Lack of social ability to get jobs. Arrogance with customers. Refusal to comply with their tastes.
Frank Lloyd Wright
[
AR made the following notes on Wright’s autobiography
.]
Apprenticeship in architects’ offices. Originality and insubordination.
Resented by his fellow-beginners. Resentment against his originality, independence, lack of “social” qualities, and boss’ favor, as well as obvious talent. Slander, ridicule, interference with work. Attempts to get him out.
Incident with [Daniel H.] Burnham. Attempt to bribe [Wright] into submission to prevailing styles and commercial success—on the very basis of the originality of his talent.
Opening his own office—big wish.
“American Institute of Architects,” The A.I.A. (Check up on this and on all architectural associations and publications.)
Compromise on a house for money’s sake. Subsequent shame at hearing the house praised.
First building praised, admired—and ridiculed. Requests for more houses like the “compromise” and his attempts to talk clients out of it.
Office taken with another architect—but not as partners.
Incident with Cecil [Corwin]—who quit because of envy for Wright’s superior talent.
Speeches at clubs. Editorial comments. Antagonism of professionals.
Ridicule—and yet notice and inept copying, distorting of his ideas.
Gradual growth and development of his own individual style.
His principles in house building: simplicity, elimination of unnecessary details and trimmings; real fireplaces, flat roofs, abundance of windows, light, spaciousness. Elimination of different materials in favor of one. Flat, parallel planes. Straight, geometrical lines. “Organic” architecture. Antagonism to and ridicule of these houses. Calling them “heresy.” Misunderstanding and confusion of his work with established eclectic styles.
Interior—spaciousness. Eliminating unnecessary walls and doors—“boxes within boxes.”
“Plasticity”—building as a harmonious whole.
Engineers could not help with this structural continuity. Emphasis on the nature and individual qualities of building materials. New materials: steel, glass, concrete.
Reactions of public to these new buildings
: Bankers refused to finance them. Mill men refused to work for them. Contractors misunderstood the plans. Some of them went broke. The worst type of contractor appeared on the scene. Interior decorators refused to work for owners—because architect had to okay everything.
Refused steadily to enter a competition. [He held that] the world has gained no building worth having by a competition because:
1. The jury is necessarily a hand-picked average. Some “constituency” must agree upon the “jury.”
2. Therefore the first thing this average jury does is go through all the designs and throw out the best ones and the worst ones. This is necessary in order that the average may average upon something average.
3. Therefore any architectural competition will be an average upon an average in behalf of the average.
4. The net result is a building that is well behind the times before it is built.
Every architect entering a competition does so to win a prize. So he aims at what he conceives to be the common prejudices and predilections of the “jury.” Invariably, the man who does this most accurately wins the competition.
Committee decisions, too, are seldom above mediocre unless the committee is “run” by some strong individual.
One such individual gave the commission for the Unity Temple to Wright.
[Wright:] “Why not, then, build a temple, not to God in that way—more sentimental than sense—but build a temple to man, appropriate to his uses as a meeting place, in which to study man himself for his God’s sake?”
All artistic creation has a philosophy. The first condition of creation.
Hard work on coordinating minor features with the whole. (This coordination of details to the whole—isn’t that the same as plot construction in accordance with your theme?)
Interiors expressed in exteriors—“the living motif of the architecture.”
Hardest of an architect’s trials: to show his work, first time, to anyone not entirely competent, perhaps unsympathetic....
At this moment the creative architect is distinctly at a disadvantage as compared with his obsequious brother of the “styles.” His brother can show his pattern-book of “styles,” speak glibly of St. Marks at Venice and of Capella Palatine, impress the no less craven clients by a brave show of erudite authorities—abash them.
But the architect with the ideal of an organic architecture at stake can talk only principle and sense. His only appeal must be made to the independent thought and judgment of his client. The client, too, must know how to think from generals to particulars. How rare it is to go into court where that quality of mind is on the bench! This architect has learned to dread personal idiosyncrasy—offered him three times out of five as substitute for such intelligence.
