Euine Fay Jones : an interpretation of organic architecture

Abstract

Why is it, that the architecture of Fay Jones, who won an AIA Gold Medal in 1990, is still relatively unknown outside America? The answer is somewhere in our hectic struggle for the new, the innovative, and the different. Jones has stood apart from his peers in this regard. He has not participated in debates about architectural style, and the direction this has taken: his architecture is enduring and timeless. However, his architecture is widely admired by the American public. As a result of the first article about his architecture to appear in a magazine - on the Calvin Bain house, in 1959 - Jones received requests for 600 house designs. Since then, he has created his own distinctive architecture which saw him win the prestigious gold medal. His great talent is the subject of this investigation. Fay Jones's architecture derives from an organic philosophy, and yet it looks so different from the common perception of organic architecture: that which looks naturalistic. This research investigates Jones's interpretation of organicism, and the other ideas which make up his distinctive organic architecture. The research revealed that his interpretation of organicism relates to the fundamental principles of organicism. His work is largely founded in the twentieth century American tradition of organicism, developed by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, which while moving away into a more prescriptive form of organicism, still relates to its fundamental principles. Jones has extended this tradition in a number of ways. He has responded to the modernist tradition, the social conditions of the twentieth century, and has overlaid historical ideas, to create a new direction for the tradition of organicism.