12 ms·

How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

35 points by wormold 12y ago

digitalengineer 12y ago
Wasn't Frank Lloyd Wright the inspiration for the main characer of Ayn Rands 'The Fountainhead?' She uses him to draw a figure, mocked by regular architects, fighting against the 'fake' style of that day: architects trying to build 'classic' buildings from Greek times with columns and all. In the novel 'man' is what the buildings are about, if I'm correct. I don't know for sure, but I imagine Frank got his share of ridiculement as well.
- ohwp 12y ago
  From Wp[1]: "The character of Roark was at least partly inspired by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Rand described the inspiration as limited to "some of his architectural ideas [and] the pattern of his career".[19] She denied that Wright had anything to do with the philosophy expressed by Roark or the events of the plot." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead#Howard_Roark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead#Howard_Roark
  - digitalengineer 12y ago
    Hey thanks! I'd never realised they were from the same time-frame and knew each other. From the same article: "Rand's denials have not stopped other commentators from claiming stronger connections between Wright and Roark.[21][22] Wright himself equivocated about whether he thought Roark was based on him, sometimes implying that he was, at other times denying it.[23] Wright biographer Ada Louise Huxtable described the "yawning gap" between Wright's philosophy and Rand's, and quoted him declaring, "I deny the paternity and refuse to marry the mother."[24]"
ohwp 12y ago
There are more architects who tried this. Christopher Alexander dedicated a lot of time to solve building countries to doorsteps. What amazed me after reading some of his books are the physical effects of today's cities on humans (and animals). Some examples: Living higher than 4 stores: there is evidence that this will disconnect you from the life happening on ground level. Streets made for cars: cars are more important than humans.
- vanderZwan 12y ago
  To clarify: these are examples of what NOT to do, and Alexander stated them as such.
  - hueving 12y ago
    I disagree. I can't ride a human to work. :-)
    - timclark 12y ago
      Move nearer to where you work then!
      - chc 12y ago
        This is not a practical solution for many people. If I lived nearer to where I work, I'd be living on the streets.
        ajuc 12y ago
        Use public transport?
        chc 12y ago
        Because public transportation is horrible in much of the US, that's a 4.5-hour commute.
        mercer 12y ago
        Yes, but isn't that the whole point? If a city is designed for cars, you're gonna need a car. Which has all kinds of downsides. I have to admit I often thumbed my nose at 'those Americans and theird cars', but only until I spent some time in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Once there, I realized that it's pretty much impossible to do anything without a care! It shocked me.
        12y ago
saraid216 12y ago
I'd recommend Leon Krier's Architecture of Community if you want a better look at this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Architecture-Community-Leon-Krier/dp/1597265799 http://www.amazon.com/The-Architecture-Community-Leon-Krier/... He gets somewhat repetitive and preachy, IMO, and I don't feel the book delivers on its promises, but it's a much more in-depth look at the ideas faintly alluded to in the article. Differently, check out Vishaan Chakrabarti's A Country of Cities, which disagrees with Krier (and thus agrees with Wright) on the skyscraper: http://www.amazon.com/Country-Cities-Manifesto-Urban-America/dp/1935202170/ http://www.amazon.com/Country-Cities-Manifesto-Urban-America... It suffers, IIRC, from not enough citations but is otherwise pretty strong on its argument. I tend to lean towards agreeing with Chakrabarti and Wright more on the vertical space issue, largely because Krier never quite managed to form a coherent argument against density except that it was being done badly. Krier, on the other hand, highlights the idea of the poly-centric city which is at least a reality in Seattle (where I live).
mynegation 12y ago
I recommend everyone to visit his masterpiece building: Fallingwater tucked in the Pennsylvania countryside, and also a nearby smaller house Kentuck Knob. I visited both twice. During my second visit I stood breathless before the Fallingwater and weeped, so beautiful and perfect it was.
- zrail 12y ago
  It's a gorgeous building that I plan to visit soon. Interestingly, at construction it had severe structural and environmental deficiencies. For example, mildew was a huge problem for many years, and the perfect cantilevers were not strong enough and sagged until they were repaired in the early 2000s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallingwater#Repair_work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallingwater#Repair_work
- zb 12y ago
  Seconded. I wrote up a little piece about my visit to Fallingwater and why it particularly fascinates me, as a software engineer: http://www.zerobanana.com/essays/fallingwater/ http://www.zerobanana.com/essays/fallingwater/ (Kentucky Knob is also really interesting, and so close that it's certainly worth visiting both if you're in the area.)
josephlord 12y ago
I've heard the name lots of times in a Simon & Garfunkel song but I didn't know who he was.
- snail22 12y ago
