Week 3

This week, my research about Taliesin in Wisconsin and my experience with middle school students at Taliesin West illustrated the life that transpires inside Wright’s buildings. Moreover, my Week 3 focus on Taliesin proved to be ideal timing because it coincided with my meeting with Ms. Caroline Hamblen, the Taliesin Program Manager, during her visit to Taliesin West this week. Ms. Hamblen shared her Taliesin lesson plans and put me in contact with another educational director at the David Wright House in Phoenix to set up a visit.  

On Tuesday, accompanying 3^rd to 8^th grade students from Sacaton, a Native American reservation in Pinal County, on a tour of Taliesin West offered me new insights into how to capture the attention of the very children whom I am trying to engage with my lesson plans. They eagerly explored the visually dynamic rooms, excitedly asking questions and pointing out the elements that they had discussed in previous “Design Your Dream Space” architecture lessons with my on-site mentor. Their desire for hands-on learning inspired me to incorporate Wright’s elements of simplicity and tactility into my own lesson plans. Through observation, I witnessed that children were most drawn to Wright’s colorful, graphic designs, such as the abstract mural of the Midway Gardens adorning the music pavilion. Coincidentally, the Frank Lloyd Wright building that I was researching this week was Wisconsin’s Taliesin, which prominently features geometric motif.

Taliesin West Pavilion mural “City by the Sea.” Source: The Wright Library

The children’s enthusiasm was encouraging since I had just devised a geometry-based lesson plan exploring the Robie House’s stained glass windows, instructing children to discover the geometry in Wright’s window designs, as well as use complementary and supplementary angles, quadrilaterals, triangles, and parallel and perpendicular lines.

Wright's Robie House Window

This geometric theme would continue in a different medium and with a circular motif in my next building of study: Taliesin. 

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TALIESIN

My sketch of Taliesin

Originally designed in 1911 and successively rebuilt and redesigned after two fires, Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, was Wright’s summer home and studio. Wright returned to the beloved Wisconsin hills of his boyhood to build his home and farm, feeling a special affinity with nature there. Following the tradition of his mother’s Welsh family, Wright named the multi-building compound Taliesin, which is Welsh for “shining brow,” due to its position on the brow of the hill. Wright believed that “no house should ever be put on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and house could live together each the happier for the other” (Pfeiffer, Frank Lloyd Wright: Taliesin). 

Taliesin. Source: Chicago News Bench

Instead of the horizontal lines of his Prairie style houses, Taliesin radiates gracefully—it “unwinds clockwise, spiraling around the hill and out to the original entrance.” Its vertical belvedere anchors the cantilevered terraces hugging the hillside. A spectacular 12-meter observation deck juts out perpendicular to the hillside. Diagonals dominate the building’s design. Like all Wright’s homes, the entrance is tucked away inconspicuously. Diagonal axes of the floorplan fit the hillside site; rooms are entered and exited at the corner; lines of sight extend diagonally out to the landscape through the windows. Wright designed the entire site, planting formal gardens and damning the creek below to form a pond (“Key Works of Modern Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright”).

Like Taliesin West would later incorporate local boulders into its desert masonry, Taliesin adopted local limestone into its exterior and interior, blending inside and outside, stone and wood. Wright desired for it to be “a natural house, not natural as caves and log-cabins were natural but native and spirit and making, with all that architecture had meant whenever it was alive in times past” (Pfeiffer).

Taliesin Lake View. Source: Charles Sholton

Taliesin’s history, however, is scarred by tragedy: two fires, both of which reduced the buildings to cinders. The first fire, started by an insane servant who murdered Wright’s mistress Mamah Borthwick and her two children along with four others, enflamed Taliesin in the summer of 1914. However, Wright redesigned and rebuilt Taliesin, so that it was not identical to the original; Wright, and, consequently, the house had evolved. He doubled the size of the drafting studio and added the western portion of the Taliesin to house the farm animals and equipment. Unfortunately, another fire from faulty wiring ignited in April 1925, incinerating Taliesin’s residences. Wright once again refused to surrender, rebuilding and even integrating the fire-singed stones into his new buildings. In this way, Wright never truly ceased building Taliesin. He almost constantly modified the outer buildings and landscape, expanding the residential quarter and gardens and paving roads once the Taliesin Fellowship was established to accommodate the new students (“Key Works of Modern Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright).

Taliesin burned down. Source: WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, IMAGE ID: 55870

Taliesin side view. Source: american-architecture.info

One room in particular articulates Wright’s design artistry. The living room is a celebration of Wright’s manipulation of interior space—soaring multi-storied levels, marriage of stone and wood, tented wood beams of the ceiling, horizontal pot shelves—and conjures up a sense of diagonal movement, which is enhanced by the golden tones of the wood and natural lighting (Maddex, 50 Favorite Rooms by Frank Lloyd Wright). The highlight of the room is the almost-room-sized carpet sporting a circular, geometric motif in muted tones of red, blue, gold, and olive green. Barrel chairs echo the circles in the carpet below (Lind, The Wright Style).

