Interdisciplinary Studies in Letters & Science

Chabot College - Spring 2006

Selected Readings from

In the Cause of Architecture

by Frank Lloyd Wright

Essay 1: "In the Cause of Architecture" - March 1908

"Radical though it be, the work here illustrated is Wright has been working for
dedicated to a cause conservative in the best sense of about 20 years by now, and
the word. At no point does it involve denial of the his building credits are
elemental law and order inherent in all great significant. Starting under
architecture; rather, is it a declaration of love for the Louis Sullivan's vision and
spirit of that law and order, and a reverential teaching, he has evolved his
recognition of the elements that made its ancient letter first characteristic "style",
in its time vital and beautiful." which some called radical.

"Primarily, Nature furnished the materials for

architectural motifs out of which the architectural forms
as we know them today have been developed, and,
Wright's thesis is clear - use
although our practice for centuries has been for the
Nature as our guide, rather
most part to turn from her, seeking inspiration in books
than cling to past practice
and adhering slavishly to dead formulae, her wealth of
without understanding the
suggestion is inexhaustible; her riches greater than any
organic nature of the
man's desire."
building, site, people, and
intended use.
"But given inherent vision there is no source so fertile,
so suggestive so helpful aesthetically for the architect
as a comprehension of natural law."

How does Wright use

"A sense of the organic is indispensable to an
"organic" in the architectural
architect..."
sense?
"Japanese art knows this school more intimately than
that of any people. In common use in their language Wright apparently began to
there are many words like the word "edaburi,", which, learn of Japanese and Asian
translated as near as may be, means the formative architectures under Sullivan;
arrangement of the branches of a tree. We have no he visited Japan numerous
work in English, we are not yet sufficiently civilized to times before moving there to
think in such terms, but the architect must not only construct houses and his
learn to think in such terms but he must learn in this most famous of Japanese
school to fashion his vocabulary for himself and furnish buildings, the Imperial
it in a comprehensive way with useful words as Hotel.
significant as this one."

Wright's Propositions:
1. Simplicity & Repose are the qualities that measure the true value of any work of art.
But simplicity is not in itself an end nor is it a matter of the side of a barn but rather an
entity with a graceful beauty in its integrity from which discord, and all that is
meaningless, has been eliminated.

 Few rooms, comfort, utility, and beauty

 Doors, windows are integral with structure and form
 Excess detail & ornament are vulgar "Merely that it looks rich is no justification
for the use of ornament."
 Assimilate fixtures into design
 Pictures deface what should be decorative
 Furniture should be integral

2. Individualism: As many styles of house as kinds of people "A man who has
individuality (and what man lacks it?) has a right to its expression in his own
environment."

3. Building should grow from its site

 Nature is quiet, substantial, organic

 The Prairie is quiet, level
 Roofs should have gentle slopes, low proportions, quiet sky lines
 Heavy set chimneys
 Sheltering Overhangs, low terraces, outreaching walls

4. Colors: Go to the woods and fields for soft, warm optimistic tones of earths and
autumn leaves

5. Bring out the nature of materials

 Strip wood of varnish and stain it

 Reveal the nature of wood, plaster, brick or stone: friendly and beautiful
6. House of character, not of fashion, grows in value

Above all, Integrity.

"From the beginning of my practice the question

uppermost in my mind has been not "what style" but
"what is style?" and it is my belief that the chief value
of the work illustrated here will be found in the fact that
if in the face of our present day conditions any given
type may be treated independently and imbued with the
quality of style, then a truly noble architecture is a
definite possibility, so soon as Americans really
demand it of the architects of the rising generation."

1) Wright's "Prairie Style"

"A study of the illustrations will show that the buildings
has produced notable
presented fall readily into three groups having a family
buildings including many of
resemblance;
the houses noted for this
essay. In comparison to
1) the low-pitched roofs, heaped together in pyramidal
Victorian Architecture, the
fashion, or presenting quiet, unbroken skylines,
Prairie style emphasized
open spaces, rather than
boxes within boxes
characteristic of Victorian
2) the low roofs with simple pediments countering on
rooms. See also the Hillside
long ridges; and
Home School

2) Dana House
3) those topped with a simple slab.
3) Unity Temple

"The architecture is not 'thrown up' as an artistic

exercise, a matter of elevation from a preconceived
ground plan. The schemes are conceived in three
dimensions as organic entities..."

"In a fine art sense these designs have grown as natural

plants grow, the individuality of each is integral and as
complete as skill, time, strength, and circumstances
would permit."

"The method in itself does not of necessity produce a

beautiful building, but it does provide a framework as a
basis which has an organic integrity, susceptible to the
architect's imagination and at once opening to him
Nature's wealth of artistic suggestion, ensuring him a
guiding principle within which he can never be wholly
false, out of tune, or lacking in rational motif."

