 |
 |
Frank Lloyd Wright Room, 1912–14. American. Purchase, Emily Crane Chadbourne Bequest (1972.60.1).
|
|
"Organic Architecture" and the Prairie-Style House
This living room from the Francis W. Little house epitomizes Wright's concept of "organic architecture," in which the setting, building, interior, and furnishings are intrinsically related, and represents an excellent example of his late Prairie-style. The house comprises a group of low, connected pavilions integrated with gardens and terraces that radiate from a central symbolic hearth—the physical and spiritual center of the house and of domestic life. The living room exemplifies one of Wright's most important contributions to modern architecture: the idea of dynamic spatial continuity and open planning, according to which the distinction between inner and outer spaces is minimized and interior space is left open. Low overhanging roofs and geometric window "grilles" with stylized plant motifs once linked the interior, visually and spatially, to a wooded site overlooking Lake Minnetonka. The Museum's installation has sought to preserve this continuity between interior and exterior by reconstructing the exterior façades in the side passageways and providing a view of Central Park.
The room itself is not merely a single enclosed volume but a series of horizontal levels surrounded by glass, which allows the interplay between natural light and the rich earth tones employed throughout. Like many architects influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, Wright played upon the natural qualities of materials, melding form and function and looking upon building materials, structure, and method as integrated parts of a larger whole. Here, harmony is achieved in the combination of the ocher plaster walls, the natural oak flooring and trim, the reddish brown bricks of the fireplace, and the electroplated copper finish of the zinc cames that define the windows. The composition of the side walls—with their band of casement windows below, long oak shelves, band of clerestory windows above, and oak-trimmed panels that integrate the surfaces of wall and ceiling—carries the viewer's eye upward to the leaded-glass ceiling light.
The photograph shows the insistent horizontality of the space, emphasizing the visual interaction between the sweeping horizontal banks of the casement windows, the clerestory windows, and the hipped ceiling. This horizontality, which recalls the broad stretches of the midwestern plains, is characteristic of Wright's Prairie period. Wright used the verticality of the plaster cast of Victory of Samothrace (original, Musée du Louvre, Paris) as a visual foil to balance the massive plane of the tabletop and the intersection of the horizontal lines of the windows and oak trim. Here, the pair of weed-holders produce the same effect. Although the general design is in keeping with Wright's earlier Praire-style work, the room also reflects his developing ideas about ornamentation, which caused considerable friction between him and his patrons, the Littles.
Wright's interest in Japan and 1913 visit to that country are evident in his inventive use of open spaces and horizontal planes, illustrating lessons he learned from Japanese domestic architecture and prints. "You get a sense of tremendous, limitless space," Wright asserted, "On what is your attention focused? Nothing." Asian influences can also be seen in the forms of the simple wall lamps and in the works of art on display, similar to those typically found in Wright-designed interiors of this period. Wright's interest in Japan continued, and he was later commissioned to build the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1916–22). Like other Prairie School designers and architects, Wright believed that a home and all its furnishings should be complementary and produce a seamless work of art; decoration and furnishings were integrally related to the design of each room. The oak furniture here, however, consists primarily of pieces Wright designed for two different settings. While some pieces were made specifically for Northome, others were created for the Little home that Wright built in Peoria in 1902. Still, the furniture is arranged as the architect envisioned it, following his floor plans, and a photograph that appeared in Henry Russell Hitchcock's survey of his work, In the Nature of Materials (1942), rather than as the Littles placed it. This arrangement is important in illustrating Wright's unified conception of exterior and interior design and furnishings.