  As someone who studied architecture for years, this made me literally groan out loud. Frank Lloyd Wright is usually the one architect whom people at least have heard of. One of the issues which has discouraged me from pursuing computer programming in the past is my impression that a lot of people involved in technology-related careers (ie my would-be future peers) have narrow perspectives on the world due to their reduced levels of interest in a wider liberal arts education, and it is annoying when I see something which confirms that. I really hope that I don't sound like a troll, but I also value giving and receiving honest feedback, and my guess is that some of you could probably benefit from looking away from the computer screen once and a while and exploring something new.
  - sanoli 12y ago
    What are you talking about? Here in HN people are aware of and interested in a bunch of different subjects. Plus, unlike the liberal arts/artist crowd, they have tachnical knowledge and are usually more rational about their opinions and conclusions. So one person says he hadn't heard of Wright in the middle of many more people commenting the article, and you say hackers need to look more at the arts?
    - snail22 12y ago
      I'm not necessarily talking about HN, but about people I have known in person - classmates in college, people I knew socially afterwards, and (this probably has skewed my judgement somewhat) an ex-boyfriend. I also personally suspect that the phenomena may even be making some hard-to-trace contribution (through reduced opportunities to practice communication skills, limited peer groups, and less time spent studying human diversity and other cultures in general) to the headlines which keep popping up about how sexist the technology field is. I know that concern may sound extreme, and I really hope that it can be proven wrong. Obviously (and thankfully) none of that can be generalized, but the original poster's example was so shocking to me that I felt compelled to say something warning people that the situation is in some cases possible. I also don't know what you mean when you say that people with technical knowledge (which I have some of) are "more rational about their opinions and conclusions" - I sincerely believe that taking a literary theory class and learning about often-vilified (perhaps not here) ideas such as postmodernism and deconstruction improved my decision-making ability by allowing me to better understand both sides of an issue.
jacquesm 12y ago
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Niemeyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Niemeyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BAcio_Costa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BAcio_Costa and their work on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia
- binarymax 12y ago
  One more who I particularly admire, responsible for the planning of Yerevan, Armenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tamanian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tamanian
- seeingfurther 12y ago
  I lived in Rio for 3 years and every time I saw a building or design that didn't seem to fit, invariably it was a Niemeyer work or inspired by Niemeyer. You can still find the old Portuguese architecture in spots but you really have to look for it <sigh> maybe I'm just not modern enough.
  - sanoli 12y ago
    Lived in Rio for long time and always go there to visit. Agree with you, Niemeyer stuff is just out of place, and some just look like badly aged sci-fi. Here in Sao Paulo there's this little mall on the first floor of one of his buildings, and none of the stores have bathrooms. I was told by an architect that Niemeyer, being a communist, wanted bathrooms to be collective. So you have to go up a flight of stairs and pee in this dark, dungeon-like cave that nobody uses anyway.
- sanoli 12y ago
  Lived in Brasilia for about a decade. Hated the way the city was planned. Everyone needed cars, only a handful of local commerce close to you, no real downtown, everything spread out so people ended driving everywhere, and public transport was only for the poor who lived in surrounding cities, so the busses sucked big time (same thing with subway, was built to take workers in and out of the city, only run until 9 p.m. or earlier).
saalweachter 12y ago
The article mentions that his spread out, one-acre-per-person city "would be connected by a complex design of streets and highways." Is anyone familiar with his highway plan? My impression of city planning is that roads are the hard, boring part, so I'm curious if Wright's roads were just a thing he drew between his beautifully arranged buildings and parks, or if he had an actual plan for how to move people efficiently around his cities. Saying "everyone should live close to their workplace" only works if you have a single, mega-office/industrial park, with all of the housing arranged tightly around it. Once you have two places people can work, changing jobs requires people to change houses, and only people who work together can live together. So in practice you need to have a transportation system that allows everyone in the city to commute between work and home in a short amount of time during a small window of time in the morning and afternoon. Sitting in traffic in a beautifully designed city does not sound particularly more fun than sitting in traffic in a poorly designed city.
- peatmoss 12y ago
  I'm not familiar with his highway plan, but unless he figured out a way to transcend limitations of spacetime, providing transportation to an insane land use of one acre per person would be intractable. The common wisdom is that, due to latent demand, you can't really build your way out of congestion. That would be extra problematic under the land use you mention, as you'd be forcing everyone to drive everywhere (mass transit and walking are difficult when populations are diffuse and distances are vast). So, yeah, this strikes me as being a utopian vision by a talented architect dabbling in something outside his expertise.
- saraid216 12y ago
