Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was not a green designer in the contemporary sense, but he was doing some things that today one might call sustainable. He was concerned with natural climate control, particularly trying to keep buildings cool and ventilated naturally. He believed in the value of natural light and maximized its creative use in his designs.

The relationship of site and structure was of central importance to Wright’s thinking, and he frequently adapted his designs to conditions, including climate extremes. This may be seen in the structural designs of Photo 1.

A structure should also have a relationship to nature, he believed, not only through light, air, and views but also in terms of designs that are in harmony with their surroundings and make nature and landscaping part of the building. This may be seen in Photo 2.

Wright favored the use of natural materials in unadorned ways that brought out their best qualities, and he would frequently try to draw on materials native to the area, like local stone and woods. His color palette was natural: earth tones, greens, reds, yellows, stone. These may be seen in Photo 3 and Photo 4.

Photo 1: Casement art glass allows for views, light, and air while enhancing privacy, and makes decoration organic to window (Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois [1910

Photo 2: A low building profile on the windy prairies of Wisconsin: The bermed “back” of Wright’s second house for Herbert Jacobs (Middleton, Wisconsin, 1943)

Photo 4: Urns and planters bring nature into the structure and make it organic to the building (Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois [1910

Photo 3: Pale ochre color of cantilevered concrete slabs matches color of fallen rhododendron leaves; red painted steel evokes color of its base metal, iron ore, and the process of steel-making (Edgar Kaufmann House, Mill Run, Pennsylvania [1936

– Joel Schorn is an editor and writer in Chicago who is also a volunteer tour interpreter with the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust. His coffee is often inexplicably tepid on Wednesdays.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Sustainable Building and Cooperative Housing

Like a number of other architects of his era, such as Daniel Burnham and the French early modernist Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright became interested in urban and community planning and gave it considerable attention throughout his career.

While it cannot be said that Wright was a direct pioneer of sustainable building and cooperative housing, several of his principles and practices in the areas of small-home construction and social planning looked ahead to these movements (I’ll talk about some connections to cohousing in this post and to sustainability in a future one).

Progressive Architecture

Wright was a progressive architect who believed architecture had a moral, social and even spiritual purpose—that the spaces people lived in shaped their values and quality of life. So it is not surprising that social planning would attract his attention. Also informing his views were the Progressive movement’s support for cooperative action and self-ownership of homes, farms and places of employment—in other words, self-sustaining and self-determining communities that practiced cooperative decision-making.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s futuristic drawing of a Broadacre City community.

As early as 1900-1901 Wright had developed a ‘Quadruple Block Plan’ in which each home would be placed in an one-acre circle with commonly held and maintained landscaped parcels floating between the circles. His grander vision for community living came later, a proposal he called Broadacre City. In this plan, each family had a home on an acre of land each (hence the name “Broadacre”).

These homes would be grouped around open green space and community buildings which would be centers for the arts, recreation and relaxation, worship and education; however, the effect was more like a medieval village than a modern suburb. Each community would be self-contained and self-sufficient. While the auto made the creation of these communities in exurban locations possible, cars themselves would be pushed to the periphery of each settlement to make the community pedestrian-friendly.

In an upcoming post I’ll talk about sustainable design and Wright’s approach to the affordable single-family home, which has some Iowa connections.

– Joel Schorn is an editor and writer in Chicago who is also a volunteer tour interpreter with the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust. He does not think Thursday is the new Friday.