Essay: Why did Frank Lloyd Wright disagree with Bauhaus philosophy (form or function)

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT DISAGREED WITH THE BAUHAUS PHILOSOPHY THAT FORM SHOULD FOLLOW FUNCTION WHEN HE STATED THAT ‘FORM AND FUNCTION SHOULD BE ONE’. WHY DID THESE TWO GIANTS OF 20TH CENTURY ARCHITECTURE CHAMPION CONTRARY OPINIONS AND IS FORM OR FUNCTION THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THEIR WORK?
INTRODUCTION:
The potential for new building materials and technologies to revolutionise architecture was evident in the late 1800’s with the use of cast iron and cast plate glass at the Crystal Palace (1851) in London; the first house built of reinforced concrete in St Denis, France (Francois Coignet, 1853); the ten-story, steel-framed Home Insurance Building in Chicago (1885 William Le Baron Jenney); and the Eiffel Tower (1889) in Paris.
The Modernist architectural movement which was born at the start of the twentieth century, combined innovative construction technologies, particularly the use of reinforced concrete, glass and steel, with a minimalist design ethos, as a reaction against the decorative ornamentation of preceding styles.
Whilst Early European Modernism (1900-1914) included some stylised ornamentation with designers such as Charles Renny Mackintosh with the Arts and Crafts, and Art Nouveau Movements, a more austere and functional design language developed. Examples include, the AEG Turbine Factory (1909) by Peter Behrens and the Fagus-Werk Factory (1913) by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer.
At the same time, Early American Modernism (1900-1914) was dominated by Frank Lloyd Wright, who despite having no formal architectural training, was working in Chicago with Louis Sullivan on the pioneering steel-frame high-rise office buildings. He went on to develop highly original design concepts and challenge traditional design rules with his series of Prairie and Block houses for example. His philosophy that ‘form and function should be one’ was also applied to houses, office buildings, as well as church buildings and a warehouse, all of which used innovative construction technologies and simple, geometric design elements.
European Modernism developed after the Great War and Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus School (1919-1932), his innovation of combining of arts and technical teaching was particularly influential. The design style and method of teaching are visible 100 years later, despite being open for only 14 years across three locations and having had at most 200 students, at any one time.
Gropius’ (1883-1969) belief in standardised architecture, mass production and large-scale construction became key concepts of modernism, which he described in his book ‘The Idea and Construction’1. An example being his design for a collection of accommodation towers for workers at Siemens, Siemensstadt Estate (Siemens Street) in Berlin, or mass-produced housing near to the Bauhaus school in Dessau
The economic, minimalist design style of Gropius and the Bauhaus School’s philosophy is often referred to as ‘form follows function’ and contrasts with Frank Lloyd Wright’s statement that ‘form and function should be one’.
CHAPTER 1: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) designed more than 1000 buildings, over half of which were completed. He had a passion for designing buildings to collaborate in their intended environment and ‘enhance natural beauty’2, whilst still ensuring functionality. He is best known for his ‘Prairie School’ style of architecture and this period of his work (1917-1929) best fits with his tenant that “form and function should be one” and that “The physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines.”3
The ‘Prairie School’ of design was an architectural style for the Midwest of the United States, centered around Chicago. Its buildings feature horizontal lines and broad overhanging eaves, typically through the use of flat, or hipped roofs and lack of decoration. The horizontal references of the design were said to evoke the wide, flat and treeless expanses of the prairies.
In 1991, Wright was acknowledged as ‘the greatest American Architect of all time’4, by the American Institute of Architects.
Frank Lloyd Wright cited his five key inspirations as:
1. Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), perhaps best known as the ‘Father of Skyscrapers’5, a key member of the ‘Chicago School’ of architects and influencer in the ‘Prairie School’ style of architecture. Sullivan was a mentor to Wright long after he worked in the practise of Adler & Sullivan (1888-1893) and Sullivan referred to him as his “Lieber Meister” (German for “Beloved Master”).
2. Nature and organic influences, particularly the shapes, forms, patterns and colours of plants. He grew up in rural Wisconsin and much of his design considered the interaction of his buildings with the natural environment.
3. Music was important to Wright whom once said “architecture is a kind of music”6. His father, Carey Wright was an amateur composer and Frank Lloyd Wright’s favourite composer was Ludwig van Beethoven.
