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THE MICHIGAN DAILY MAGAZINE
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P, .TM ,IA hl A A - .n --*... -unay, March , 195
Organic Architecture
Modern Life Must Find Expression in Homes -Frank LloydWright
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A TESTAMENT. By Frank Lloyd
Wright. New York, 1957: Hori-
?on Press, 255 pp. $12.50.
By BERNARD H. STOLLMAN
"So, my boy, do not trouble
yourself as to whether or not
others understand your words
as you do. Seek rather to un-
derstand yourself-regardless
of words; and in due time, if
so it be written in the great
book of destiny, others will
perceive in your works more or
less of what you, more or less
adequately, have thought, felt,
lived, loved and understood."
--Louis Sullivan
THOUGH many controversial
characters have passed upon
the American scene in the past
sixty years, few have been the
cause of as much heated debate
as has the Chicago architect,
Frank Lloyd Wright. His name outline, a brief summing up of
has become a household word everything Wright has ever writ-
throughout this country as well as ten and said. Yet his generaliza-
many other parts of the world, tions are more poetic and less di-
Though most Americans know of dactic in tone. He speaks not to
him, very few have any idea why convince but simply because the
lie should be a topic for discussion statements are true, lastingin-
at all. He is popularly pictured as
a self-procliimcd radica, a an- evitable. This is not the teacher
preme egotist who has little use cautioning, it is the master
for the work of others. prophesying.
A Testament is, in many ways, Though accused of being a self-
the culmination of the more than appointed radical and the origi- r
sixty years that Wright has been nator of a new kind of architec-
practicing his profession. The ture, this is not wholly true. Few
ideas presented in it are not new; realize "organic" architecture had
the book contains nothing Wright its beginiings in the late 19th cen-
has not stated previously in his tury under the hand of another
books or lectures. It contains none leas well-known asehitect. Wrinht
of the close analyses of American himself never received a degree in
civilization present in Genius and architecture; the closest he ever
the Mobocracy and The Future of came was a course in civil engi-
Architeture nor does it examine neers g at the University of Wis-
the material sofbuilding as close- cousin. However, Wright had no
ly as did The Natural House. desire to be an engineer. In his
Basically, A Testament is an senior year he left school and went
to Chicago to look for a job with
an architectural firm. It was there
that he met and worked for Louis
Sullivan, undoubtedly the great-
est architect of the period. WRIGHT WORK-The latest achievement of the noted architect
Though H H. Richardson had is located near 7 Mile Road in Detroit. Says author Stollman, "it
hinted at it with his Marshall leaks, but it wouldn't be a Wright house unless it did."
Field Department Store in 1885, it
was Sullivan who first originated freedom. Wright soon realized that way of looking at it. The history
the idea of "organic" as applied to what "Lieber Meister," Wright's of architecture simply had been a
architecture. He was sickened by name for Sullivan, was suggesting search for this truth - democracy
the restatement of classical and was not just a possible solution to offering the first real opportunity
renaissance themes. He wanted an the problem of the meaning of to bring it into concrete, physical
architecture that was distinctly architecture. It was the only solu- form.
American, an indigenous one that tion; the reality or essence of However, introducing the public
" " expressed the American concept of architecture, not simply another to organic architecture proved to
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