Week 4

HOLLYHOCK HOUSE

This week, I learned how Wright “went Hollywood.” Actually, the idiom is not totally accurate: not only was Hollyhock House Wright’s first commission in California, its groundbreaking design launched the California modernist era and ended his Prairie style period. Therefore, Wright arguably not only "went Hollywood" but helped create the Hollywood look. 
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Source: Eric Brightwell

True to his philosophy of organic architecture, Wright did not truly abandon his earlier design principles but just adapted them to the warm, sunny climate and rolling landscape of Southern California—a far cry from the flat plains of the Midwestern prairie. His Midwestern accent acquired a California lilt, yet his message remained the same.

High atop Olive Hill in Hollywood, Wright imbued Hollyhock House with a sense of theater and drama appropriate to the glamour of the locale. Arts patron, Bohemian spirit, and oil heiress, Aline Barnsdall hired Wright in 1917 to sculpt a home on the thirty-six acre site peppered with olive trees and overlooking expansive vistas of both the Pacific Ocean and the Hollywood Hills. By 1921, Wright had completed this architectural treasure—still revered in 2015 by thousands of fans celebrating its reopening after a five-year, $4.4 million restoration (L.A. Times).  

Situated on the top of Olive Hill, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House overlooks both the Pacific Ocean and the Hollywood Hills. The epitome of the California concrete style, Hollyhock House’s massive, monolithic frame evokes the grandeur of a Mayan temple, the romance of a Spanish courtyard, and the cool elegance of a Japanese shrine. It is a theatrical expression of California’s multicultural vibrancy.

My sketch of Hollyhock House's amphitheater-like reflecting pool

The larger landscape of Los Angeles informs the design of the building site. Four wings composed of cubic and rectilinear shapes ensconce semi-circular pools. The house fully unites exterior and interior by adjoining each room to the outdoors through terraces. In fact, Hollyhock House boasts one of the earliest uses of roof terraces in modern architecture, theatrically linked by bridges and exterior stairs ("Key Works of Modern Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright"). 

Like Wright’s other houses, Hollyhock House still preserves a sense of privacy with its pergola-enhanced entry and concealed central courtyard. Hollyhock House symbolizes a microcosm of Los Angeles itself. Towering mountains protectively surround the city from the surrounding desert and the Pacific Ocean just as the high walls of Hollyhock House shelter the central garden courtyard, all the while preserving views of the ocean (“Key Works of Modern Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright”).

Source: "Key Works of Modern Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright"

To further align the house not only with the surrounding landscape but the surrounding culture, Wright sought to fulfill his patron’s request to mold Hollyhock House into a buzzing art and cultural center, replete with a cinema, theater, studios, and residences for actors as well as the patron ("Key Works of Modern Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright").

Source: marshabray.com

Hollyhock House’s design changed drastically from the original plan, revealing Wright’s evolution as an architect from the horizontal lines and low roofs of his Prairie style to the monument-like pillars and ornamental blocks of his later Californian work. Hollyhock House’s stylized geometrics and stucco walls captured the southern Californian zeitgeist (Hess, “Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses”).

The highlight of the home’s interior is the hearth. In the living room, a bas-relief of geometric forms adorns a concrete fireplace, nestled below a latticed skylight and above a gold-tiled reflecting pool. Here Wright best expressed the Japanese idea of the unity of the four elements—the hearth representing earth; the pool, water; the fireplace and torchiere lamps, fire; and skylight, air. A moat originally encircled the home, symbolizing water (Tristan Bravinder, The Getty Iris).

Source: LA Curbed

The infusion of Japanese mythology is not surprising. While he was designing Hollyhock House, Wright simultaneously was building the Imperial Hotel in Japan. Further, Japanese influences can be found in the screen paintings lining the living room walls, the gold metallic paint on the walls, and the open floor plan with minimal walls (Lind, “The Wright Style”).

Even more metaphorically, Wright embedded the Japanese-influenced theme of “compression and release” in Hollyhock House. Low ceilings dominate most rooms, narrowly leading to the grand release into the soaring ceilings and lowered floor of the awe-inspiring living room (The Getty Iris). In the same way, the compressed wings of the house open up into the release of the courtyard.

Despite this new California vernacular, Wright still maintained vestiges of his Prairie style: stained glass on the second story. However, these glass corners featured the purples and greens of sunny California, rather than the autumnal hues of the Midwest (Maddex, “50 Favorite Rooms by Frank Lloyd Wright”).

Source: Architectural Digest

Source: Architectural Digest

Wright sought to involve his patrons in the buildings that they commissioned as part of his philosophy of the democracy of architecture. Bringing architecture to people, Wright encouraged homeowners to explain to him exactly how they hope the house to look. This philosophy, however, caused the construction of Hollyhock House to be plagued by setbacks on account of multiple sudden design changes, Wright’s lengthy trips to Japan, and heated conflict between Wright and Barnsdall (Penny Fowler, “Frank Lloyd Wright: Graphic Artist”).

However, Aline Barnsdall’s design request did inspire Hollyhock House’s crowning glory: its ornamental pillars in the shape of stylized hollyhock flowers—the favorite flower of Barnsdall. Recalling both the cubist art of Europe and the simplified shapes of Japanese woodblock prints, Wright’s geometric hollyhock pillars translated two-dimensional art into a three-dimensional format (Fowler, “Frank Lloyd Wright: Graphic Artist”).

Source: Architectural Digest

Indeed, Wright claimed: “Geometry is at the center of every Nature-form we see—not to be simply “looking-at” nature, but looking into nature, grasping the principles at work, and then building forms that are not imitative but creative” (Fowler, “Frank Lloyd Wright: Graphic Artist”).

Source: Lily Spitz

In fact, the Hollyhock abstractions not only grace the exterior friezes but trellis down the backs of dining room chairs, bud as planters in the gardens, and climb up columns in the courtyard (Maddex, “50 Favorite Rooms by Frank Lloyd Wright”).  

Hollyhock House furniture. Source: Architectural Digest

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Capitalizing upon Wright’s stylized nature forms, I designed a lesson plan for students ages K-12 that invites students to explore the process of abstraction through the hollyhock motif prevalent at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House. The lesson will give students a greater appreciation for Wright’s organic architecture by uniting nature and building.

The following is a summary of the lesson plan for creating a flora-based, abstract-designed mold. Students will explore their surrounding landscape and collect a leaf or flower as a basis for their stylization. Alternatively, students can choose a photograph of a plant or flower. After closely inspecting their specimen to determine the dominant shapes that form the plant, students will draw an abstracted version using geometric shapes. Next, students will glue pre-cut wooden circles, squares, diamonds, and triangles onto the inside bottom of a shoe box, layering shapes one on top of another for varying degrees of increased depth, if desired. After filling the shoe box halfway with plaster of Paris, students will turn over and release their mold when dry. 

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Looking back on my Hollyhock House research this week, the hollyhock motif and verdant courtyards seem to have offered Wright a respite from the tragic fire and deaths at Taliesin in 1914. Perhaps Wright needed to reinvent himself because that chapter of his life--the Prairie style--had closed and he needed to move forward.