4. Wright often wrote about his appreciation of Japanese art, prints and buildings. In 1917 he wrote about Japanese art that, “When I first saw a fine print about twenty-five years ago it was an intoxicating thing.”7 He first travelled to Japan in 1905, and his 1910 rendering of Winslow House, seems to mimic Japanese artist Ando Hiroshige’s use of vegetation8 as a frame for the image. in 1912, he wrote the book “The Japanese Print: An Interpretation”9. He spent many months visiting Japan in 1913, 1917 and 1918 to work on the Imperial Hotel, in Tokyo.
5. Wright’s mother was a teacher and purchased a Frederick Froebel Gift set, of geometric kindergarten building blocks at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In his autobiography, Wright said that “these primary forms and figures were the secret of all effects… which were ever got into the architecture of the world”10. He is widely quoted as having said “the maple wood blocks… are in my fingers to this day”.
Whilst, Louis Sullivan was both a precursor of Modernism and an inspirational force to Wright, he disagreed with the Sullivan’s view that “form follows function”, especially as it was adopted by the Bauhaus movement, preferring a philosophy ‘form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union’11.
Wright believed that form and function are both important, and that a building should be viewed aesthetically whilst being practical for the intended use. For example, a house should be designed for the family living in it, an office for the workers, or for example the Guggenheim art museum being designed to emphasise the beauty of the artwork and to enhance the visitor’s experience.
He believed in designing structures that were in accord with humanity and the surrounding environment, his designs aimed for the use of humans, as well as fitting into the environment without depriving it of organic forms and aesthetics, for example, building a house in an area of a site-specific species. Natural materials and continuous windows were used to let in natural light and bring the environment and residents together.
An example of ‘organic architecture12 is perhaps his most famous work, the private residence ‘Fallingwater’ (Kaufmann House – 1937). The construction, nested in a forest, over a 30ft waterfall was chosen to place the residents close to their natural surroundings. The construction included strong horizontal aspects being built from concrete with a flat roof, with the verticals out of limestone blocks. Wright said, that “where the whole is [to] the part as the part is to the whole and where the nature of the materials, the nature of the purpose, the nature of the entire performance” 13
The appearance of the concrete is softened to match the local sand, and compliment the natural colour of the limestone, and harmonise the building with the nature surrounding it. The extensive use of glass helps to balance the boundaries of interior and exterior designs.
A different example of Wright’s consideration of both form and function is perhaps his other most recognisable design, the iconic geometric Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1937-1959), in New York. It features a spiral, shell-like shape, which is larger at the top than the bottom, an inverted-ziggurat, which houses a showcasing of art along a continuous ascending path.
The building’s circular exterior provides a striking monument, being an extreme contradiction to the adjacent perpendicular, boxy Manhattan apartment blocks. It could be argued that it’s organic shape better matches Central Park, on the opposite side of the road, in front of it.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s last major project, it used 650m3 of concrete and 700 tonnes of steel to create a museum both aesthetically striking when viewed as a whole, whilst addressing its purpose of being an art gallery. The artworks are viewed by walking along a continuous loop, which climbs towards the sky, a sensation which is enhanced by the glass dome, creating what Wright described as “one great space on a continuous floor”14.
The interior is meant to give the sense of being inside a seashell and this may be one factor in why the exterior is painted in a natural, warm beige.
Geometric details such as small circles in the floor were added to emphasise the geometry of the building and triangular light fixtures supplement the nature of the structure. Some elements of Wrights design were ignored, such as his idea to paint the interior off-white to fit with the nature and shell-like concept.
At the time of completion the design received mixed reviews15, with some strong criticism such as art critic John Canaday writing in the the New York Times that “A war between architecture and painting, in which both come out badly maimed,” contrasting with critic Emily Genauer describing it in the New York Herald Tribune, as “the most beautiful building in America,” or “Mr. Wright’s greatest building, New York’s greatest building”, according to architect Philip Johnson.
Wright claimed that he intended the curved walls to cause the art work to be lent backwards, as on an easel, showing he thought deeply about the function of a building in the design process. Others argued that this was poor design leading to difficulty when hanging art work. There was disagreement with Manhattan’s building-code administrators due to structural weaknesses in the design, including the glass dome which was deemed too large.