Fight to persuade the committee. One dumbbell with stupid criticisms, objections, and doubts is always present and dissenting.
Contractors bid after the plans are approved. Most of them refuse—because it is too new, too much of a risk. Those that do bid charge twice too much. No one really wants it. A contractor is needed to “rescue ideas, to participate in creation.”
Congratulations after the Temple opened.
[Wright] does not believe in ancient traditional church building—because traditional religion itself is dead. (This is important for architecture as a reflection of the architect’s philosophy.)
He gets a commission because the clients saw in his houses “the countenances of principle.”
Lack of general response to his work after a period of intensive labor, day and night.
Architect calls in sculptors and artists. Architect—the master of them all. He sometimes slept “on a pile of shavings” right at the construction works.
A female model posing for sculptors right in a shanty on the building site.
Unions interfering and stopping construction on frequent occasions, on silly pretexts.
Cheap additions, such as a glowing electric sign, that ruin the architect’s idea. [...]
[Wright:] “Equivocal conduct hurts ten times more those who practice it than those it is practiced upon.”
The “eternal triangle”—architect, owner, contractor. Owner often takes contractor’s side against the architect.
Owner decides to build and make changes without consulting architect.
Usually it is necessary to defeat the contractor’s advice to the client.
He had no real organization. “My office is me.”
“I don’t know why houses have so much grief concealed in them, if they try to be anything at all and try to live as themselves. But they do. Like people in this I suppose.”
“The greater the idea, the greater the banker animosity.”
Owner choosing contractor and insisting on him.
The architect has to defend the construction of his building continually.
“Where creative effort is involved there are no trivial circumstances. The most trivial of them may ruin the whole issue. Eternal vigilance is the only condition of creation in architecture.”
Sullivan—ruined by provincial prejudice against his personal habits. “A genius? That term damned him as it was intended to.”
The rarest and most fortunate occurrence in any architect’s life: opportunity, ideal site, and a man who understands.
Dangers of construction: building settling because of too great a weight.
Foreign exhibit of photographs, drawings, models. Lectures. Dinners given in architect’s honor.
Remark about the worthlessness of courthouse in Milwaukee. Storm in the press. Furious enmity. Even attempts at arrest on trumped-up charge. But big lecture and enthusiastic audience nevertheless.
Speaks at Architect’s dinner in New York. Alone and against the majority of speakers. Obvious resentment of others.
[Wright] gets his houses accepted by convincing the client that he (the architect) is right, by explaining the truth clearly.
Other architects try to make Wright out as “difficult,” because he does not “stay in line with them,” even though he has had no troubles with his clients. Work came to him, instead of his going out after work. He “stayed in line” with his principles, not with salesmanship.
“Eclectics haven’t much artist-conscience and what little they have is guilty.”
His ideals: The importance of interior space expressed in the exterior, “inside” and “outside” as one. The use of glass to this end. Open buildings as contrast to the “caves” of ancient architecture. “Freedom” substituted for “fear.” Steel construction and “plasticity” unknown to ancient architecture. A variety of new materials—each to determine the style of the building it is used on. “Organic” ornament to express the meaning of the whole, not merely for looks and trimming effects.
No more buildings of one material to imitate another (such as: steel made to look like masonry, etc.).
Buildings, just as airplanes, steamships and automobiles, should look like what they are, be what they are.
February 23, 1937
Lewis Mumford,
Sticks and Stones
.
Rather strained attempts to connect architecture with sociology, particularly in explaining the prevalence of certain styles at certain times by economic conditions, à la Marx. (The classic style in America because of its “imperial” atmosphere is in keeping with the “imperial” mood of the rising capitalists.) Good for Toohey.
February 27, 1937
Arthur Woltersdorf,
Living Architecture
.