  > Saying "everyone should live close to their workplace" only works if you have a single, mega-office/industrial park, with all of the housing arranged tightly around it. You're assuming zoning. Check this out: office. And then put a house on top. More reasonably, do what I ended up having to do in SimCity: zone a couple spaces as commercial, then zone another couple spaces as residential, and then zone another couple spaces as commercial, and keep flipping back and forth.
jeremymcanally 12y ago
As mentioned in the article, there's an exhibit right now at NYC's MoMA on Wright's ideas about the city: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1448 http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1448 I saw it last week, and it's really great. They have the scale model he built there along with a lot of his drawings. A lot of fascinating ideas in there. I just wish I could locate some of his writings on the subject without dropping $200-$300 on an out of print copy of a portion of his autobiography or papers. :(
meddlepal 12y ago
Frank Lloyd Wright tried to solve the city by destroying the city. His Broadacre design experiment is pretty much affluent, planned suburban America. No thanks.
rglover 12y ago
I grew up in suburban Ohio and have lived in Chicago for the past two years. Before I moved, there was a longing to join the energy of the city. Ohio, by and large, is pretty slow moving. It wasn't until I got to Chicago that I realized the effect that change of pace had. In order to both live and function in the city, I had to rewire my brain. I recall the first few months in the city being absolutely terrifying. Not because of any one thing in particular, but your sense of self starts to evaporate. You start to see the boundaries between you and the universe. You feel small. Occasionally, my girlfriend and I travel back to her home town. An honest to goodness town, too. It's classified as a "village." When I'm there, I often take walks around the entirety of the town. The change of pace is incredible. Even compared to where I grew up, there's a sense of serenity, not just in the immediate experience, but in the people. The behavior you see there is a total 180 from what you experience in the city – a cold, dismissive brood that makes you feel entirely too insignificant. When I moved to Chicago I made it a point to visit FLW's home and studio in Oak Park (about 20-30 minutes outside of the city). Though the area he built in has changed dramatically (based on the descriptions told as a part of the tour), there was something really serene about it all. His home was directly adjacent to his studio. Seeing this, the whole time I thought "yeah, I could dig this." This article makes his vision sound akin to the modern day suburb, which, while there are similarities, doesn't feel like an accurate interpretation. If you get the chance to experience some of his more rural-based work, I would check it out. There's a certain flow to the buildings he designed that elicits a feeling of peace. I can imagine his plans outlined in this article were to accomplish that on a much bigger scale.
- kcovia 12y ago
  I think your experience describes your feelings in the city. As someone who grew up half in a city and half in the country, I feel more at home and more significant in an urban environment.
  - rglover 12y ago
    Definitely. Didn't want my sentiments to apply to all cities. See my reply above. A lot of places that embody the spirit of a city, without the "shut out" feeling. Certainly depends on the person. Which, whether FLW's desire or not, is why forcing an option on everyone and assuming it's the best for each person is a pretty weak way of doing things. That's actually my favorite part of humanity: there are a lot of different ways of life/attitudes. Just a matter of finding the one you sync up with best.
harywilke 12y ago
i can recommend Urbanized. a documentary about urban city planning. it covers lots of current ideas, and has interviews with many leading architects and urban planners. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1701976/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1701976/ http://urbanizedfilm.com/ http://urbanizedfilm.com/
dredmorbius 12y ago
No discussion of cities and reimagining them is complete without referencing Jane Jacobs. Her approach was almost the direct opposite of Wrights (and of many urban reformers). Her focus was the street and interactions between residents, shopkeepers, and other inhabitants of the city. Her realization (mirrored well by Garrison Keillor in a biographical documentary I caught a year or so back) was that cities are collections of neighborhoods or villages. rglover her contrasts his impression of Chicago with the small towns of Ohio in which he grew up. My experience with large cities is that frequently their downtowns are impersonal (though even there I've found my niches), but it's in the neighborhood that their character really shows. Sometimes it's a character you don't much care for, but often there's a sense of place and community, even in dynamic and rapidly changing cities, which can persist for years, decades, or even generations. It does take time to appreciate and find, though. Back to Jacobs: finding her The Life and Death of Great American Cities was a watershed for me (and I can still remember the marginalia in my uni's copy at one of her common-sense observations: "God bless you, Jane"). Cities and the Wealth of Nations and The Economy of Cities changed many of my perceptions of what economics was about and where its real centers lay (it's rarely nations or states, cities and metropolitan areas, yes). Wright's interesting. But he's no authority on cities or urban planning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs

35 points by wormold 12y ago

Wasn't Frank Lloyd Wright the inspiration for the main characer of Ayn Rands 'The Fountainhead?' She uses him to draw a figure, mocked by regular architects, fighting against the 'fake' style of that day: architects trying to build 'classic' buildings from Greek times with columns and all. In the novel 'man' is what the buildings are about, if I'm correct. I don't know for sure, but I imagine Frank got his share of ridiculement as well.

ohwp 12y ago
From Wp[1]: "The character of Roark was at least partly inspired by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Rand described the inspiration as limited to "some of his architectural ideas [and] the pattern of his career".[19] She denied that Wright had anything to do with the philosophy expressed by Roark or the events of the plot." [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead#Howard_Roark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fountainhead#Howard_Roark
- digitalengineer 12y ago
  Hey thanks! I'd never realised they were from the same time-frame and knew each other. From the same article: "Rand's denials have not stopped other commentators from claiming stronger connections between Wright and Roark.[21][22] Wright himself equivocated about whether he thought Roark was based on him, sometimes implying that he was, at other times denying it.[23] Wright biographer Ada Louise Huxtable described the "yawning gap" between Wright's philosophy and Rand's, and quoted him declaring, "I deny the paternity and refuse to marry the mother."[24]"

ohwp 12y ago

There are more architects who tried this. Christopher Alexander dedicated a lot of time to solve building countries to doorsteps. What amazed me after reading some of his books are the physical effects of today's cities on humans (and animals). Some examples: Living higher than 4 stores: there is evidence that this will disconnect you from the life happening on ground level. Streets made for cars: cars are more important than humans.