Living room carpet. Source: The Wright Library (left), archdaily.com (right)

To explore both geometry and texture, I developed lesson plans for grades K-4, 5-8, and 9-12 to introduce Frank Lloyd Wright’s geometrically-patterned textiles, especially the room-sized Hoffman carpet in Taliesin’s living room. While the K-4 lesson plan focuses on geometric shapes and colors, the 5-8 plan explores the geometry of circles: area, circumference, sectors, arcs, and chords. Lastly, the 9-12 plan digs deeper, asking students to draw from their surroundings to create a textile pattern based on abstractions of natural elements, such as leaves or saguaros, using concentric circles, arcs, chords, sectors, and squares to achieve aesthetic harmony.

Wright's organic architecture incorporated the same design from furniture to floorplan. Older students can practice these principles by learning about and inventing grid patterns, which can be overlapped and extended. Moreover, students will learn how to minimalize landscapes into a grid pattern to further harmonize nature and building. 

Source: Kevin Nute, “Frank Lloyd Wright and “Composition”: The Architectural Picture, Plan, and Decorative Design as “Organic” Line-Ideas.”

Week 2

After studying how Frank Lloyd Wright used the cube as the basis of his design for Unity Temple last week, I pursued the theme of deconstructing a box this week and unwittingly opened up a Pandora’s Box of cultural and intellectual crosscurrents in the early 20th century. I knew that Wright’s architecture would invoke art, design, math, and science, but the sociological, religious, and psychological ramifications of his organic architecture philosophy surprised me—I even stumbled into the fourth dimension!

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UNITY TEMPLE

Before I even dip a toe into the space-time continuum, I first will finish up my discussion of Unity Temple from my last post. While choosing to design a building using a cube, at first glance, does not seem particularly groundbreaking, the shape held significance for Wright. According to Eugenia Victoria Ellis's "Space of Continuity: Frank Lloyd Wright's Destruction of the Box and Modern Conceptions of Space," Wright’s first symbol for his architect practice was a red square composed of two parts: a circle inscribed within a square superimposed on an equilateral cross. Instead of being oriented to the north like a compass, this circle orients to the sun and was used by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans. 

Frank Lloyd Wright early logo. Source: Association of Architecture Organizations

At the turn of the 20th century, theosophy was a philosophy in vogue that combined Eastern metaphysics with western culture to emphasize the inner self. Considering that theosophy was included in the World's Parliament of Religions at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (the Chicago World Fair), and that Wright had designed interiors for some buildings at the fair, the philosophy’s mixture of science and religion seemed to affect his work as well as that of other European artists, such as the cube-obsessed Piet Mondrian. Wright’s forte—his brilliant sense of interior space, the interiority, of a building—harkens back to theosophy’s spiritual focus on inner space and its Eastern influence (Ellis). 

Wright's organic architecture sought to bring out the spirituality of living spaces by diminishing the divide between outside and inside. In fact, Wright found spirituality in Nature. In a famous interview with Mike Wallace in 1957, when asked what church he attended, Wright replied: “Yes, I occasionally go to this one, and then sometimes to that one, but my church I put a capital N on Nature and go there,” like others “spell God with a G.” For Wright, Nature and God were synonymous. Nature was not to be copied but to be inspired by—Nature was the ultimate teacher.

Other artists, like the cubist Picasso, and later physicists, like Einstein, studying relativity were all using contemplating how light and geometry could replicate or expose a cosmic order. Within this milieu, it is not surprising that Wright decided to deconstruct the box: demolish boxlike rooms from the interior and expand the cube on the exterior. As in science, form follows function. Before Wright, the European model of architecture relied on proportion and geometry, focusing more on the exterior space, with interiors of boxy rooms. Wright turned that philosophy on its head and designed from the inside outwards, expanding a square beyond its cubic parameters, cutting off the corners to free the box to a new dimension.  The Unity Temple was a concrete expression of Wright's aspiration (Ellis).

To do this, Wright seemed to conceive of the infinity of the x-y-z axes, to draw the eye outward at the edges of a building to unite the inside and outside worlds. Often, the center of the axes—spiritual and physical—was the nave for Unity Temple and the hearth for homes (Ellis).

To design Unity Temple in 1905, these notions of using the interior to define a space, rather than the traditional dominance of the exterior dictating form, seemed to fit the spiritual purpose of the building. To appreciation how revolutionary this idea was, contemporary architecture at this time epitomized the Beaux Arts style—heavily ornamented and focused on form. Wright’s Unity Temple, on the contrary, designed space, not form. In Wright’s own words, “Unity Temple is where I thought I had it, this idea that the reality of a building no longer consisted in the walls and the roof…space not walled in now but more or less free to appear. In Unity Temple, you will find the walls actually disappearing” (Ellis).

