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Truth Against the World: Frank Lloyd Wright Speaks for an Organic Architecture
Truth Against the World offers a singular portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright—the master architect, and perhaps America’s most famous architect, as public speaker. It was a role Wright often disdained but which he also obviously enjoyed. Including thoughtful analysis with introductions by editor Patrick J. Meehan, AIA, Truth Against the World provides the first comprehensive, single-volume collection of Wright’s most important speeches during his 70-year career to diverse audiences—high school and college students, architects, engineers, business executives, and society matrons. Topics covered by the 32 presentations include Wright’s thoughts on Beaux Arts architecture and the Columbian World Exposition of 1893, organic architecture, prefabricated housing, hospital design, the use of the machine in design, and contemporary society, among many others.
- GenresArchitecture
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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April 4, 2008
Truth Against the World: Frank Lloyd Wright Speaks for an Organic Architecture (1992)
I tend to see Frank Lloyd Wright as the ‘godfather’ of what I call organic economics and some of my comments here may help to describe how Wright’s philosophy ties in to my perspective on economics. It all begins with his central theme of organic architecture.
In a 1900 address to an architecture convention in Chicago he deplored commercialization in architecture (i.e., money making by industrial parasites) in favor of higher ideals and better purposes. To extract the consistent and essential beauty of a thing and truthfully idealizing it is the “heart of the poetry that lives in architecture.” (p. 43)
From a presentation in Chicago in 1901 he defined Art as a matter of perceiving and portraying the harmony of organic tendencies (pp. 105-106). This is consistent with his frequently held view that an architect must be an artist.
In a lecture to high school students in Chicago in 1957 he connected nature, structure, and beauty. He emphasized that nature means the essential significant life of a thing (p. 38), that from nature, comes miracles of structural integrity with an expression of beauty (p. 31).
In a 1945 speech to architects in Detroit, Wright noted that his use of the word organic goes beyond the biological (p. 51). It is concerned with entities, with structure, with being alive and vital. In a 1909 talk to a Club in Oak Park, Illinois, he said that while ornament was not a very big deal, he used it when appropriate, but only when it was organic with the structure it adorns, which involved the properties of fitness, proportion, and harmony (p. 72).
In a speech in 1950 to students in London, Wright recalled that “organic architecture is of the individual for the individual by way of individuals.” (p. 260) However, considering how any organic architecture must also necessarily be appropriate to its surroundings, you have a built in balance where the whole can no more dominate the individual than the individual can dominate the whole.
In a piece published in 1958, Wright again notes that the human scale was the scale by which man should build (p. 135). The humanist emphasis in the Renaissance resulted in architecture that did exactly this. By the same token, an organic economics would be an economics on a human scale.
From a radio talk he gave in 1949 he gave this amusing opinion of experts. “Now, an ‘expert’ is a man who has stopped thinking. He has had to stop thinking or he would be no expert. You can’t call a man an ‘authority’ who is growing and so changing his mind about things, can you?” (p. 200) In the same radio talk, Wright virtually gave his own take on the concept of theory versus practice. “Mr. Wheeler wants me to tell him how to found a university and that’s all very simple. I tried to found one my way. I founded it on the farm, founded it on building buildings, founded it on really knowing what a design means because when you sit down at the drawing board and make it, you get up and go out and execute it. That’s what I think the university should be like. I believe you cannot grasp the idea without knowing the nature of the thing, and I don’t believe you can know the nature of anything without getting into action with it. I don’t think you can sit around on your fannies and study it much or get much of it from books. I think you’ve got to get in contact with it, get into it, and by way of such immediate experience comes some knowledge of the nature of the thing you want to do.” (p. 209)
In a speech to federal architects in 1938, Wright told them that “Organic architecture….comes out of the circumstances of the time, the place, and the man.” (p. 369) Such an assertion argues for the flexibility for outcomes and policies to adapt to the immediate situation instead of relying on principles fixed for all time.
From a speech that was published in 1916, Wright describes one principle of organics as something that grows from the inside out, just as trees or flowers grow (p. 118). Then he discounts the Renaissance as “although academic, never was organic.” (p. 119) He claims the Renaissance was divorced from life. He describes Gothic architecture as an organic architecture, but not that of the Renaissance. However, my own interpretation of the Renaissance is quite different. The Renaissance was all about humanism; a step forward from the heights of Gothic cathedrals that forced the eye to the heavens, far above any humans. It was Brunelleschi (1377-1446) that first came up with linear perspective in painting, making painting more naturalistic, more real, more human, more organic. And Brunelleschi’s crowing achievement was the Dome of the Cathedral in Florence, Italy, i.e., Santa Maria del Fiore. At the time it was the largest dome of any church in the world, and without the support of Gothic flying buttresses. If to be organic is to be in harmony with the environment, the Dome qualifies as follows. Although it rises above its surroundings, it blends in. Most importantly, it works. At the time, the architect was mocked since no one thought such a large dome could be built that wouldn’t collapse in on itself. Brunelleschi proved otherwise. Organically sound architecture, like organically sound economic policy, is that which works and can be sustained in the long term with no special supporting mechanism because it is “naturally” sustained by its own nature.
