian
House as a typology
evolves. 
The road is a symbol of individual freedom. Cars aren't simply contemporary or modern, they
represent democracy itself. The technology to cross and to communicate long distance facilitates: 

air, light and freedom of movement. 

Resolving the volume of traffic as well as coming to terms with prosperity shift
focus. Horizontality and mobility are at the centre of attention in master plan
simulations of the time. 
 Broadacre was a testing ground for perfection, or at the very least something more
civilized than the chaos that seemed to define 20th century life.

 Wright foresaw that his model for the perfect community would probably never
actually be built to his specifications. He believed that perhaps America was too broken
to recover from the degradation of the city; too blind to the possibilities of what he saw
as a better way of life.

DISADVANTAGES

• Too real to be Utopian and too dreamlike to be of practical importance.

• Demands motor transportation for even the most casual or ephemeral meetings.

• Didn’t see the large population increase from 2B in 1930 -7B present time, increase
in fuel prices, environmental repercussions
 
 AN UNBUILT VISION—THAT'S ALL AROUND US AND THE REALITY TODAY

Broadacre City is the reality that is today. To some extent the interstate highways, the rise of
massive shopping malls, the cookie-cutter developments in suburbia — they are Broadacre, and
Broadacre is them in a lot of ways. Not necessary planned, more in a piecemeal fashion.
 SUMMARY
• The development of his ‘Broadacres’ concept, provides a conceptual insight into
how Wright proposed that the process of decentralization, driven by technological
advance in the areas of communication and transportation, would seek to outwork
these theoretical beliefs.

• The legacy of Wright’s ideas is entrenched in the development of suburban cities

in the post- World War II era, despite his ideas having been criticized for being too
utopian in nature, resulting in his main conceptual model, ‘Broadacres’, never
coming to fruition in any concrete holistic form, leaving his legacy to be considered
more prophetic than directly functional.

• We got the cars; the sprawl; the gas stations. Cities as diverse as Los Angeles and
Houston and Janesville, Wisconsin are in some ways versions of Wright's
Broadacre dream. But in the end, for better and for worse, America never saw the
rise of that architect king.

• Lloyd Wright may not be considered to have left a distinct physical legacy upon the
outcomes of urban planning in the twentieth century, but his conceptualization still
provides the basis for a particular understanding of how the modern suburban
metropolis has developed in the post-industrialist era.
REFERENCES

• Alofsin, A. (2011). Broadacre City—Ideal and Nemesis. American Art, 25(2),

21-25.
• Dougherty, J. (1981). Broadacre City: Frank Lloyd Wright's Utopia. The
Centennial Review, 25(3), 239-256.
• Grabow, S. (1977). Frank Lloyd Wright and the American City: The
Broadacres Debate. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 43(2), 115-
124.
• Habibi, S., & Asadi, N. (2011). Causes, results and methods of controlling
urban sprawl. Procedia Engineering, 21(0), 133-141.
• Irigoyen, A. (2000). Frank Lloyd Wright in Brazil. The Journal of Architecture,
5(2), 137-157.
• Le Gates, R., Stout, F., & Wright, F. L. (2011). Broadacre city: A new
community plan' from Architectural Record. The City Reader (5th ed., pp. 345-
350). London: Routledge.
• McCarter, R. (2006). Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Reaktion Books.