Unity Temple (top left), Hypercube (top right), Wright's Unity Temple floor plan (bottom left)
Source: Ellis

Wright turned the square of Unity Temple’s central nave into a cube and then thrusted the cube outward one more time in attempt to create a three-dimensional rendering of a four-dimensional hypercube—exploding the box. By using cantilevers, the support moved inside the building rather than at the corners, thereby liberating the corners. Consequently, the building is a cube at its center and negative space at its corners (Ellis).

While students will not be able to build a hypercube, they can play with deconstructing a box to visualize architecture. Here is a rough outline of a lesson plan for high school students on manipulating a cube, inspired by Unity Temple.

1. Every student makes a six-sided cube out of paper

Source: Annenberg Learner

2. Divided into groups, students will explore the eleven hexominoes: ways of unfolding a cube so that all six sides are connected.

Source: Kadon Enterprises

3. Students will be given irregular site plans—such as a sloping hillside, a trapezoidal plot,  a valley—and have to match one of these cube-based designs to maximize the functionality of building and location.
4. To explore properties of the three-dimensional further, students can cut the cube to find the hexagon shape. This is easiest to do if you hang it by a string from one of its vertices. Then cut horizontally through its center to see its cross section. The intersection of the plane and the cube is a regular hexagon.

Source: Queen's University

5. Students can then incorporate the hexagon, along with the cube, within their building designs.

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ROBIE HOUSE

According to "Key Works of Modern Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright," the second of Wright’s ten nominated works of modern architecture, the Frederick C. Robie House (1908-1910), represents the pinnacle of Wright’s Prairie style homes prevalent during the first ten years of the 20th century. Built in Chicago, Illinois near the University of Chicago campus in a mixed-use urban location, the house sits on a flat site, facing a tree-lined street. The Robie House not only mimics the low, horizontal lines of the Midwestern Prairie, but boldly initiated an open floor plan between living and dining rooms, dissolving traditional walls and boxed rooms. Wright designed the residence to be a single entity, from the exterior to the furniture ("Key Works"). 

My Sketch of Robie House

Layering red Roman bricks and cream-colored mortar to emphasize the horizontal design, the home appears low to the ground, despite being three levels. Furthermore, Wright stressed the idea of shelter with shadowy recesses underlying the strong horizontal lines of the low-hipped roofs. Balconies wrap around the main and upper levels, sporting colorful art glass casement windows. A short brick wall separates the house from the street, while exterior planters along the balconies integrate the house with its urban setting, while still providing privacy through the screened windows and walls ("Key Works"). 

Robie House Exterior. Source: Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

Inside, oak strips mimic the window casings across the ceiling, and the lighting fixtures shaped like globes within wooden cubes dot the ceiling. An astounding 175 leaded-glass doors and windows adorn Robie House. A 47-foot span of leaded-glass casement doors visually connects the living and dining rooms, creating an elongated, open space defined only by light from the windows and a two-way hearth in its center. Remember, most buildings at this time were filled with boxy rooms, so this was a radical design departure by Wright. The third floor contains bedrooms maximizing the view and privacy from the street. The inclusion of an attached, three-car garage was pioneering for this time, where most garages were separate from the home (“Key Works”). 

Robie House Interior. Source: Architecture Daily

Wright’s design certainly was modern. However, Wright had just returned home from visiting Japan, where he discovered that traditional Japanese architecture expressed his aesthetic ideals. According to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fifty Views of Japan: The 1905 Photo Album by the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation, Frank Lloyd called Japan “the most romantic, artistic country on earth.” He praised the Japanese sense of harmonious spirituality “expressed in bold and simple forms and flat colors, whether in woodblock prints or the materials of buildings” (Frank Lloyd Wright's Fifty Views of Japan). In Japan, he saw the unity of art, craft, and nature. For example, the eaves of main hall of the Higashi-Honganji Temple are over-hanging like those in the Robie House. Moreover, he was struck by how Japanese buildings blended so well with their surroundings (Frank Lloyd Wright's Fifty Views of Japan).

Higashi-Honganji Temple in Nagoya, Japan. Source: Wikipedia

For my lesson plan, I will focus on the leaded-glass windows to explore geometric design and the artistic elements of color, shape, space, and form.

