Architecture

101 April 2010 Dwell Dwell April 2010 102

The famous view of Fallingwater designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1934 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania.

If there is any one architect about whom the proverbial John Q. Public knows something, it is surely Frank Lloyd Wright. People who have not read a word of his writings do not hesitate to invoke his name. Many who are not the least a word bit familiar with the principles of organic architecture crave to live in a home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Si- mon and Garfunkel have even sung about him. It is no exaggeration to say that there is something of the legend-ary about Frank Lloyd Wright. Further, Frank Lloyd Wright was a legend of sorts even in his own time. In no small part, this was due to Wright ‘s flair for self promotion and scandal-ridden personal life, as is made clear in a re-cent biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, Many Masks. But Frank Lloyd Wright ‘s genius and originality played a much greater role in the creation of the Frank Lloyd Wright legend. Frank Lloyd Wright ‘s beginnings (Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867) were not especially promising. His father was a talented minister, more notable for his setback than his accomplishments. The family warmth that Frank Lloyd Wright would later seek to reflect, and

create in his early prairie houses simply was not present in his own home. Nor was rootedness another desideratum of the mature Frank Lloyd Wright, a distinguishing feature of his childhood. By the time Frank L. Wright was seven, he had moved a number of times. His record as a student at the University od Wisconsin, Madison, was hardly an inspring one. There is a notion that Frank L. Wright was predestined to become a great architect and that the catedral prints his mother hung over his crib provided him with early inspira-tion. This myth has recently been laid to rest. No one doubts, however, that the Froebel blocks that Frank Lloyd Wright ‘s mother gave him to play with greatly inspired the budding architect. Whether burying him or praising him, it must be conceded that Frank Lloyd Wright remains a paradoxical figure. A rebel in both his public and private life, Frank Lloyd Wright still designed many buildings that as sumed

a woman’s place was in the home. Although Frank Lloyd Wright was an indi-vidualist by temperament, the learning environment at his Taliesin North and West was scarcely calculated to foster genuine individuality. For all his love of the land, Frank L. Wright built only one house or a farmer during his long and produc-tive career. Frank Lloyd Wright was a functionalist whose own furniture made him “black and blue.” Frank L.Wright preached a gospel of organic architecture, and yet his building designs for Baghdad in the late 1950s were remarkably inor-ganic. Frank Lloyd Wright was a critic of what is called “grandomania,” although Frank Lloyd Wright sometimes displayed that trait himself. Frank Lloyd Wright was an arch foe of the skyscraper, but just before his death Frank Lloyd Wright began designing a mile-high structure for the state of Illinois. His Usonian homes were meant for people with relatively

low incomes, but they sold most fre-quently to professionals with rather high incomes. Frank Lloyd Wright despised conspicuous consumption, but now that he is dead his homes have become status symbols. Last, Frank Lloyd Wright wed-ded an appreciation of new technology with a notion of community that bordered

on the nostalgic. The descrip-tion of Frank Lloyd Wright as “a nineteenth-century man using twentieth-century meth-

ods” was surely on the mark. Frank Lloyd Wright has indubitably left his mark on this age. But it is not merely the mark of an architect. Speak-ing before an audience in London during the late 1930s, Frank Lloyd Wright stated that “[e]very great architect is necessarily a great poet”. Whether or not this is

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true of every great architect remains a matter of debate. There are few, however, who will not see in that statement an apt description, perhaps the most apt descrip-tion, of Wright himself.

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Type Designer ExhibitionSeptember 15-22Museum of Modern Art11 West 53 StreetNew York, NY, 10019(213) 708-9400

instead he became interested in calligraphy and at the age of 17 he began his typographic studies. He became a master in his field, worked as a teacher, wrote several books, designed typefaces, and worked his entire life as designer and writer. In 1928, Jan Tschichold explained the prin-ciples of modern typography in his book called New Typography. He pioneered production techniques and stylistic devices used throughout the twentieth century. Influenced by the new Bauhaus typography, Jan Tschichold began to use sans serif typefaces and designed simplified, assymetric layouts. In a special 1925 issue of “typographische mitteilungen” entitled “elementare typographie”, Jan Tschichold introduced the most important approaches to the new typography design. He worked for many publishers in Basel and taught at the School for the Applied Arts. In 1946 Tschichold went to London, where he was art director at Penguin Books until 1949. In 1950 he returned to Switzerland and between 1955 and 1967 he worked as a design consultant for the Basel pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche. In 1960, Tschichold was commis-sioned by the firms of Monotype, Linotype, and Stempel to create a classical typeface that would give the same reproduction on both Monotype and Linotype systems, he named the typeface Sabon. It was adapted for phototypesetting systems and it is still a popular typeface, especially in Europe. Other typefaces designed by him are Transito, Saskia, Zeus, Sabon, and Classical Garamond.

Jan Tschichold is one of the most influential typographers of the 20th century. Tschichold was born on April 02, 1902 in Leipzing, Germany. He was expected to follow in the carreer of his father, a letter-painter but