I tend to see Frank Lloyd Wright as the ‘godfather’ of what I call organic economics and some of my comments here may help to describe how Wright’s philosophy ties in to my perspective on economics. It all begins with his central theme of organic architecture.
In a 1900 address to an architecture convention in Chicago he deplored commercialization in architecture (i.e., money making by industrial parasites) in favor of higher ideals and better purposes. To extract the consistent and essential beauty of a thing and truthfully idealizing it is the “heart of the poetry that lives in architecture.” (p. 43)
From a presentation in Chicago in 1901 he defined Art as a matter of perceiving and portraying the harmony of organic tendencies (pp. 105-106). This is consistent with his frequently held view that an architect must be an artist.
In a lecture to high school students in Chicago in 1957 he connected nature, structure, and beauty. He emphasized that nature means the essential significant life of a thing (p. 38), that from nature, comes miracles of structural integrity with an expression of beauty (p. 31).
In a 1945 speech to architects in Detroit, Wright noted that his use of the word organic goes beyond the biological (p. 51). It is concerned with entities, with structure, with being alive and vital. In a 1909 talk to a Club in Oak Park, Illinois, he said that while ornament was not a very big deal, he used it when appropriate, but only when it was organic with the structure it adorns, which involved the properties of fitness, proportion, and harmony (p. 72).
In a speech in 1950 to students in London, Wright recalled that “organic architecture is of the individual for the individual by way of individuals.” (p. 260) However, considering how any organic architecture must also necessarily be appropriate to its surroundings, you have a built in balance where the whole can no more dominate the individual than the individual can dominate the whole.
In a piece published in 1958, Wright again notes that the human scale was the scale by which man should build (p. 135). The humanist emphasis in the Renaissance resulted in architecture that did exactly this. By the same token, an organic economics would be an economics on a human scale.
From a radio talk he gave in 1949 he gave this amusing opinion of experts. “Now, an ‘expert’ is a man who has stopped thinking. He has had to stop thinking or he would be no expert. You can’t call a man an ‘authority’ who is growing and so changing his mind about things, can you?” (p. 200) In the same radio talk, Wright virtually gave his own take on the concept of theory versus practice. “Mr. Wheeler wants me to tell him how to found a university and that’s all very simple. I tried to found one my way. I founded it on the farm, founded it on building buildings, founded it on really knowing what a design means because when you sit down at the drawing board and make it, you get up and go out and execute it. That’s what I think the university should be like. I believe you cannot grasp the idea without knowing the nature of the thing, and I don’t believe you can know the nature of anything without getting into action with it. I don’t think you can sit around on your fannies and study it much or get much of it from books. I think you’ve got to get in contact with it, get into it, and by way of such immediate experience comes some knowledge of the nature of the thing you want to do.” (p. 209)
In a speech to federal architects in 1938, Wright told them that “Organic architecture….comes out of the circumstances of the time, the place, and the man.” (p. 369) Such an assertion argues for the flexibility for outcomes and policies to adapt to the immediate situation instead of relying on principles fixed for all time.
From a speech that was published in 1916, Wright describes one principle of organics as something that grows from the inside out, just as trees or flowers grow (p. 118). Then he discounts the Renaissance as “although academic, never was organic.” (p. 119) He claims the Renaissance was divorced from life. He describes Gothic architecture as an organic architecture, but not that of the Renaissance. However, my own interpretation of the Renaissance is quite different. The Renaissance was all about humanism; a step forward from the heights of Gothic cathedrals that forced the eye to the heavens, far above any humans. It was Brunelleschi (1377-1446) that first came up with linear perspective in painting, making painting more naturalistic, more real, more human, more organic. And Brunelleschi’s crowing achievement was the Dome of the Cathedral in Florence, Italy, i.e., Santa Maria del Fiore. At the time it was the largest dome of any church in the world, and without the support of Gothic flying buttresses. If to be organic is to be in harmony with the environment, the Dome qualifies as follows. Although it rises above its surroundings, it blends in. Most importantly, it works. At the time, the architect was mocked since no one thought such a large dome could be built that wouldn’t collapse in on itself. Brunelleschi proved otherwise. Organically sound architecture, like organically sound economic policy, is that which works and can be sustained in the long term with no special supporting mechanism because it is “naturally” sustained by its own nature.
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