Source: Frank Lloyd Wright Trust

Source: Scholastic

Source: Jhennifer A. Amundson

Week One

The clicking of my right turn signal subtly announced that I was leaving behind the frantic rush-hour traffic on Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard. Decelerating, I drove down the sinuous road snaking through the Sonoran Desert to approach Taliesin West—the site of my internship. With the early morning sun softly silhouetting the saguaros in the violet shadows of the McDowell Mountains, the schools and supermarkets that were so close by seemed so far away. Upon reaching the site, the stream of visitors shuffling in for tours added a holiday atmosphere to the otherwise peaceful setting. At that moment, I think that I sensed a little bit of the spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision for Taliesin West: a mixture of serenity and excitement.

Taliesin West. Source: Scottsdale Convention and Visitors Bureau

Although I had attended a ceramics program at Taliesin West a few summers ago, I was eager to become reacquainted with this inspirational building compound. I had forgotten just how extensive was the 500-acre site. The Taliesin West Campus is not just one home but a meandering series of buildings connected by walkways and terraces: a drafting studio, classrooms, a swimming pool, an orchard, two theaters, a library, archives, workspaces, and a dining hall. Student-built shelters scatter the surrounding desert. In fact, Taliesin West is not just the former winter home of Frank Lloyd Wright himself but the present-day headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, whose mission is to preserve the architect’s legacy, and the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. Consequently, the site exudes energy.

In fact, the buzz of activity was my immediate impression. After entering into the brimming bookstore to be greeted by the Human Resources representative, I toured the drafting studio filled with aspiring architects working at individual drafting tables. The filtered light entering from the translucent ceiling panels seemed perfect for drawing. I was surprised how many students were from foreign countries—Belgium, Sweden, Germany. Considering how many of the visiting tourists were also from other states and nations reinforced how Frank Lloyd Wright truly was an internationally renowned architect.

Drafting room. Source: taliesin.edu

Walking among the buildings invitingly opened up new vistas with each turn—fountains, statues, and plants all playing off the triangular angles of the architecture. After a few minutes, we came upon the office of my mentor, Ms. Shawn Rorke-Davis, where I conversed about my research plans. Together we then headed to the library. The knowledgeable librarian extended me an open invitation to use the wealth of material for my project and loaned me a few books on the founding of Taliesin West to begin my research.

After lunch with the architecture students and staff, I joined one of the guided-tours to view the entire compound, both Wright's personal quarters, including his bedroom, and public areas, like the movie theater. An interesting counterpoint to the desert landscape was the prominent placement of many Asian sculptures throughout the site. Some, I noticed, were slightly broken. The guide explained Wright’s belief in the perfection of imperfection—a wabi-sabi ideal I remembered from art class. These artworks were incorporated as part of the Wright’s “desert concrete” walls. Wright purchased a shipload of shattered sculptures from the Ming Dynasty to purposely incorporate this element. Ending the tour, I glimpsed a small cactus that had taken root in a crevice of the wall of the main building—a fitting tribute to Wright’s inspiration and integration of nature into his architecture.

Asian sculpture embedded in boulder-strewn wall. Source: azcentral.com

Over the next two days, I officially began my research, delving into my mentor’s extensive collection of Frank Lloyd Wright literature in her office. Specifically I focused on Frank Lloyd Wright’s book “In the Realm of Ideas,” Norman Brosterman’s “Inventing Kindergarten,” and Daniel Treiber’s “Frank Lloyd Wright,” to ground myself in Wright’s formative years and design philosophy.

Wright himself credits his creative vision to the toy Froebel blocks given to him by his mother as a child: “The maple wood blocks are all in my fingers to this day,” an 88-year-old Wright remarked in homage to the toys. The Froebel gifts were designed by Friedrich Froebel, a German educator who invented kindergarten. Integral to Wright’s educational philosophy of “learning by doing,” the blocks taught that a creation is never destroyed; it can only change through modification. Designs had to be modified in stages: all shapes had to be returned to a whole form rather than scattering pieces to disassemble and make a new creation. For example, all 36 blocks, columns, and squares in the sixth gift would be reassembled into its original three-inch cube form. 

Froebel Blocks. Source: froebelblocks.com

Unity Temple. Source: mcnees.org

This essential idea of design by modification of a single shape informed Wright’s design of the first UNESCO-nominated site that I would be studying: Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois. Basically, the building is a pair of cubes connected by a foyer to symbolize the link between the spiritual and temporal realms. Seeking to convey the Unitarian Transcendentalist philosophy of looking inward, Wright left the exterior as unpainted concrete to contrast the airy, colorful interior where religious services are held. However, vertical and horizontal elements neatly dovetail, fitting together like a young Wright’s Froebel blocks put back in their box.

Unity Temple Interior. Source: taliesinpreservation.org

Instructions for Froebel Blocks. Source: FroBlox

Armed with these insights, I began to brainstorm lesson plans based on Unity Temple, especially its cubic motif—deconstructing a cube to articulate a space with intersecting planes.