“Ornamentation and the Organic Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright”

AboutJames M. Dennis and Lu B. Wenneker survey Frank Lloyd Wright's use of architectural ornament across three career phases—an early period (1890s-1920) of surface-applied ornament, a middle period (through the late 1920s) in which ornament becomes a structural module, and a late period (early 1930s onward) in which entire buildings function as full-scale ornament. The authors trace Wright's debt to Louis Sullivan's theory of "organic ornament," absorbed during his years at Adler & Sullivan, contrasting Sullivan's "synthetic" method of elaborating simple geometric shapes into foliation with Wright's later "analytical" method of abstracting actual plant forms into geometric components, illustrated through the Winslow House, Heller House, Larkin Building, and Unity Temple. They document Wright's long collaboration with sculptor Richard Bock beginning in 1895, the influence of Wright's childhood Froebel "Gifts" kindergarten blocks on his geometric patterning, and the emergence of Wright's "ornament-buildings"—the A. D. German Warehouse, Hollyhock House, the Millard House, and ultimately the Guggenheim Museum—in which decoration and structural form become fully unified, closing with the observation that Wright's late ground plans, such as the Ralph Jester House and Arizona State Capitol project, directly echo geometric patterns from his own earliest ornamental work.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0004-3249%28196523%2925%3A1%3C2%3AOATOAO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7