Organic Architecture

The brightest representative of the organic trend is F.L. Wright is a pupil of L. Sullivan. The leading place in the creativity of the architect was occupied by the aesthetic appearance of spaces and volumes, while Wright evaluated the project from a scientific, hygienic and technological standpoint. The base of the direction was the relationship of the building with the landscape, while everything in the building must be connected with the construction of its internal environment. That is, the conclusion is obvious that such a thing is possible only if an individual project is compiled for each object.

F.L. Wright worked for almost seventy years and for this period designed and built a large number of various buildings of various purposes – from offices, high-rise buildings to houses and temples. Focusing on the principles of organic, Wright used traditional materials, as well as its distinctive feature was the identity of the texture of the facade and interior design. A well-known architect made excellent projects of mansions, fully implementing the principles of organicity.

The space of the mansions is divided into common and intimate areas. The common zone is projected overflowing – this option implies the absence of interior partitions. Also in Wright’s projects, the interior flows into the exterior: the walls serving as a section for common rooms are designed from glass, with doors leading to the backyard. Walls oriented to the city in the project are deaf or equipped with small windows located under the ceiling, which add light to the room, but do not provide contact with the street.

Bedrooms and bathrooms in small houses are located on the same line with a single axis or at an angle to the axis. In the mansions the bedrooms are larger and the sanitary units are designed on the 2nd and 3rd floors.

Wright, like Le Corbusier, adhered to the idea of a free-plan building with a flat roof. But at the same time his ideas are realized differently, respectively, and the results are also different. For example, free planning Corbusier is a frame and a grid of columns. Wright connects the position of vertical structures and spatial planning decisions of the building, thus achieving considerable freedom of connection. Bearing supports are brick, stone walls or pylons. Masonry is not plastered neither inside nor outside. On the contour of toilets and kitchens are placed stone walls. The remaining walls and pylons are interconnected with the house plan and the rules of general stability of the structure.

Sloping roof or roof, having a flat shape, is designed by Wright without an attic, while the drainage is external and unorganized, which determines the characteristic for the architect’s houses quite solid roof overhang. Overhang protects the walls from rain, is a good protection from the sun.

Roofs are designed in different ways. One-storey mansions are equipped with insulated wooden structures, which have three layers, two-storey and three-storey buildings – reinforced concrete structures. Due to this, the cantilever overhangs on which terraces can be placed are increased. When designing houses for the southern regions, the architect often envisaged lattice roofing overhangs.

Despite the fact that all projects of the architect are diverse in composition, the red thread through all his work is the harmony of his projects with the landscape. Along with this remains the rejection of the city. His projects are not fundamentally combined with the city and are tightly enclosed by walls.

Such a decision, however, Wright took already in the mature years of creativity – from the thirties to the fifties of the last century. Early his projects – the beginning of the twentieth century – are open equally to the court and to the street.

Creativity Wright noted the creation of public buildings projects. In 1904, the architect’s project for the office of the firm Larkin and Buffalo demonstrated the abandonment of the traditionally accepted corridor layout of this type of buildings. Wright replaced this structure with an atrium volumetric-planning one.

The architect distributed the offices around the enclosed space of the atrium, one on the entire height of the building. Thus, the working premises were illuminated from above and from the side.

The most interesting of the architect’s projects is the Guggenheim Museum project that breaks stereotypes. Traditionally, for the design of museums, the enfilade structure was used.

The art exposition of the building is lined up along the ramp, which has the shape of a spiral going downward. The ramp as if wrapped around the central space (atrium). The space is illuminated through a dome made of glass. Using the elevator, visitors climb to the very top, after which as the descent is carried out, the exposure is inspected. The tour ends in the lecture halls. The architect uses combined lighting – through the dome and through a narrow ribbon opening, which was located along the ramp.

The peculiarity of composition and functions of the internal situation is the arrangement of a rather large green zone of the atrium with limited areas along the ramp that are directed to the atrium. Switching from the exposition to it, the guests of the museum are less tired. Conditionality from the position of functionality of the scheme of organization of the museum space has become decisive for the design of its external volume – the building is like a snail.

Its original closed volume is organically included in the building and does not depend on its structure.

Also organically and nontrivially designed office – multistorey building. In the Price Tower, erected in the mid-fifties, offices and apartments were to be located. Traditionally, offices are designed on the lower floors, apartments – on the upper floors. Breaking the traditional approach and constructive beliefs, refusing the project’s carcass, the architect places offices on fifteen floors of construction, separating them tightly perpendicular walls. The composition of the volume is tectonic, a feature of it is the exposure of the inner system of bearing walls at the ends.

In the organic direction and to this day, numerous students and followers of this unusually talented architect work, but he is the brightest figure in his field. The originality of his buildings is underscored by the outstanding talent of the architect.