Towards a definition of the organic aesthetic of form in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright

Abstract

During the 1890's and early 1900's, Frank Lloyd Wright was in the process of formulating his ideal, as he called it, of an "organic" architecture. An organic architecture, he stated, was to be interpreted as a "living entity," but it was not, in this emphasis, to be regarded as a scientific concept. The word "organic," he warned, should not be limited to a "biological" significance. It signified, rather a "concept of intrinsic living and of building intrinsic and natural; both concepts seen together in structure as Native." F.L. Wright, The Living City, p.160. Most critics, in their efforts to interpret this organic concept of Wright's, have preferred to concentrate on the stylistic presentation of his ideal. Representative of this approach is Grant Carpenter Manson's idea that the organic quality inherent in Wright's early domestic designs, depended on a sense of "harmony." This harmony, according to Manson, was "more the sum-total" of "material parts" than "a thing of the spirit." In a very real sense, according to Manson, Wright's domestic architecture was therefore "an organic growth in which all cells are determined by and obedient to the central, ruling idea." This "central ruling idea," Manson implies, lay in the essential logic of Wright's plans. G.C. Manson, Frank Lloyd Wright to 1910, pp.194-5.