PLANNING THEORIES OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

DESIGN CONCEPT

"To look at the plan of a great City is to look at something like the cross-section of a fibrous tumor," (1945)

The principles :

• Addressed ideas about the relationship of the human scale to the landscape

• The use of new materials like glass and steel to achieve more spatial architecture

• Development of a building’s architectural “character,” which was his answer to the notion of style.

Used old technologies in new ways.

Tested the material limits

ORGANIC ARCHITECTUREOF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE

Adapts to each site, climate, and properties of materials.

Form, function, time and site are related Spaces are a part of a coherent whole:  The core ideology is that architecture has

an inherent relationship with both its site and its time.

Falling waters By Frank Lloyd Wright

URBAN PLANNING :MODERN MOVEMENT

• The modern origins of urban planning lie in the movement for urban reform that arose as a reaction against the disorder of the industrial city in the mid-19th century.

• In the late 20th century, the term sustainable development has come to represent an ideal outcome in the sum of all planning goals.

Architects who planned to fix the modern city were three types:

• wanted to radically transform the modern city into something better

• wanted to build small communities that would connect to larger cities through public transportation

• wanted to rid the world of the industrial city altogether

“Wright felt the city and the industrial civilization that produced it must perish,”“They were the consequences of diseased values, and to achieve health, new values had to be established in a new environment.”

~ late urban sociologist Leonard Reissman

“We live now in cities of the past, slaves of the machine and of traditional building.” 

Frank Lloyd Wright

UTOPIA FOR A PERFECT COMMUNITY:

BROADACRE CITY

Was the contradicting opinion of Wright against the Radiant city concept of Le Corbusier

An urban or suburban development concept, introduced by Wright in

•  The Disappearing City (1932)• When Democracy Builds (1945)• The Living City(1958)

• It was not a city, but a landscaping that covered the whole country

• A socio-political scheme by which each U.S. family would be given a one acre (4,000 m²) plot of land from the federal lands reserves

• Decentralised in organisation it is self-sufficient in supply

• Republican in constitution

• Populated by auto – mobile citizens.

The first full-out diagram of Broadacre was published in 1935 in Architectural Record, and that same year a Broadacre model was displayed at Rockefeller Center.

KEY FEATURES

• spacious landscaped highways

• giant roads

• public service stations, expanded to include all kinds of service and comfort

• Individual units are interlinked with each other through the landscaping

the farm unitsthe factory unitsthe roadside marketsthe garden schoolsthe dwelling placesthe places for pleasure and leisure

• Each unit is on its acre of individually adorned and cultivated ground

• All units are arranged and integrated in a way that each citizen of the future will have all forms of

productiondistributionself improvementenjoyment

within a radius of a hundred and fifty miles of his home, now made easily and speedily available through his vehicle

• Wright believed that all citizens should own automobiles and helicopters

• Intention was to create a functional community, not a cluster of individuals.

• More light, freedom of movement and space was allowed

• At Broadacre’s center : one-acre land units meant for nuclear families

• Expanding outwards from center were other distinct areas including

farm units luxurious housing

orchards hotelsanitarium music gardenzoo aquariumfactories

scientific and agricultural researchand a small school for small children

• No Slum

• No Scum

• No glaring cement roads or walks

• Entire United States was to be filled with small cities interconnected by a super highway.

• Each city would be embedded in nature and have its own cultural and educational centers.

• Larger villages would contain only about 10,000 individuals.

• Rejected American cities of the first half of the 20th century.

• According to him, cities would no longer be centralized; no longer beholden to the pedestrian or the central business district.

• Wright's concept was ultimately an extension of

the things that made him personally comfortable: open spaces, the automobile, and not surprisingly, the architect as master controller.

PROS OF THE BROADACRE CONCEPT

• Communication technology was developed

• Invention of machines

• Scientific Discoveries

• Direct business distribution

• Development of public facilities

• Mobilization of people

• Usage of various materials

CONS OF THE BROADACRE CONCEPT

• Increased road traffic

• No spontaneous pedestrian life

• Obviating the need for non-excludable urban common spaces

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