Frank Lloyd Wright and His Manner of Thought

Introduction: Truth against the World

3 Intro­ duc­ tion Truth ­ against the World “i would much ­ rather build than write about build­ ings, but when I am not build­ ing, I will write about build­ ings—or the sig­ nif­i­ cance of those build­ ings I have al­ ready built” (CW I: 315). Frank Lloyd ­ Wright ad­ dressed these words to read­ ers of The Archi­ tec­ tu­ ral ­ Record in De­ cem­ ber 1928, as part of his se­ ries “In the Cause of Archi­ tec­ ture.” Be­ cause of mar­ i­ tal scan­ dals, per­ sonal trag­ edy, and fi­ nan­ cial short­ falls, he did not have much archi­ tec­ tu­ ral work at the time, and much of what he did have never got be­ yond the de­ sign pro­ ject stage. There­ fore he had to write to earn his liv­ ing. The onset of the Great De­ pres­ sion fol­ low­ ing the fi­ nan­ cial crash in 1929 made ­ chances for work in his ­ proper pro­ fes­ sion even less ­ likely, and so he had to write all the more, es­ pe­ cially when Jap­ a­ nese ­ prints from his col­ lec­ tions no ­ longer ­ brought top dol­ lar. Yet for all his em­ pha­ sis on build­ ing, with no less than six var­ ied rep­ e­ ti­ tions of that term in his sin­ gle sen­ tence, these words fol­ low over a quar­ ter mil­ lion that he had al­ ready writ­ ten, ­ nearly all of it pub­ lished in im­ por­ tant so­ cial and pro­ fes­ sional ve­ nues. Al­ though pas­ sion­ ate for build­ ing, he ob­ vi­ ously cared for get­ ting his ­ thoughts on paper as well as ­ erected in wood, brick, stone, and con­ crete. The rea­ son for this is sim­ ple. Intro­ duc­ ing a new prin­ ci­ ple in archi­ tec­ ture that he ­ called “or­ ganic,” ­ Wright was ar­ guing not just for a build­ ing­ method but for a sup­ port­ ing phi­ lo­ so­ phy of how life ­ should be lived. His prin­ ci­ ple ran coun­ ter to how west­ ern civ­ il­ iza­ tion had built since clas­ si­ cal times, and even more so ­ against so­ cial prac­ tices of the cur­ rent era. But his ­ family’s motto, “Truth ­ against the World,” would in­ spire his 4 Introduction: Truth against the World in­ de­ pen­ dence. The ­ phrase had char­ ac­ ter­ ized the Lloyd Jones ­ clan’s proud af­ fir­ ma­ tion of Uni­ tar­ ian be­ liefs that contra­ dicted the Es­ tab­ lished­ Church’s doc­ trines, just as their Welsh iden­ tity re­ sisted as­ sim­ i­ la­ tion into the Brit­ ish ­ spirit of a ­ United King­ dom and its es­ tab­ lish­ ment ­ forces. Frank Lloyd ­ Wright’s or­ ganic prin­ ci­ ple for archi­ tec­ ture chal­ lenged the es­ tab­ lish­ ment as well. Co­ in­ ci­ den­ tally, but no less frus­ trat­ ing to the archi­ tect, the pop­ u­ lar co­ lo­ nial and Vic­ to­ rian hous­ ing ­ styles of the day were En­ glish in or­ i­ gin and es­ tab­ lish­ men­ tar­ ian in their au­ thor­ ity. If the fam­ ily motto had not ex­ isted, its young mem­ ber would have had to in­ vent it to speak for his own man­ ner of ­ thought. The bril­ liance of Frank Lloyd ­ Wright’s archi­ tec­ ture has in­ spired the work of hun­ dreds of schol­ ars. Every as­ pect of his de­ signs and build­ ings has been ex­ am­ ined in great de­ tail. But until now no one has stud­ ied the man’s think­ ing as it was intro­ duced to the pub­ lic via a lec­ ture in Evans­ ton, Il­ li­ nois, in 1894, and con­ tin­ ued to be de­ vel­ oped and ex­ pressed in books and es­ says through­ out his life­ time, to­ tal­ ing by 1959 over one and a half mil­ lion words. The canon of schol­ ar­ ship on ­ Wright’s work is help­ ful none­ the­ less for dis­ cov­ er­ ing as­ pects of that ­ thought as man­ i­ fested in his build­ ings. It al­ lows ­ today’s ­ reader of The Col­ lected Writ­ ings to con­ firm how the ­ architect’s ideas ­ worked out in prac­ tice. In­ deed, the great pub­ lic...