Frank Lloyd Wright, In the Cause of Architecture (1908 · 1954)

Wright’s first manifesto, published with photographs of his Prairie houses, and a late book on the small American house: together they state the principles of an “organic” architecture grown from its site, its materials and the life within it.

Wright published “In the Cause of Architecture” in the Architectural Record in March 1908, with some eighty illustrations of work from his Oak Park studio. At its heart is a list of propositions: that simplicity and repose are the qualities by which art is measured; that there should be as many kinds of house as there are kinds of people; that a building should seem to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonise with its surroundings; that colours should be taken from the fields and woods; that the nature of materials should be expressed rather than disguised; and that a house should have integrity, like a person.

The Prairie houses he describes (low, spreading, with hipped roofs whose eaves reach far beyond the walls, bands of windows under the eaves and a great fireplace at the centre) were a deliberate answer to the tall, boxy Victorian house. Published in Berlin by Wasmuth in 1910–11, they had a strong influence on the young European modernists.

The Natural House (1954) restates the argument for the “Usonian” houses Wright had built since 1936: houses without attics or basements, heated through the floor, planned around an open living space with the kitchen as its hub, built of a few honest materials, and opening freely to the garden. Here Wright describes his work as a long campaign against the box: opening its corners, extending its roofs, and letting interior and exterior flow into one another.

The book, part by part

I In the Cause of Architecture (1908)

The propositions of organic architecture; the Prairie house explained.

Fig. 1A Prairie house: hipped roofs, deep eaves, bands of windows, central hearth. Open in Models ↗

Rules: A building should grow from its site · Emphasise the horizontal · The hearth at the centre

II The Natural House (1954)

The Usonian house; destroying the box; the nature of materials; building in harmony with the ground.

Fig. 2Terraces cantilevered from a stone core over a stream. Open in Models ↗

Rules: Destroy the box

Rules drawn from In the Cause of Architecture

A building should grow from its site

Shape a building to its place so that it seems to grow out of the ground: take its lines from the landscape, its materials from the region, and its plan from the life it will hold.

Emphasise the horizontal

On flat land, keep the house low and let its lines run parallel to the ground: low-pitched hipped roofs with deep overhangs, continuous sills and copings, bands of windows, and terraces extending into the garden.

roof pitch ≈ 15°–25° · eaves projecting 1.5–3 m

The hearth at the centre

Plan the house around a great fireplace at its heart, and let the wings of the plan extend from it in a cross or a pinwheel.

Destroy the box

Open the corners, extend the roofs and terraces beyond the walls with cantilevers, and let the space of the house flow outward rather than being enclosed in rooms like boxes.

The nature of materials

Let each material reveal its own character (the grain of wood, the stratification of stone, the plasticity of concrete) and design each part in the way its material wants to be used.

The Usonian house

Build the family house on one level on a heated concrete slab, on a planning grid, round a brick core of hearth and kitchen; wall it in wood towards the street and in glass towards the garden; roof it flat with deep eaves, and shelter the car in a carport instead of a garage.