THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE

As the beginning of a new year gets us thinking about what lies ahead, I thought it interesting to go back and examine Wright’s ideas about the “Future of Architecture,” in order to see if it is relevant today, and gain perspective on the future. One-hundred ten years ago, in 1908, Wright said in “In the Cause of Architecture:” “As for the future—the work shall grow more truly simple; more expressive with fewer lines, fewer forms; more articulate with less labor; more plastic; more fluent, although more coherent; more organic….It shall become in its atmosphere as pure and elevating in its humble way as the trees and flowers are in their perfectly appointed way, for only so can architecture be worthy its high rank as a fine art…”  This was written before his Wasmuth publication in 1911 and the ensuing International Style of architecture beginning in the 1920s. Indeed, it appears his prophecy of the future was quickly fulfilled regarding a greater simplicity and plasticity in architecture.

Much later, in 1953, he wrote the book, The Future of Architecture. While the first essay was written before modern architecture took hold, this later book was written in retrospect of the rise of modernism both in Europe and in the United States. It includes an interview with Hugh Downs in the beginning of the book, who asks Wright if there is any difference between his use of the word ‘organic’ and Down’s use of the word “Modernist” architecture. Wright replies that they are “very different,” and gives some reasons for this. While it has been 65 years since that interview, I wonder if we need to ask the question again, “Do we know when a design becomes organic?” This is an important question because if there is no important difference between the two then we can continue on the path of modernism and keep Wright as a footnote, an idiosyncratic genius perhaps, in the progression of modern architecture. Another possible answer to that question is that, yes, there is a difference, but Wright’s ‘organic’ is rejected as a viable or desirable option. In other words, it is not relevant to our day and age and only has historic significance.  Either way, we should not sentimentalize Wright’s architecture, but evaluate it based on its principles and relevancy today and for the future. 

The Future of Architecture is a sustained argument in fact for this very difference, as much of the book makes an unfavorable critique of the modernism popular at the time.  For example, later in the book he states “human houses should not be like boxes, blazing in the sun, nor should we outrage the machine by trying to make dwelling places too complementary to machinery. Any building for humane purposes should be an elemental, sympathetic feature of the ground, complementary to its nature-environment, belonging by kinship to the terrain.”  He also states, “The machine should build the building… But it is not necessary for that reason to build as though the building, too, were a machine—because, except in a very low sense, indeed, it is not a machine, nor at all like one. Nor in that sense of being a machine, could it be architecture at all!”  Lest one think that Wright was opposed to the machine, he was the one who, in 1901, wrote “The Art and Craft of the Machine” which was something of a shock to the arts and crafts society in which it was presented. 

 But Wright gives an important key to this difference in the above quote which needs to be understood in our time, because ironically, it is today’s culture which is less able to understand this than the culture of Wright’s day.  When he refers to the ‘low sense’ of the machine, he acknowledges that at a very elementary level, a building is a mechanical assemblage of parts which serve a function of shelter, etc. Another word for this is reductionism, and by it we could say (as Wright does elsewhere in the book) that a chair is a machine to sit on, a tree is a machine to bear fruit, and a home is a machine to live in, and so forth.  So, if Wright is not satisfied with this ‘low’ sense, then what is the higher sense he is after? It was a holistic sense, or a teleological conception of architecture. Teleology is the idea that an object’s meaning is derived not by its individual parts in isolation but by the end purpose or goal of its being. When Wright speaks of the centrality of the ‘Idea,’ this larger sense of the whole and purpose is in mind, its essence. Now, the International Style architects promoted the idea that their forms were not artistically imposed by an architect-artist but were derived from their functions (form follows function); however, history has shown us that the International Style was as much an aesthetically imposed style as any other style. The difference was that as a style it prioritized a machine-like, or reductionist ‘sense’ of looking at architecture. One could say it was the style of non-style.  

Today, modernism is back in vogue, although the expressions of it have multiplied in many various directions. There is a strain of it which, like the International Style, emphasizes box-like, minimal forms, which Wright referred to “as though cut from cardboard…ruled together in box-like forms…superficial.”  While there are some subtle differences with today’s box-style modernism (contrast of materials instead of all-white boxes for example),  I believe Wright’s critique of them today would be similar. [Figure 1]

Toward the end of The Future of Architecture, is a chapter written to “the young man in architecture,” where he writes, “I am here to assure you that the circumference of architecture is changing with astonishing rapidity but that its center remains unchanged.   The center of architecture remains unchanged because—though all unconfessed or ill-concealed,—beauty is no less the true purpose of rational modern architectural endeavor than ever, just as beauty remains the essential characteristic of architecture itself.”  Indeed, since Wright’s death, the circumference of architecture has expanded tremendously with technology, computerized and parametric design, non-rectangular geometries, digital fabrication, 3D printing, and the like. Wright also said that “by means of a greater science, a more integral order may now be executed than any existing.” Here, as one example, I would consider fractal geometry. Fractal geometry is an organic function because it is the math of the integrated whole, where successive iterations of scale have within them the imprint of their geometry at a higher and lower scale.  The Mandlebrot set is one example of this. [Figure 2] But the challenge of this is how to take pure mathematical form and transform it into habitations for people in the real world. This is a boundary where math cannot cross and where the ‘function’ of habitation, use, site, and the human spirit must be integrated into the greater whole.

Perhaps the key thought here is that today we have lost the center of building, lost in the ever-expanding circumference of novelty and technology. As much as Wright himself pursued that expanding circumference of technological advance, he never lost the eternal center point of design and this is why his buildings also have a timelessness to them.  What are some of these ‘center’ principles? A sense of space, for example, and with it a real sense of place and shelter, and the connection with the land which it is built upon.  Also, a sense of repose which comes from the harmony of a unified and integrated whole. Computer parametric design may create elaborate skins of buildings with geometries too complex to do by hand anymore, but they are no substitute for the sense of space and shelter of a building, and its place within the context of its environment, whether natural or urban.  Without this sense of repose, they become shallow, hollow, noisy gongs which become another clever but temporary meme on the landscape instead of serving the higher purpose of inspiring and uplifting the human soul. As we look to the future, I think we still have a lot to learn from Wright.