In July 1958, he wrote a letter that highlighted the connection between his design for the as yet unfinished Guggenheim and the artwork it would display. “Yes, it is hard…to understand a struggle for harmony and unity between the painting and the building. No, it is not to subjugate the paintings to the building that I conceived this plan. On the contrary, it was to make the building and the painting a beautiful symphony such as never existed in the world of Art before.”16 Although Wright had announced this, critics still argued that ‘the building competes with the art work’. James Johnson, Museum Director said “This is the most spectacular museum interior architecturally in this country. But my job is to show off a magnificent collection to its fullest.”17 Contrastingly, Tom Krens, a former Director stated “Great architecture has this capacity to adapt to changing functional uses without losing one bit of its dignity or one bit of its original intention. And I think that’s the great thing about the building at the end of the day.”18
The smooth, plain exterior of the Guggenheim Museum is free of augmentation with solely the name visible in a simple font running flush along the front of the building. This could be considered a design reference to the modernity of the Guggenheim Museum’s collection, in contrast to the more historical contents and the design of Richard Morris Hunt’s Beaux-Arts façade of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, only one quarter of mile south on 5th Avenue.
The influence of Frank Lloyd Wright can be widely seen in contemporary architecture, with an example being, award-winning American architect David Small who chose to draw upon the ‘Prairie style’19, similar to Wright’s Robie House, when designing his own home20. Small designed his home to integrate into a hillside and the natural environment, in line with Wright’s quote “no house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.” 21
Similarities include strong horizontal elements, natural materials and large roof overhangs, open-plan living and easy access to the garden in line with Wright’s desire to ensure free-movement between the interior and exterior of the house.
The breadth of Wright’s influence can be seen beyond architecture through Jonathan Adler (1966-onwards), who said “I hadn’t considered Frank Lloyd Wright’s philosophical approach to design but what I love is the visual vocabulary and his innovations. There are so many signature visual tricks that have influenced me – how he cantilevered everything, his horizontal gestures, his idea of buildings as sculptural objects.”22
CHAPTER 2: THE BAUHAUS
The Bauhaus aimed to create a visionary, utopian, craft guild which would combine beauty through usefulness, whilst coalescing arts, technology and interaction with people, to reunite originality and manufacturing. Its aim was to raise a ‘new breed’ of artists that could work with anything as a result of focusing on their surroundings.
The main influence of the Bauhaus was functional modernism, a philosophical movement associated with cultural change. The Nazi Party were concerned that the Bauhaus school23 was a centre for communist intellectualism and radicalism, hence its closure in 1932, and the spreading of its philosophies worldwide when its practitioners were disbanded. Notable locations for the Bauhaus concept to subsequently become established were the ‘New Bauhaus of Chicago’, Canada, Western Europe and the largest number of buildings in Tel Aviv’s White City, Israel24, hence Bauhaus perhaps achieved more influence than had it remained in Germany.
Walter Groupius wrote in 1926’s Bauhaus Dessau – Principles of Bauhaus Production, that “An object is defined by its nature. In order, then, to design it to function correctly – a container, a chair, or a house, – one must, first-of-all, study its nature: for it must fulfil its function usefully, be durable, economical, and beautiful.”25
Bauhaus was famous for an unpretentious attitude to design, using it as more than an architectural style, rather a way of thinking. One of the main characteristics of Bauhaus design is that “form follows function”: where a product needs to work efficiently and subsequently consider the aesthetics, hence making the functionality the primary concern.
The phrase “form follows function”, was coined by Louis Sullivan (1856 – 1924), who is said to be the ‘Father of Skyscrapers’, and a key member of the ‘Chicago School’ of architects and mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright. Sullivan credited the saying to the 1st century Roman civil and military engineer, Vitruvius.
Gropius similarly said, “In order to design it to function properly, one must first-of-all study its nature. For it to serve its purpose perfectly, it must fulfil its function in a practical way.”26
Another characteristic was ‘truth to materials’ where the design should be ‘honest’ and not modify or hide its materials for the sake of aesthetics. Examples include Marcel Breuer’s iconic bicycle frame inspired, exposed tubular framed Wassily (1925) and B32/ Cesa (1928) chairs, or Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) and Lilly Reich’s (1885-1947) Barcelona chair (1929), with visible and thin stainless-steel X frame, or by leaving visible in buildings, steel support beams.
Bauhaus design had the characteristic of the minimalist design style of modernism, and favoured linear, geometric and repetitive forms. It avoids curvature, complexity or augmentation, celebrating the efficiency of simple geometric shapes, which being easily recognisable, have become iconic for their use of clean, sharp lines. Students were taught to look at the world around them and simplify them, encouraging a new approach towards an art school.