Essay 2: "In the Cause of Architecture" - May 1914

"I still believe that the sense of an organic architecture,

once grasped, carries with it in its very nature the
Look at the incarnations of
discipline of an ideal at whatever cost to self interest or
Taliesin (destroyed by fire in
the established order. [By organic architecture I mean
1914 and once more before
an architecture that develops from within outward in
being rebuilt in 1925.)
harmony with the conditions of its being as
distinguished from one that is applied from without.]"

"These forms were the result of a conscientious study

of materials and of the machine which is the real tool,
whether we like it or not, that we must use to give
shape to our ideals - a tool which at that time had What is Wright's style in this
received no such artistic consideration from artists or essay, and how does it differ
architect....The principles, however, underlying the from the first, written some
fundamental ideal of an organic architecture... are 6 years earlier? Why?
common to all work that ever rang true in the
architecture of the world, and free as air to any pair of
honest young lungs that will breathe deeply enough."

"As for the vital principles of an organic architecture,

that has been lost to sight, even by pupils. But I still
Can you detect a change in
believe as firmly as ever that without artist integrity and
the man's perception of his
this consequent individuality manifesting itself in
place in the world?
multifarious forms, there can be no great architecture,
no great artists, no great civilization, no worthy life."

"This is Art, then, in a sentimental Democracy, which

seems to be only another form of the self-same
hypocrisy?"
For those interested in an
"The 'Democracy' of the man in the American street is
extension of this philosophy,
no more than the Gospel of Mediocrity. When it is
read Ayn Rand's "The
understood that a great Democracy is the highest form
Fountainhead".
of Aristocracy conceivable, not of birth or place or
wealth, but of those qualities that give distinction to the
man as a man, and that as a social state it must be
characterized by the honesty and responsibility of the
absolute individualist as the unit of its structure, then
only can we have an Art worthy the name."

"'The letter killeth'; yes, but the more deadly still is the
undertow of false democracy that poses the man as a
creative artist and starves him to death unless he fakes
his goddess or persuades himself, with 'language,' that
the cow is really she."

"And this thing that eludes the disciple... what is it?

"First, a study of the nature of materials you elect to

use and the tools you must use with them, searching to
find the characteristic qualities in both that are suited to
your purpose.

"Second, with an ideal of organic nature as a guide, so

to unite these qualities to serve that purpose, that the
fashion of what you do has integrity or is natively fit,
regardless of perceived notions of style. Style is a
byproduct of the process and comes of the man or the
mind in the process. The style of the thing, therefore,
will be the man - it is his."

Essay 3: "Part III. Steel" - August 1927

By 1927, at age 60, Wright

was in debt, and the coming
of the Depression would
"Steel is the epic of this age." shrink his commissions to
almost nothing. He was
"Now, ductile and tensile, dense to any degree, uniform considered washed up as an
and calculable to any standard, steel is a known architect, and yet he was
quantity to be dealt with mathematically to a certainty metamorphosing into his
to the last pound: a miracle of strength to be counted third-generation style, and
upon!" his most spectacular. Look
at the writing in this essay -
"Mathematics in the flesh - at work for man!" the command of material,
his knowledge of
engineering, his enthusiasm
for the capabilities.

"In itself it has little beauty, neither grain nor texture of What does Wright think of
surface." the buildings made from
steel thus far?
"But the weaknesses of steel are not fatal to beautiful
use, nor is the lack of individuality in texture other than
an opportunity for the imagination."

"Here we have reinforced concrete, a new dispensation.

A new medium for the new world of thought and
Remember this is 1927,
feeling that seems ideal: a new world that must follow
almost 80 years ago, and
freedom from the imprisonment in the abstract in which
Wright was entirely correct.
tradition binds us. Democracy means liberation from
Today all buildings and
those abstractions, and therefore life, more abundantly
bridges, roadways and
in the concrete. This is not intended as a pun. It
walkways, are made of
happens to be so literally, for concrete combined with
reinforced concrete.
steel strands will probably become the physical body of
the modern civilized world."

"The limitation of the human imagination is all that ties

the hands of the modern architect except the poison in
his veins fostered by "good taste" for dead forms."

Do you see the seeds of

"And again, easier to comprehend are the new forms Fallingwater and Taliesin
brought to and by reinforced concrete. First among and what Wright is about to
them is the slab - next the cantilever-then the splay." create over the next 30 years
here?

"Here, 'young men in architecture', is your palette. The

'foyer' of your new world."

"And never lose sight of the fact that all in this new
world is no longer in two dimensions. That was the old
world. We are capable of a world now in three
dimensions; the third, as I have said before, interpreted
as a spiritual matter that makes all integral - "at one."

"How life may be blessed by the release this simple

development of its viewpoint will bring to mankind.

"The trace of human imagination as the poetic language

of line and color must now live in the thing so far as it
is natural to it. And that is very far."
 Last Updated: 3/31/06 - SH

ISLS - Spring 2006 - Frank Lloyd Wright

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