vanderZwan 12y ago
To clarify: these are examples of what NOT to do, and Alexander stated them as such.
- hueving 12y ago
  I disagree. I can't ride a human to work. :-)
  - timclark 12y ago
    Move nearer to where you work then!
    - chc 12y ago
      This is not a practical solution for many people. If I lived nearer to where I work, I'd be living on the streets.
      - ajuc 12y ago
        Use public transport?
        chc 12y ago
        Because public transportation is horrible in much of the US, that's a 4.5-hour commute.
      - mercer 12y ago
        Yes, but isn't that the whole point? If a city is designed for cars, you're gonna need a car. Which has all kinds of downsides. I have to admit I often thumbed my nose at 'those Americans and theird cars', but only until I spent some time in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Once there, I realized that it's pretty much impossible to do anything without a care! It shocked me.
        12y ago

saraid216 12y ago

I'd recommend Leon Krier's Architecture of Community if you want a better look at this: http://www.amazon.com/The-Architecture-Community-Leon-Krier/dp/1597265799 http://www.amazon.com/The-Architecture-Community-Leon-Krier/... He gets somewhat repetitive and preachy, IMO, and I don't feel the book delivers on its promises, but it's a much more in-depth look at the ideas faintly alluded to in the article. Differently, check out Vishaan Chakrabarti's A Country of Cities, which disagrees with Krier (and thus agrees with Wright) on the skyscraper: http://www.amazon.com/Country-Cities-Manifesto-Urban-America/dp/1935202170/ http://www.amazon.com/Country-Cities-Manifesto-Urban-America... It suffers, IIRC, from not enough citations but is otherwise pretty strong on its argument. I tend to lean towards agreeing with Chakrabarti and Wright more on the vertical space issue, largely because Krier never quite managed to form a coherent argument against density except that it was being done badly. Krier, on the other hand, highlights the idea of the poly-centric city which is at least a reality in Seattle (where I live).

mynegation 12y ago

I recommend everyone to visit his masterpiece building: Fallingwater tucked in the Pennsylvania countryside, and also a nearby smaller house Kentuck Knob. I visited both twice. During my second visit I stood breathless before the Fallingwater and weeped, so beautiful and perfect it was.

zrail 12y ago
It's a gorgeous building that I plan to visit soon. Interestingly, at construction it had severe structural and environmental deficiencies. For example, mildew was a huge problem for many years, and the perfect cantilevers were not strong enough and sagged until they were repaired in the early 2000s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallingwater#Repair_work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallingwater#Repair_work
zb 12y ago
Seconded. I wrote up a little piece about my visit to Fallingwater and why it particularly fascinates me, as a software engineer: http://www.zerobanana.com/essays/fallingwater/ http://www.zerobanana.com/essays/fallingwater/ (Kentucky Knob is also really interesting, and so close that it's certainly worth visiting both if you're in the area.)

josephlord 12y ago

I've heard the name lots of times in a Simon & Garfunkel song but I didn't know who he was.

snail22 12y ago
As someone who studied architecture for years, this made me literally groan out loud. Frank Lloyd Wright is usually the one architect whom people at least have heard of. One of the issues which has discouraged me from pursuing computer programming in the past is my impression that a lot of people involved in technology-related careers (ie my would-be future peers) have narrow perspectives on the world due to their reduced levels of interest in a wider liberal arts education, and it is annoying when I see something which confirms that. I really hope that I don't sound like a troll, but I also value giving and receiving honest feedback, and my guess is that some of you could probably benefit from looking away from the computer screen once and a while and exploring something new.
- sanoli 12y ago
  What are you talking about? Here in HN people are aware of and interested in a bunch of different subjects. Plus, unlike the liberal arts/artist crowd, they have tachnical knowledge and are usually more rational about their opinions and conclusions. So one person says he hadn't heard of Wright in the middle of many more people commenting the article, and you say hackers need to look more at the arts?
  - snail22 12y ago
    I'm not necessarily talking about HN, but about people I have known in person - classmates in college, people I knew socially afterwards, and (this probably has skewed my judgement somewhat) an ex-boyfriend. I also personally suspect that the phenomena may even be making some hard-to-trace contribution (through reduced opportunities to practice communication skills, limited peer groups, and less time spent studying human diversity and other cultures in general) to the headlines which keep popping up about how sexist the technology field is. I know that concern may sound extreme, and I really hope that it can be proven wrong. Obviously (and thankfully) none of that can be generalized, but the original poster's example was so shocking to me that I felt compelled to say something warning people that the situation is in some cases possible. I also don't know what you mean when you say that people with technical knowledge (which I have some of) are "more rational about their opinions and conclusions" - I sincerely believe that taking a literary theory class and learning about often-vilified (perhaps not here) ideas such as postmodernism and deconstruction improved my decision-making ability by allowing me to better understand both sides of an issue.