The smugness, stodginess, dull commonplaceness of officially recognized architectural authorities, as exemplified in most essays of this book. The only exception—the only architect with something definite and fresh to say—is a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright and not a member of the American Institute of Architects, as are most of the others. Characteristic of officialdom when it tries to “go modern”: staleness, a reluctant repetition of the truths proclaimed by the real modem [architects], which are too obvious to be disclaimed and are therefore embraced half-heartedly, mechanically, without conviction, consistency or fire, evidencing an amazing ability to make even a new truth sound like a bromide; at the same time, obviously no desire to accept this modernism as a whole, a struggling and pulling to compromise, to incorporate the old traditions with the new or to explain the old lamely with new formulas borrowed from modernism. A magnificent display of reluctance to say anything positive, important, fundamental or vigorous. A great deal of talk about meaningless details, a re-chewing of trivialities, with all great fundamental principles ignored, with no real faith to proclaim, only a great show of cheap erudition and pseudo-importance in detailed knowledge of many nothings.
A great emphasis on “public spirit,” on duty to the community, on being only “servants and expressors of national spirit, general spirit, mood of the people, trend of the times,” etc.
Typical quotation: “The problem is to know the past and still be free to speak in a language that will hold the man in the street, so that he will think and talk about architecture as his wife does about her favorite movie star.”
Incidental question: a librarian writing about library building insists that libraries must be made to look as accessible to the public as possible—to “bring the library nearer to the people.” “Spacious and inviting entrances are placed at grade level, close to the public thoroughfare, with as few steps as possible between the pedestrian and the building.” This may be quite sound in relation to library architecture, but the question it raises, in a more general sense, is this: is it advisable to spread out all the conveniences of culture before people to whom a few steps up a stair to a library is a sufficient deterrent from reading? Hasn’t that something to do with the attitude behind general education for those better left illiterate?
The advocates of “housing projects” rave about a hideous example of a huge block of buildings all alike, with a series of windows like those in a jail, where your feeling of an individually owned house (“my home is my castle”) is reduced to owning three dots of windows out of a myriad of identical bee-hive cells. (This is to be advocated by Toohey—just right for him.)
Another typical quotation—regarding the expression of “true American” architecture:
In experience and expression each individual will contribute some factor common to all. The sum total of these common experiences and modes of expression is the common denominator, the factor which dominates the race or the community; which distinguishes it and individualizes it. The development and enrichment of this factor is not imitation but worthy progression. [...]
Climate, Geography, Race, Nationalism must impress and inspire the architect in this desired, if not at once forthcoming, expression. The architect cannot stand alone by himself ignoring the workings of these four great influencing factors, stand alone and endeavor merely to express himself, and achieve an art which shall be so generally and widely expressive of fundamentals as to last and become a permanent influence, as permanent and as lasting in effect as the social organism of which he is part. If he is apart from, rather than a part of, the social order neither the artist nor his words will persist.
(Great for Toohey!)
Isn’t the exact opposite true of Frank Lloyd Wright? Doesn’t the genius and the new always come as opposite to the “spirit of the community” and have to fight like hell against it? I grant that the genius will not be known and will not influence the general culture unless he is fairly widely recognized. Isn’t it then a question of
forcing
that recognition on the community (through the recognition of a few leaders), rather than a question of the genius “expressing” his community—whatever that is? If a genius passes unnoticed, the loss is humanity‘s, more than his. There must have been many great innovators that never influenced culture because they were not recognized in time. So much the worse for culture. Culture is not the supreme arbiter, always right by the mere fact that it took a certain turn and not another. It is largely chance, the result of the eternal fight between man and masses. And if we judge men in their own time and reality, which is all that counts to men, let them be judged by their intrinsic value, not by their relation to a vague accident called “culture.” A work of art is great by what it is, not by how many cheap imitations it has created in its assimilation into a “cultural” movement. (“The vermin of the cultured that feasts on the sweat of every hero”—Friedrich Nietzsche.)