Wrightian Revival: Spacial Style Over Mannerist Substance
When I first discovered Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture, I tried to copy elements from his buildings directly, to more or less transpose them whole from his design to mine. It was only later - after reading Wright's articles on architecture and especially listening to him lecture about what he called Organic Architecture that I developed a deeper understanding.
Wright has often been called an 'artist' both by others and by himself. Its certainly the case that his building plans as well as his designs for leaded glass windows, rugs, light fixtures, or furniture are 'artistic'. But at the risk of sounding pretentious the fundamental medium of Wright's artistry is space itself. 'Its not about the four walls of a building but the space within' is Wright's famous dictum. But it is how a buildings interior space feels which is fundamental. And Wright's great genius lay in rendering and designing with space so that it moved people in the same way that art moves people.
Art has to do with creating what engenders emotional reactions and experiences. A proper critique of art is merely to catalog one's own emotional response to and impressions of the work. To hold forth on why it is good or bad is to completely misunderstand, Wilde tells us. Art is for the sake of revealing to us emotion we are capable of experiencing but which may not be evoked under the ordinary circumstances of life. Of all architects this use of architecture as an art form capable of eliciting emotion normally unavailable to us is most acute in Wright, while at the same time he was the architect most proficient at expressing it through architecture.
To give a concrete idea of what I'm trying to say, take Wright's Prairie Style. Now there are many marvelous Prairie Revival homes built that are beautiful, with jewel like quality. They are great and splendid things. My one tiny criticism is that they seem primarily concerned to create a picture of what a Prairie House ought to look like without giving due consideration to what the space feels like to be in. Now I admit I am myself merely an amateur architect who has designed little which has ever been built. However I feel myself fortunate to have become interested in architecture right at the time when the 3D program Sketchup was being released by Google: Where traditional CAD software had been about designing in plan, Sketchup was all about thinking in space.
By working entirely in 3D I think you are much more attuned to the spacial feel of a building. With Sketchup its simple to pull surfaces up or push them back or divide them or order them all the while working in perspective. At the same time working in this way develops ones abilities to analyze in 3D and more importantly synthesize in it. Now I don't pretend to be a great architect or even necessarily a good one. However I can say with conviction that practicing designing buildings in Sketchup has probably developed what talent I may have about as far as could be hoped.
And so here is a Prairie House I designed for a vacant lot I often drove by on Upper Mountain Avenue in Montclair, NJ. I made use of Sketchup's great terrain capture features which hooks into Google Earth. I used Sketchup's fog feature to lend an air of atmospheric realism. And for fun I incorporated some Wright design elements from the 3D warehouse which you can both use and add to for free.
These images show that by studying Wright's principles of space and by practicing their application with Sketchup, even the amateur architect can quickly fashion a building well suited to its site and pleasant to inhabit.