jacquesm 12y ago

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Niemeyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Niemeyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BAcio_Costa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BAcio_Costa and their work on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia

binarymax 12y ago
One more who I particularly admire, responsible for the planning of Yerevan, Armenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tamanian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tamanian
seeingfurther 12y ago
I lived in Rio for 3 years and every time I saw a building or design that didn't seem to fit, invariably it was a Niemeyer work or inspired by Niemeyer. You can still find the old Portuguese architecture in spots but you really have to look for it <sigh> maybe I'm just not modern enough.
- sanoli 12y ago
  Lived in Rio for long time and always go there to visit. Agree with you, Niemeyer stuff is just out of place, and some just look like badly aged sci-fi. Here in Sao Paulo there's this little mall on the first floor of one of his buildings, and none of the stores have bathrooms. I was told by an architect that Niemeyer, being a communist, wanted bathrooms to be collective. So you have to go up a flight of stairs and pee in this dark, dungeon-like cave that nobody uses anyway.
sanoli 12y ago
Lived in Brasilia for about a decade. Hated the way the city was planned. Everyone needed cars, only a handful of local commerce close to you, no real downtown, everything spread out so people ended driving everywhere, and public transport was only for the poor who lived in surrounding cities, so the busses sucked big time (same thing with subway, was built to take workers in and out of the city, only run until 9 p.m. or earlier).

saalweachter 12y ago

The article mentions that his spread out, one-acre-per-person city "would be connected by a complex design of streets and highways." Is anyone familiar with his highway plan? My impression of city planning is that roads are the hard, boring part, so I'm curious if Wright's roads were just a thing he drew between his beautifully arranged buildings and parks, or if he had an actual plan for how to move people efficiently around his cities. Saying "everyone should live close to their workplace" only works if you have a single, mega-office/industrial park, with all of the housing arranged tightly around it. Once you have two places people can work, changing jobs requires people to change houses, and only people who work together can live together. So in practice you need to have a transportation system that allows everyone in the city to commute between work and home in a short amount of time during a small window of time in the morning and afternoon. Sitting in traffic in a beautifully designed city does not sound particularly more fun than sitting in traffic in a poorly designed city.

peatmoss 12y ago
I'm not familiar with his highway plan, but unless he figured out a way to transcend limitations of spacetime, providing transportation to an insane land use of one acre per person would be intractable. The common wisdom is that, due to latent demand, you can't really build your way out of congestion. That would be extra problematic under the land use you mention, as you'd be forcing everyone to drive everywhere (mass transit and walking are difficult when populations are diffuse and distances are vast). So, yeah, this strikes me as being a utopian vision by a talented architect dabbling in something outside his expertise.
saraid216 12y ago
> Saying "everyone should live close to their workplace" only works if you have a single, mega-office/industrial park, with all of the housing arranged tightly around it. You're assuming zoning. Check this out: office. And then put a house on top. More reasonably, do what I ended up having to do in SimCity: zone a couple spaces as commercial, then zone another couple spaces as residential, and then zone another couple spaces as commercial, and keep flipping back and forth.

