|
|
Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie house
In 1897 Frank Lloyd Wright’s style is revealed, especially with prairie houses, and his house in Oak Park announced this style, integrated in the landscape. He also tried to take into account the constraints imposed by the continental climate of the region. For this purpose, he multiplied the height differences of the ceilings so that the rooms would be ventilated. These innovations pass through the use of a combination of traditional materials (natural stone for the façade, and the soils) and other innovations for that time: concrete, steel, roofs, terraces in console or great bays. Wright is then detached from the classical European architecture and he tried to define a style inspired from his master Sullivan, which he calls organic, and which he considers a new background of the American culture. Thus, if architects don’t try to imitate nature, the shape of the house must be according to their function.
However, only between 1900 and 1910 his projects of houses had the characteristics of the so called prairie houses, having common features like 3 extended, low buildings, with narrow, steep roofs, clear contours, exterior suspended structures, and large terraces as well as the use of a lot of unfinished materials. This name of prairie houses was given because their design is harmoniously integrated in the landscape around Chicago. These houses are also credited to be the first examples of open plans. Frank Lloyd Wright used with a unique art the interior spaces in the construction of residential buildings and of public buildings as well.
One of the deep beliefs of Frank Lloyd Wright was that the man, the human beings, belonging to mankind must be in the center of all the projects and architectural achievements. A lot of examples illustrating this fundamental concept of the American architect can be found in the town of Buffalo in the state of New York, as a direct result of the friendship between Wright and an executive director of Larkin Soap Company, Darwin D. Martin.
What is remarkable in Wright’s architecture is that he did not have only a creative mind from the point of view of a scientist, of a man who perceives the concrete side of the things; he also associated his creation with spiritual life, with nature, as if the man’s creation would be a part of nature, even if he used artificial materials like glass, steel and concrete. His work is like an agreement between man and God.
An example of prairie house is Frederick Robie House from Chicago, built in 1907. This house with its extended roof, which is very slightly steep, supported by a steel column of about 37 meters length is the most spectacular, dynamic, and remarkable of all the houses belonging to that period.
Its rooms, which are functional, where people can sleep and the living room form only one space, which is not interrupted, which is harmoniously divided through suggestions of great use of the interior space. This building influenced young architects after the First World War, as a beginning of modern art. |