The Bauhaus school 1923 exhibition ‘Art & Technology: A New Unity’ of 1923, heralded a new emphasis on technology, the use of new materials, for instance, tubular steel and concrete, as well as using mass production and modern manufacturing processes. The focus on efficiency and mass-producible design, created objects which where economic to produce and therefore available for everyone, creating mass consumerism.
Hungarian, Marcel Breuer27 (1902–1981), attended the Bauhaus at the age of 18. He progressed to run the Bauhaus carpentry shop and retained a close relationship with his mentor Gropius throughout his life. He returned to the school in 1925 as a Master and taught in the newly established architecture department.
Breuer’s relative youth prevented him from winning many architectural commissions and he focused upon furniture instead. He is perhaps most famous for his innovation of utilising the new technology in tubular steel chairs, notably the ‘Wassily’ chair. This was named later in the 1960’s when it was reissued by its Italian manufacturer and they chose to highlight Bauhaus colleague, Wassily Kandinsky for whom Breuer made a copy.
The Wassily chair is a famous example of the Bauhaus principles of the use of new materials; exposing the purpose and construction of an object; and minimalist in its use of materials; manufactured using new techniques28. These chairs are still being manufactured today, showing the scale to which, the Bauhaus is still relevant and influential.
Of Jewish heritage Breuer left Germany in 1935, to work for furniture maker Isokon in London, designing furniture with bent and formed plywood, a new and innovative material. In 1937 he went with his mentor Gropius to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
In 1941, Breuer left his practise with Gropius whose fame he felt, overshadowed his own name. His architectural commissions increased, for example his use of primary colours, red, yellow and blue in the side panels of The Stillman House, Litchfield, USA. The coloured panels create a simple geometric look that has been thought about after the practicality of the design. Wassily Kandinsky (teacher at the Bauhaus, from 1921) believed that a successful design could only ascend from mutual collaboration of forms and colours. He thought that geometric shapes were finalised by certain colours, for example the liveliness in yellow. This idea shows a link in Breuer’s Stillman House as it is clear he gained inspiration from Kandinsky from the production of the Wassily chair. The house is simple in form, with no unnecessary decoration, emphasising open space through extensive use of glass panels and windows. This increases the functionality of the house whilst creating an art through the choice of materials, letting natural light fill the open space, the form following afterwards, one of the principles Breuer would have learnt at the Bauhaus school.
The interior showcases industrial brick, also painted the same clean white to reflect the light, allowing the raw details to show the structure of the home. The polished wooden floor delivers contrasting textures with the brick walls and stone kitchen flooring.
Architectural critic Rachel Carley said “’Litchfield has always been a place where people had gone after the best, including the best art and design. These modernist houses aren’t a break with the past, but a continuation”29, suggesting that the originality of the distinct design is making the past present again.
Breuer developed through at least four recognisable phases, across 100 buildings. New concepts such as his ‘binuclear’ houses with bedrooms in a separate wing to the rest of the house, adopted inspiration from others, such as the notable Swiss architect, Le Corbusier (1887-1965) and his use of concrete from 1956. The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York which he designed in 1966 is a prime example of extensive use of glass and remains very contemporary, strong geometric shapes and concrete structural supports share much with modernists such as Wright.
One of Corbusier’s most famous quotes is “a house is a machine for living in”30, linking to function over form. He said that “Reinforced concrete provided me with incredible resources”31.
A century on, the influence of the Bauhaus School remains- through embrasing modern materials and manufacturing methods, coupled with the strive for economic design, production and functional performance. This design simplicity and performance efficiency subsequently defined brands which where deemed modernist and perhaps ‘Germanic’ such as Dieter Rams32 at Braun, and brands such as Bosch and Siemens.
A global presence can be felt in brands such as Habitat, IKEA, Zara Home and Made.com, where Buahas, modernist design can be seen as a differeniator to divert attention from the lower cost, economically produced items.
Architecture styles have changed and developed, the Bauhaus school could be viewed as plain or austere; unforgiving however it informs the development of most modernist architecture today.
Whilst many comtempory designed minimalist products, such as the products of IKEA, show a connection to Bauhaus design, as illustrated by the two adjacent cantilever chairs, the comtempory design is different. There is however also a business selling officially sanctioned versions of original Bauhaus designs or close ‘tributes’ – The nest of tables below, shows this, with Habitat ‘Kilo’ tables being sold at £85.50 and an officially licenced, strikingly similar, version of Josef Albers’ design priced at £1,614.
Today the Bauhaus is perceived as one of the most influential movements in architecture, art and design.