jeremymcanally 12y ago

As mentioned in the article, there's an exhibit right now at NYC's MoMA on Wright's ideas about the city: http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1448 http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1448 I saw it last week, and it's really great. They have the scale model he built there along with a lot of his drawings. A lot of fascinating ideas in there. I just wish I could locate some of his writings on the subject without dropping $200-$300 on an out of print copy of a portion of his autobiography or papers. :(

meddlepal 12y ago

Frank Lloyd Wright tried to solve the city by destroying the city. His Broadacre design experiment is pretty much affluent, planned suburban America. No thanks.

rglover 12y ago

I grew up in suburban Ohio and have lived in Chicago for the past two years. Before I moved, there was a longing to join the energy of the city. Ohio, by and large, is pretty slow moving. It wasn't until I got to Chicago that I realized the effect that change of pace had. In order to both live and function in the city, I had to rewire my brain. I recall the first few months in the city being absolutely terrifying. Not because of any one thing in particular, but your sense of self starts to evaporate. You start to see the boundaries between you and the universe. You feel small. Occasionally, my girlfriend and I travel back to her home town. An honest to goodness town, too. It's classified as a "village." When I'm there, I often take walks around the entirety of the town. The change of pace is incredible. Even compared to where I grew up, there's a sense of serenity, not just in the immediate experience, but in the people. The behavior you see there is a total 180 from what you experience in the city – a cold, dismissive brood that makes you feel entirely too insignificant. When I moved to Chicago I made it a point to visit FLW's home and studio in Oak Park (about 20-30 minutes outside of the city). Though the area he built in has changed dramatically (based on the descriptions told as a part of the tour), there was something really serene about it all. His home was directly adjacent to his studio. Seeing this, the whole time I thought "yeah, I could dig this." This article makes his vision sound akin to the modern day suburb, which, while there are similarities, doesn't feel like an accurate interpretation. If you get the chance to experience some of his more rural-based work, I would check it out. There's a certain flow to the buildings he designed that elicits a feeling of peace. I can imagine his plans outlined in this article were to accomplish that on a much bigger scale.

kcovia 12y ago
I think your experience describes your feelings in the city. As someone who grew up half in a city and half in the country, I feel more at home and more significant in an urban environment.
- rglover 12y ago
  Definitely. Didn't want my sentiments to apply to all cities. See my reply above. A lot of places that embody the spirit of a city, without the "shut out" feeling. Certainly depends on the person. Which, whether FLW's desire or not, is why forcing an option on everyone and assuming it's the best for each person is a pretty weak way of doing things. That's actually my favorite part of humanity: there are a lot of different ways of life/attitudes. Just a matter of finding the one you sync up with best.

harywilke 12y ago

i can recommend Urbanized. a documentary about urban city planning. it covers lots of current ideas, and has interviews with many leading architects and urban planners. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1701976/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1701976/ http://urbanizedfilm.com/ http://urbanizedfilm.com/

dredmorbius 12y ago

No discussion of cities and reimagining them is complete without referencing Jane Jacobs. Her approach was almost the direct opposite of Wrights (and of many urban reformers). Her focus was the street and interactions between residents, shopkeepers, and other inhabitants of the city. Her realization (mirrored well by Garrison Keillor in a biographical documentary I caught a year or so back) was that cities are collections of neighborhoods or villages. rglover her contrasts his impression of Chicago with the small towns of Ohio in which he grew up. My experience with large cities is that frequently their downtowns are impersonal (though even there I've found my niches), but it's in the neighborhood that their character really shows. Sometimes it's a character you don't much care for, but often there's a sense of place and community, even in dynamic and rapidly changing cities, which can persist for years, decades, or even generations. It does take time to appreciate and find, though. Back to Jacobs: finding her The Life and Death of Great American Cities was a watershed for me (and I can still remember the marginalia in my uni's copy at one of her common-sense observations: "God bless you, Jane"). Cities and the Wealth of Nations and The Economy of Cities changed many of my perceptions of what economics was about and where its real centers lay (it's rarely nations or states, cities and metropolitan areas, yes). Wright's interesting. But he's no authority on cities or urban planning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs