Three Cultural Ecologies 2017014267, 9781472435538, 9781315595863

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THREE CULTURAL ECOLOGIES

Three Cultural Ecologies reverses common conceptions of modern architecture. It reveals how selected works of two modern architects, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, embraced environmental and cultural conditions as reciprocal and complementary. A basic premise of this book’s arguments is that cultural patterns cannot be adequately conceptualized in the terms that typically define ecology today. Instead, studies based on the natural sciences must be complemented by descriptions and interpretations of historical narratives, cultural norms, and individual expressions. Previously unpublished images and new interpretations will allow readers to rediscover works they thought they knew; Villa Savoye, Taliesin, La Tourette, and Ocatilla; as well as projects that are less well known: by Wright, the House on the Mesa and the City Residential Plan, and by Le Corbusier, the Immeuble-villas and Ilôt Insalubre projects. More broadly, this study of cultural ecology at three scales – domestic, monastic, and urban – reconsiders the history of modern architecture. The conditions brought about by societal and technological modernization and confronted by modern architecture have not disappeared in our time, but have intensified, making the task of imagining how some measure of equilibrium between culture and ecology might be achieved even more pressing. David Leatherbarrow is Professor of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, where he serves as Chairman of the Graduate Group in Architecture (Ph.D. Program). He teaches architectural design as well as the history and theory of architecture, gardens, and cities. His recent books include Architecture Oriented Otherwise, Topographical Stories: studies in landscape and architecture, and Uncommon Ground: architecture, technology and topography. Richard Wesley is Adjunct Professor of Architecture, University of Pennsylvania, where he serves as Undergraduate Chair in the Department of Architecture and teaches architectural design and theory. He has previously taught at the University of Illinois, University of Notre Dame, and Harvard University. His essays and reviews have been published in Architectural Research Quarterly, Critical Juncture, Harvard Design Magazine, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Rassagna, Res, and VIA.

THREE CULTURAL ECOLOGIES

David Leatherbarrow and Richard Wesley

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 David Leatherbarrow and Richard Wesley The right of David Leatherbarrow and Richard Wesley to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Leatherbarrow, David, author. | Wesley, Richard, author. Title: Three cultural ecologies / David Leatherbarrow & Richard Wesley. Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017014267 | ISBN 9781472435538 (hardback) | ISBN 9781315595863 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Architecture—Environmental aspects. | Architecture and society. | Le Corbusier, 1887–1965—Criticism and interpretation. | Wright, Frank Lloyd, 1867–1959—Criticism and interpretation. Classification: LCC NA2542.35 .L43 2017 | DDC 720.1/03—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017014267 ISBN: 978-1-4724-3553-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-59586-3 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

1 Speaking of cultural ecology1 2 Pre-modern home economics20 3 Rustica and urbana37 4 Up on the roof69 5 Pre-modern cloisters and precincts101 6 Alone-together naturally115 7 Into the desert149 8 Answering disequilibrium189 Bibliography211 Index219

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1 SPEAKING OF CULTURAL ECOLOGY

Architecture as cultural ecology: what might this phrase mean? It may seem strange to pose this question today, when the words culture and ecology are used so widely and seem so obvious in architecture and other fields. But the answer is far from clear, especially when the two are joined to form a single term. If it was possible a few decades ago to dismiss the warnings of an impending environmental crisis as alarmist, if faith in evermore effective, technological fixes once allowed architects to believe there would be no need to change the way they practiced design, the situation has changed today; routine methods and indifference have become entirely unacceptable, to clients in many cases and to the public almost always. Persuasive accounts of the ecological crisis and recommendations for alternative design practices come from all quarters: from public policy and governmental regulations, to environmental science, award-winning designs, education reform, and professional licensing requirements. No less common and insistent are the calls for change from outside architecture. Among the many, perhaps the following lines from Félix Guattari’s widely read Three Ecologies can be taken as a representative example: The Earth is undergoing a period of intense techno-scientific transformation. If no remedy is found, the ecological disequilibrium this has generated will ultimately threaten the continuation of life on the planet’s surface. Alongside these upheavals, human modes of life, both individual and collective, are progressively deteriorating.1 The apocalyptic tone of this forecast has become standard fare, across the philosophical and ideological spectrum. The remedy Guattari seeks will no doubt depend upon the contributions of many, each of us is being called to act, according to whatever means we have at our disposal – material, intellectual, or professional. Today, pleas for ecological awareness and “green living” call for sustainable actions that minimize our use of natural resources and reduce or eliminate damage to the natural environment – water, land, and air.

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A thinker who may be seen to argue an opposite politics, David Orr, offers exactly the same diagnosis of our predicament: We can no longer assume that nature will be either bountiful or stable or that the earth will remain hospitable to civilization as we know it . . . three crises [the food crisis, the end of cheap energy, and natural systems at their breaking point] constitute the first planetary crisis, one that will either spur humans to a much higher state or cause our demise. . . . We have a decade or two in which we must make unprecedented changes in the way we relate to each other and to nature.2 Orr does not say in this passage that architecture will play a significant role in the “unprecedented changes” required for the continuance of life as we know it, but this inference is suggested by his allusion to the Earth as an environment made “hospitable” to human civilization. But the problem is not for Orr essentially political. Making hospitable settings is architecture’s basic task. The same role for architecture is implied in Guattari’s allusion to “human modes of life, both individual and collective.” Yet surely it would be presumptuous to attribute to architecture a salvational role, on the assumption that better design could bring an end to the environmental crisis. Much of modernist urbanism also assumed this premise. At both scales, inaction is not an option either. Resignation is no better than over-reaching. Nor can we continue to rely on the concepts, techniques, and images that have historically contributed to this state of affairs. A basic purpose of this book, and of our opening question about the possibilities for a cultural understanding of ecology, is to explain the ways that architecture can respond to what is today commonly called the environmental crisis, precedents for which can be found in 20th century examples, many of which are rarely considered in ecological discussions today. We realize that modern architecture in the first half of 20th century will seem to many readers an unlikely place to find answers for current environmental questions, for the buildings and ideas of that period are often said to have contributed in a significant measure to our current predicament. Mounting evidence of such a “contribution” should not, however, cause us to include among those charged all who practiced before the awakening of environmental awareness, particularly not the suspects thought to be culpable only because their works are so very well known. Perhaps we have rushed to judgment rather too quickly and see the modern tradition too uniformly. Our aim in this book is to look again at projects and writings we thought we knew perfectly well, in an attempt to learn still more from them. Especially relevant for us are projects, ideas, images, and elements developed in the first period of the modern movement, its “heroic” phase – generally speaking, between the two World Wars.3 The works of two architects in particular, Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, will be closely studied in the chapters that follow, not because their works were so influential – which of course they were – but because they indicate more clearly than others how modern 2

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architecture has been practiced as a form of cultural ecology, admittedly avant la lettre, as we shall explain.

Reconsidering a categorical division As long as conventional understandings of culture and ecology are accepted uncritically, our study will seem unpromising. We imagine our approach will appear less doubtful when we point out that the boundaries between these fields are no longer settled in other disciplines. Border crossings have become the norm in contemporary anthropology, for example: [I]t is becoming increasingly difficult continue to believe that nature is a completely separate domain from social life, hypostatized according to circumstances under the species of a nourishing mother, of a spiteful stepmother, or of a mysterious beauty to be unveiled; a domain that humans attempt to understand and control and whose whims they occasionally suffer, but which constitutes a field of autonomous regularities, within which values, conventions, and ideologies have no place. This fantasy is now vanishing: where does nature stop and culture begin in regard to global warming, in the thinning of the ozone layer, in the production of specialized cells from stem cells? Clearly the question no longer makes any sense.4 Is this true in architecture as well? Is the fantasy of a categorical distinction between social concerns and environmental conditions also now vanishing in the design of buildings, landscapes, and urban areas? The answer to the question depends on the way recent environmentalism is viewed. Some will maintain that architects came to this realization decades ago, in the 1960s, when the “environmental movement” first emerged in architecture and its proponents called for reforms in both design and theory. For that position to be maintained, however, contributions from figures both in and outside architecture would have to be allowed. To describe this book’s thesis concerning cultural ecology more fully, let us briefly review some of the key texts and ideas in this history.

Environmentalism Most narratives of architecture’s environmental movement maintain that the ecological problem or crisis we face today has been in discussion for a number of decades, maybe as long as a half century, at least since the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, which was not, of course, a book written for architects in particular, although many read it. Hers was not the only wakeup call: other writers, scientists, and poets also sounded the alarm – figures like John Muir, Paul Sears, Aldo Leopold, and Wendell Berry.5 In fact, concern for environmental destruction was becoming widespread in the post-war years. 3

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In 1955, for example, a symposium at Princeton University gathered an unusually large number of proto-environmentalists to celebrate the accomplishments of the American conservationist George Perkins Marsh by taking account of all that mankind had done to (negatively) change the Earth – deforestation, soil erosion, species relocation, pollution of the waters and sky, the rearrangement of plant communities, and of particular relevance to architecture, all of the consequences of ever-expanding urbanization. Marsh’s explanation of the American “dust bowl” was taken as a pioneering example of this sort of study and explanation. The massive publication that resulted from the conference had an indicative title: Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.6 Still, Rachel Carson’s account of “the grim specter [that] has crept upon us almost unnoticed,” seems to have quickened the awareness of environmentalists more effectively than any other.7 Of the “two roads” modern civilization could take, her choice was clear: all that would (or should) be acceptable in future were “biological solutions, based on an understanding of the living organisms they seek to control, and of the whole fabric of life to which these organisms belong.”8 Her scope could hardly have been wider. The sea she loved was the site of her initial concern, then “surface waters” and eventually the whole of “earth’s green mantle.” The threat, in the form of “elixirs of death” came from industrial chemicals (pesticides) especially, developed for agribusiness and sold for great profit in the post-war years, thanks to the earlier contributions from the science that enabled chemical warfare. Insects and weeds had become the enemy, DDT and organic phosphates the armaments. The “co-lateral damage” of this undeclared and rather one-sided war, “side effects,” as she called them, concerned Carson greatly; industrialized agriculture was threatening the very world it was supposed to nourish.

Design with nature The territory that concerned Carson – widely regional, by implication global – was far beyond the sphere of action in which architects operate. An early and exceptionally ardent champion of the ecological approach to design, Ian McHarg, was likewise concerned with comprehensive frameworks for project making, but his recommendations for action were to have bearing on territories that were smaller in scale, which is to say regions and specific localities or landscapes and settlements within them. Like Carson, he perceived a crisis and recommended radical changes in both thinking and practice. His categorical indictment of “anthropomorphic man [who] seeks not unity with nature but conquest” is no less challenging today than it was in 1969, when Design with Nature first appeared.9 Although he described his now-classic book as an “ecological manual for the good steward who aspires to art,” it is much more than that, for his sense of unity or “co-tenancy of the phenomenal world” ascribes to works of art the same origin as natural phenomena. Such a statement, verging on the monism and tight-fisted positivism of the 19th century, implied both a philosophical anthropology and theory of art. 4

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The idea of line of descent for works of art from nature is, of course, only a conceptual premise, but it was one that allowed McHarg the development and use of an elaborate method of description and analysis, utilized in “case studies” that would, if pursued widely for decades, result in an inventory of all of the sectors in a given region that would be congenial to settlement and occupation, having distinguished them from areas that would not. Such a “mapping” would serve the purposes of regional planning and policy making. Yet, still another premise was required for these studies: that “physical, biological, and social phenomena [could] be represented as values.”10 He didn’t define this last term, but given what he wrote elsewhere in the book, it would seem incorrect to assume they included cultural or historical matters, especially if understood anthropocentrically. Closer to his understanding and aim is the use of the term in mathematics: the value of an unknown in an equation, for example. The values, once determined, could be ranked, basically, from high to low. Lastly, when observed, valued, and ranked, natural and social phenomena could be set out as a range of “guidelines” for project development – something like ecological zoning on a regional scale. Although he referred to the several factors of his surveys as “parameters,” digital techniques were obviously unavailable in the 1960s.11 McHarg’s parameters were not “parametric” in the contemporary sense of the term, he simply assembled and variously superimposed hand-drawn maps made on transparent sheets of paper or film.12 The descriptions that resulted authorized development and excluded any impositions that expressed other “values,” let’s say aesthetic or cultural values that could not be extrapolated from the aspects of the natural world that had been represented “scientifically.” Despite the clarity and rigor of McHarg’s analytical procedure, his text was rather silent about the steps that were to follow analysis, those of project making or design. Given this omission – odd because “design” was the first word of his title – we need to ask a simple but difficult question: were there to be additional steps? Or does his silence on this topic mean that analysis and design were understood as the same thing? Is design essentially adjudication or choice among objective factors rendered as values? If not, if productive work seems lacking from this equation, to what kind of knowledge or experience (outside the findings and methods of positive science) might an architect turn when developing a proposal? Certainly not inherited culture, for that amounted to nothing more than “a ragbag of ancient views [Christianity, Humanism, the history of western gardens, etc.], most of them breeding fear and hostility, based on ignorance, certain to destroy, incapable of creation.”13 Although designers may “aspire” to art, McHarg argued that ecological science of this kind, together with the associated mapping techniques, were largely adequate to the tasks of design.

Design with climate In the decades after it was published, McHarg’s book was read mainly by landscape architects and regional planners. A comparable book for architects was Victor Olgyay’s Design With Climate, published eight years earlier in 1963, one year after Carson’s Silent Spring. While her scope was widely environmental and McHarg’s broadly regional, 5

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Olgyay’s climate-based method focused on modern buildings; specifically, their technologies (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning), and their construction materials (large sheets of glass and long spans of steel), precisely the materials whose use resulted in high resource and energy consumption, as well as air pollution, although these concerns were not addressed directly in his writings. Nevertheless, for most historians of the environmental movement in architecture, Olgyay’s book is the foundation of what today is alternately and loosely called sustainable or environmental design.14 And its influence is still strong, although indirect.15 Contemporary digital techniques, environmental simulation in particular, can be seen as extensions or elaborations of the methods, graphs, and charts presented in Olgyay’s “manual.” In much of contemporary practice, modeling programs, such as EcoTect, prescribe an approach that approximates environmental determinism, often described as “performance-based” architecture. Our question in the case of Olgyay’s work is the same as it was with McHarg’s: what role, if any, might culture have played in a climate-based approach to design? At this scale, the scale of architecture, the answer will be different. Olgyay had four basic premises for his method: (1) a thermostable condition has always been the goal of builders; (2) building styles are not defined by national frontiers but by climate zones; (3) two kinds of formalism must be avoided (indiscriminate use of modern Western forms, and sentimental imitation of vernacular forms); and (4) regions differ and require their own solutions, which lead to characteristic expression.16 Although this last topic – characteristic expression – has been overlooked in subsequent attempts to make the “bioclimatic approach” the basis for project making, it was decisive for Olgyay. Like McHarg, Olgyay sought a method. His basic question concerned the kind of method that would be suitable for his purposes and subject matter (architecture not biology). Obviously it had to be useful for solving problems, but there was something else he saw as decisive. His account began with a statement of principle: one must work with, not against natural forces. On this, point he anticipated McHarg’s premise and followed Carson’s, whom he did not cite, but we suspect had read. Procedures that were systematic were also sought, for Olgyay’s method was to be universally applicable, not useful in one department of the environment or another. He settled on four steps: (1) an opening survey of climatic conditions; (2) an evaluation that climate’s impact on the person, in physiological terms; (3) the development of technological solutions that would achieve the “thermostable” condition; and (4) the development of a unified architectural result. In abbreviated form, the steps of the bioclimatic approach were these: mapping, diagnosis, problem solving, and composition. No single architect could manage all of this, no matter what the expertise; instead, these steps and the solutions they gave required the participation of the climatologist and the environmental engineer as well. Once adopted, the four-step method would lead over the time of both an architect’s practice and the history of modern architecture to cumulative understanding, for typical problems lead to typical solutions; which is to say, types of elements. With shading devices, for example, there were horizontal, vertical, and egg-crate types. They could 6

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be used separately or paired, the latter procedure resulting in “combinative masks.” But that was not the only place for “composition” intending “unity.” This is where the “method” gets very interesting. Commenting on the types and their selection, he observed that many technically correct solutions are available for single situations.17 Olgyay concluded that choice was required of the designer, even creativity. In project making, the architect was to consider not only what would perform effectively, for acceptable performance could be accomplished in different ways, but also the appearance that would result, the visual quality of the choice, the character, expression, or image of the solution. Although it was an essential part of any work’s performance, character could not be decided on that basis alone. At this point we have moved a considerable distance from McHarg’s position, taken what may be called the next step, crossing the border, moving outside the confines of technical thinking. Olgyay not only allowed design in this productive sense, step four of his method required it (the development of a unified architectural result). Thus understood, project making was something categorically distinct from analysis, although analytical findings were never to be ignored; it was something that required “the imagination” in design and affected “the heart” in experience. To say that “environmental masks” had character diminishes their cultural role; in fact, they were characters. Performance in architecture was not only technical, but also theatrical, perhaps even rhetorical. In a number of cases, sun-breakers were used for expressive purposes when they were of little consequence environmentally. On this basis alone can one understand Marcel Breuer’s prediction that “the sun control device, an element of the façade, an element of architecture . . . is so important a part of our open architecture, it may develop into as characteristic a form as the Doric column.”18 The concern for expression indicates awareness of the inadequacy of any deterministic or narrowly causal approach to architectural design: “The practical and direct expression of rational necessities no longer gives complete satisfaction.”19 We are inclined to ask if complete satisfaction ever resulted from environmental determinism. Nevertheless, given the advances of recent environmental science, Olgyay allowed himself to assert that while the battle for functional solutions had been won; “the war [for a new architecture was not over] . . . the next fight [would be] for the lyrical heart and its emotional needs.” A definitive statement of principle had already been set out in 1957 in the text on shading devices he had co-authored with his brother: “To choose between the various technically correct possibilities, or develop new variations is the designer’s task. This is the line where the technical method ends and creative expression takes over.”20 Among the many modern examples of creative expression (that also operated effectively) they examined, a large number had been built in Brazil, work by figures like Oscar Niemeyer, Afonso Reidy, and the Roberto brothers. The book also illustrated a number of projects and cited statements by Le Corbusier, whose account of the origin of the brise-soleil or “sun-breaker” seems to have confirmed their understanding of the artistic dimension of environmentally responsive design.21 7

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Crossing the line Let us repeat the decisive quotation from the Olgyay brothers cited before: “To choose between the various technically correct possibilities, or develop new variations is the designer’s task. This is the line where the technical method ends and creative expression takes over.”22 Unlike Carson and McHarg, whose concerns were global and widely regional, those of the Olgyays were local to the site of the architectural project, as we have said.23 Furthermore, they were less concerned with saving energy, although they never recommended waste, than with human comfort, together with creative expression within a given cultural context. At the scale of the project’s vicinity, and aiming to provide for human comfort and give creative expression, the categorical distinction between ambient conditions and built works became far less important than it had been in solutions motivated by interests that were narrowly ecological (eco-technical solutions). Vital instead was the interplay, reciprocity, or correspondence between environmental and social concerns. Not only was line that had separated them to be crossed, that act, which is to say decision and invention in project making, would advance modern architecture, perhaps even define it. Here is the decisive point: concerns we shall call cultural were understood as inseparable from conditions that had been distinguished as natural. More than that: natural conditions – ecologies, when understood comprehensively as a network of interrelationships – were made legible and given to both understanding and experience through architectural means, such as those of a well-designed house, community building or urban area, the scales we will take up in the chapters that follow. This meant that the natural environment ceased to be a world-unto-itself, indifferent to human affairs, the target of representations, and the agent of external effects. Discovered instead was a landscape or urban settlement in which structures, configurations, and patterns that alternately preceded and resulted from construction served as one another’s support and story: a sun-breaker’s shadows not only reduced heat gain and glare, but created beautiful patterns, and were designed to do so.

An expanded anthropology Similar line-crossings were occurring in other disciplines in the post-war decades. As we’ve seen already, anthropology provided a good example of “border crossing.” Approximately concurrent with the environmental or ecological studies of Olgyay (1963) and McHarg (1969) were ecological approaches to cultural anthropology. Some of the changes in this science emerged in the 1955 conference called “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth.” That same year, a text called Theory of Culture Change was published by the anthropologist Julian Steward.24 In addition to cultural change, he studied cultural patterns, in not one, but several parts of the world. More largely, he attempted to articulate the concepts that would outline a general methodology for cultural understanding.25 While his opening chapter addressed what he called the “multilinear evolution” of cultures, the arguments about ecology that followed are particularly significant for us. 8

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Admitting the risk of qualifying a term that already seemed obscure, he proposed linking the ecological study of environments to the interpretation of cultures. He used the term cultural ecology to augment the historical dimension of most anthropological studies and to describe the “creative processes involved in the adaptation of culture to its environment.”26 Any account of “adaptation,” he observed, had to address Darwin’s explanation of an organism’s “adaptation to environment.” Since the time of Darwin, the environment had come to be seen as the total web of life in which plants, animals, and territory interact. Further, adaptive interaction explained the evolution of genotypes. Steward then noted that the concept of ecology had more recently been extended to human beings, logically he thought, for they, too, are part of “the web of life.” Today this field of study is called human ecology.27 But with respect to this seemingly obvious extension, Steward offered a decisive qualification: “Man enters the ecological scene, however, not merely as another organism which is related to other organisms in terms of physical characteristics. He introduced the super-organic factor of culture, which also affects and is affected by the total web of life.”28 The term “super-organic” was not Steward’s: he adopted it from earlier thinkers, particularly his teacher, Alfred Kroeber. In a biographical memoir, Steward explained Kroeber’s thinking as follows: He was uncompromising in his insistence that culture should be conceptualized . . . as a phenomenon of a superorganic level: that culture derives from culture, and that conceptualizations or explanations – ‘reductionism’ – which introduce psychological, organic, or environmental factors are indefensible.29 While Kroeber, for his part, published a text with the word superorganic in its title, he did not define the term in that essay; he focused instead on the inadequacies of contemporary approaches to the study of human cultures, particularly those that could be called scientistic or positivistic. Nevertheless, his understanding of the superorganic is evident in the following passages: “A house may be built on rock; without this base it might be impossible for it to have been erected; but no one will maintain that therefore the house is nothing but improved and glorified stone.” (173) “Culture rests on [a] specific human faculty . . . the thing in man that is supra-animal.” (205) “The dawn of the social thus is not a link in any [organic] chain, not a step in a path, but a leap to another plane.” (209) “The social substance . . . the existence that we call civilization, transcends [organic material or activity] utterly for all its being forever rooted in life.” (212)30 The result was for Steward a composite or hybrid condition that coupled the web and way of life.31 Understating himself somewhat, he called this conjunction a “problem” for science. Why? “Man’s cultural behavior is of a different order than that of his . . . 9

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biological evolution.” Cultural patterns are not genetically derived. Nor do they submit themselves to the kind of analysis that yields results in the natural sciences.32 Steward’s distinction echoes a methodological principle that was articulated at the dawn of Western science. Aristotle wrote: [I]t is the mark of an educated mind to expect that amount of exactness in each kind [of study] which the nature of the particular subject admits . . . it is equally unreasonable to accept merely probable conclusions from a mathematician and to demand strict demonstrations from an orator.33 Cultural action, on this account, is not biologically determined, only qualified. Genetically determined organic equipment does not explain cultural choice or history, even if that history and choice require the use of that equipment. A precisely analogous conclusion was reached by Victor Olgyay, as we have seen: the equipment of façade construction and composition requires both analysis and judgment. Steward’s opening conclusion is decisive, not only for the methodology of cultural study, but the examination of its several parts, among them architecture: “Culture, rather than genetic potential for adaptation, accommodation, and survival explains the nature of human societies.”34 For us this means the phenomena of cultural change and cultural pattern cannot be adequately conceptualized in biological terms, those that typically define the limits of current ecology. Steward concluded his opening argument with a statement of purpose for cultural ecology that we have adopted as one that is equally good for architecture: “the interaction of physical, biological, and cultural features within a locale or unit of territory is . . . the ultimate objective of study.”35 Significant as we believe the discussion of cultural ecology is to architecture today, we feel rather confident that the term would have seemed both confusing and redundant in the pre-modern period. Not only puzzling, the coupling of these words would have been impossible, because the second, ecology, is a very recent invention, recent if one takes a long view of architectural history. Of course, the absence of the word does not mean that the phenomena to which it refers, the objects studied in modern ecological science, were neglected in earlier architectures, but only that they were not seen in isolation. It makes no sense to ask how the houses, community buildings, or urban areas of pre-modern architecture addressed ecological concerns if cultural conditions are neglected in the inquiry. Likewise, no account of designs at these scales will be adequate to the projects themselves if concerns that are today called “environmental” are overlooked.

Modern ecology: Oecologie The term ecology, we’ve said, has no great antiquity, although the two Greek stems it combines – οἰκός and logos – are ancient. It was introduced into the vocabulary of science by Ernst Haeckel in Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (1866). In that text, however, one does not find a simple, clear-cut definition. First of all, this new field 10

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could not be understood apart from that more inclusive science of which it was but one part, biology. Second, it did not result from the study a single entity, not even a class of them, but of relationships; more narrowly, the physiology of relationships. The first of Haeckel’s several definitions described Oecologie as a “science of the economy, of the habits, of the external relations of organisms to each other [äusseren Lebensbeziehungen der Organismen zu einander].”36 This brief explanation from the opening pages of the book was followed by a fuller account in the second volume: By ecology, we mean the whole science of the relations of the organism to the environment including, in the broad sense, all the ‘conditions of existence’. They are partly organic, partly inorganic in nature; both . . . are of the greatest significance for the form of organisms, for they force them to become adapted. When combined, these conditions constitute what he called the organism’s “habitat.” This last term might be thought to imply architecture, but such a reading would be mistaken. From the rest of Haeckel’s text, it is plain that buildings and artifacts were not admitted into the territory he studied, kept outside its borders. Nevertheless, the scope of consideration was in principle widely inclusive. Its scales included bodies, lands, regions, climates, and their encompassing atmospheres, in short, the range from microbes to the planet Earth. Separate sciences, such as botany and zoology, would focus on one or another of these scales, the organisms within them, and the department of the natural world under study. Among ecologically conscious architects today, Haeckel’s name and writings may not be terribly well known, although he is sometimes cited, but his premise about habitats conditioning organisms has great currency, if only metaphorical, for as we have just observed, works resulting from human industry were not his concern, nor thought to be enmeshed in the relationships that bind organisms to one another and their place. Today, of course, human agency is not only at play in this web of relationships, but it is widely seen as a decisive factor in the development of today’s environmental “problems,” particularly the destruction of the environment, global warming for example. Even if Haeckel excluded human from natural history in ecological order, his explanation of terms indicated awareness of the cultural transformation of vocabulary; specifically, the ancient uses of ecology’s root words. Logos was not explained in his text, but he did offer a definition of οἰκός. He wrote: “οικος, ό household or housekeeping, living relations.”37 He did not dwell on the household sense of the term; it seems to have been presented as a distant reference, distant because the science he had in mind was new, which is to say, developed according to the methods of the modern natural sciences. The diversion from the ancient sense of οἰκός begins with his dedication to contemporary methods, a style of thinking – an ideology one can say – sometimes and appropriately called “scientism.”38 To further explain the relationships between an organism’s habitat and the household of nature, Haeckel turned to his contemporaries and immediate predecessors, alternately rejecting and accepting ideas of figures like Baron von Cuvier and Charles 11

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Darwin. Haeckel saw the need for very close attention to relationships, for physiology had, he felt, “largely neglected the relations of the organism to the environment, the place each organism takes in the household of nature, in the economy of all nature.”39 The proximity of this notion to ideas set forth by Darwin is plain in another definition set out a few years later, when Haeckel explained that “ecology is the study of all those complex interrelations referred to by Darwin as the conditions of the struggle for existence.”40 It was not to his immediate contemporaries alone that Haeckel referred. He, like Darwin, turned to a natural scientist from the 18th century as a source for the idea of ecology, even although a slightly different term had been used. Carl Linnaeus had introduced the phrase “economy of nature” in 1758 to describe “the all-wise disposition of the Creator in relation to natural things, by which they are fitted to produce general ends, and reciprocal uses.”41 Ecology and economy are, of course, cognate terms, with the Greek οἰκός as their common root (nomos or law substituted logos). For Linnaeus, correspondences, mutualities, and unities presented themselves to the careful student of nature, for whoever duly turns his attention to the things on this our terraqueous globe, must necessarily confess, that they are so connected, so chained together, that they all aim at the same end, and to this end a vast number of intermediate ends are subservient.42 This “economy,” also called a “polity,” expresses the same interdependencies as Haeckel’s “external relations,” those that bind organisms to one another and their habitat. And here, as before, cultural conditions in general and architecture in particular were excluded from these “interdependencies.” The same is true for the “conditions” that Darwin said staged the “struggle for existence” – no public squares, streets, or houses were implicated or involved. Of course there were sharp differences between the ways these scientists understood the “history” of natural “economies.” Linnaeus’ conception is often described today as static, for he thought that the structures and relationships established by the creator would continually renew themselves in an unending series of repetitions – no growth. Darwin is well known to have argued instead for development, progress, or evolution, thanks to the “struggle” he observed. Haeckel, in turn, criticized Cuvier for concentrating on the functions of the organism itself, apart from its habitat. Like Darwin, Haeckel contextualized the life of organisms. Nonetheless, in each of these accounts, the ecology or economy of the natural world depended on and expressed a network of relationships, a web, weave, or fabric of interdependencies. The several sciences have distinguished their own subject matter within this fabric, on the assumption that in nature, there exist separable scales of association. We will show that comparable scales exist in architecture too. Yet, for Linnaeus, Darwin, and Haeckel, ecological relationships bound together natural, not cultural phenomena. Ecology, we’ve said, was invented as a subset of biology. Insofar as this science of natural phenomena was then thought 12

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to be the model science to which all other sciences should conform, other kinds of phenomena, not assessable to the methods and descriptive techniques of the natural sciences, buildings and farms for example, were left out of the picture. We have repeatedly stressed this point because it explains why the term ecology, as commonly understood today (to name the interdependence among organisms and their habitat) is inadequate to architecture, and why it must be qualified with a term such as cultural.

Cultural ecologies We are not alone in extending the program for cultural ecology beyond anthropology. Since the time that Steward published his arguments, a number of scholars in other fields have taken an ecological approach to cultural phenomena.43 Hubert Zapf, for example, has read literature from the perspective of cultural ecology. His basic premise is that the relationship between culture and nature is a fundamental dimension of all human and cultural phenomena.44 He concentrated on American and English literature. Shakespeare’s The Tempest, for example, was interpreted as a way of realigning and healing a corrupt civilization by using nature in both its paradisiac and savage aspects. But more generally for Zapf, great literature expresses the interrelatedness of nature and culture. To support his position, he cited many sources in the humanities, particularly Peter Finke’s Die Ökologie des Wissens [Ecology of Knowledge] (2005) and Gregory Bateson’s Steps Toward an Ecology of Mind (1973), which argue for ecology as an approach not limited to the natural sciences, but applicable to cultural studies as well. Writing from a socio-political point of view, the productive and influential writer Murray Bookchin can be added to this list; particularly his Ecology of Freedom (1982). His thesis was that the world’s ecological problems are seated in long-standing social problems; which is to say, cultural issues lie at the core of ecological imbalances. Poverty’s opposite is not wealth but justice. Still more inclusive is the emerging field of studies called Ecological Humanities, which intends to overcome the long-standing separation between the sciences and the humanities, using cultural ecology as a methodological framework. The recent journal called Environmental Humanities opened its first issue with a subtitle that proposes a mutuality of research areas: “Thinking Through the Environment: Unsettling the Humanities.”45 In step with these developments, we see architecture as a field that can be studied – and has been practiced – as a form of cultural ecology. Let us, then, summarize the basic thesis of this book: that ecological concerns, observations, and responsibilities, based on studies guided by the methods of the natural sciences, are at once necessary and inadequate for architectural understanding and design; these types of study must be complemented by descriptions and interpretations of historical narratives, cultural norms, and individual expressions. This is true for both historical understanding and contemporary project making. We will not, however, argue for “sustainable buildings.” This is because we do not believe that buildings in themselves are sustainable. They can, of course, be positive elements in the sustainability of a wider topographical setting, rural or urban. The ancient root term, οἰκός named just such a topography: an individual dwelling unit within 13

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a community of similar units situated in a specific environmental setting. The Greek house-farm and the Roman villa are two exemplary cases we will study in our next chapter. Later examples include Renaissance villas (in Tuscany especially), also dwelling units in close combination with one another, as in monasteries (particularly the Charterhouse type). Pre-modern examples of these domestic and monastic ecologies will also be considered in the pages that follow.

Two modern architects Julian Steward published his study of cultural ecology, we have said, in 1955, two years before the Olgyay brothers published Solar Control and Shading Devices. That near coincidence, together will all the publications and conferences dedicated to environmental concerns in architecture in the next decade would suggest that the beginnings of “environmental consciousness” are to be found at that time, the 1950s and 1960s, then also, possible elaborations of a cultural approach to ecology. Obvious though it may seem, this inference strikes us as incorrect. Our study of modern architecture as cultural ecology argues that the origins of this approach come considerably earlier; specifically, during the decades between the two World Wars, even though the protagonists of the movement, together with their apologists, did not describe the work with this term. It is hardly surprising that the term ecology is not used in architectural writings of this period, for an explanation of a project’s setting that considered only biological conditions would not have occurred to them. The “ecologies” in which they worked were always also cultural. Victor and Aladar Olgyay have given us a clue to a more accurate history of cultural ecology within modern architecture. After citing Xenophon on the orientation of the ancient Greek house, so that it would benefit from the sun in the winter and not suffer it in the summer, the brothers turned to one of their contemporaries for support of their claims about the operational and expressive aspects of sun-breaking devices: the importance of this new element is shown by the fact that more than one architect feels he was the originator of its conscious use as a means of architectural expression. Without much doubt, Corbusier’s crystalline principles and forceful phrasing lead the idea to become indisputably architecture.46 Others who may have claimed this invention as their own, as well as those whose work the Olgyay brothers illustrated heavily in their study of sun-breakers, were Marcel Breuer, Richard Neutra, the Roberto brothers, and Oscar Niemeyer. Still another architect, in whose work they did not find sunscreens or sun-breakers, Frank Lloyd Wright, was nevertheless one of the earliest of the moderns to “break the box” and “break the sun,” less often with vertical than horizontal elements, deep eaves and overhangs. With the work of all of these figures in mind – but particularly Wright and Le Corbusier – it seems plain that cultural responses to ambient natural conditions can be found in the decades before the 1960s, when “environmental consciousness” is often said to begin.47 14

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Methodologically speaking, our study ends in the 1960s, with the beginning of environmental determinism.48 Ironically, perhaps tragically, that very movement – the one that promised a new awareness of the natural world – cast a dark shadow over the tradition we believe has great relevance today.49 Ironic though saying it may seem, it was just at the time that the best and most progressive inventions of the modern tradition had reformulated the mutuality of ecological and cultural considerations that “environmentally minded” critics and designers subordinated the second to the first. Assumed in this double error (historical and conceptual) is a third consequence that was even more problematic for the continuity of the modern tradition: the restoration of the twoworld thesis, nature vs. culture, in order to give the new “environmental” architecture the task of making itself sustainable – a task we have said is in principle misconceived and in practice unmanageable. This book has two basic aims, one historical and another thematic. We attempt to show that a number of architectural works of the early and middle decades of the 20th century not only embraced environmental and cultural conditions, but that some of the major architects of the modern period saw these two concerns as one. This approach did not arise by accident, nor was it evident in the work of only a few. It emerged as a creative response to unprecedented conditions of practice in the modern period, conditions that were radically altered by the processes of urbanization, industrialization, and environmentalism – in short, modernization. We realize that this argument challenges a well-worn commonplace of existing histories: that the new architecture of the 20th century resulted from an iconoclastic combination of art and engineering. Not only inaccurate, this notion obscures the real continuity of the modern tradition as it developed within its environmental and cultural contexts. As has been said, we will focus mainly on two architects: Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. There can be little doubt that their ideas and buildings were exceptionally influential on the whole of the modern tradition, but we concentrate on them for reasons other than influence. No others in the modern tradition enable us to show so clearly how architecture at this time was – at its very best – practiced as a form of cultural ecology, although let us say one last time, before that term had been formulated. No comprehensive account of their works will be presented, for studies of that kind exist in abundance. Important instead are those projects, some built others not, that creatively developed and expressed an approach that refused a distinction between cultural relevance and environmental awareness. Their mistakes and errors of judgment – both ecological and cultural – will also be instructive, for their responses to problems they themselves had caused were in many instances wonderfully creative. We are, of course, far from alone in crediting Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright with decisive roles in the history of modern architecture. Among the books that have argued for the importance of these two, sometimes coupled with others, a number reveal rather clearly the background for current conceptions of their influence: The Master Builders: Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright, Peter Blake, 1960; Four Great Makers of Modern Architecture: Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Richard Miller, 1963; Urban Utopias of the Twentieth Century: Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd 15

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Wright, Le Corbusier, Robert Fishman, 1977; Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier: The Great Dialogue, Thomas Doremus, 1985; and Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier: The Romantic Legacy, Richard A. Etlin, 1994.50 Although all of these books were published after the time when “environmentalism” is said to have awakened the thinking of architects, none see a concern for ecology, let alone a cultural approach to ecology in their work, even though many of their arguments and descriptions have been helpful to us and reward review and reconsideration. Nor has interest in these two dissipated, just the reverse. Consider, for example, the fact that in recent years, we have seen important exhibitions devoted to both of them at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: Le Corbusier and landscape, Wright and the city.51 In each case, long-standing conceptions were challenged by documents and interpretations that indicated interests typically overlooked. Thus we read in the book that accompanied the 2013 exhibition on Le Corbusier: “The experience and cultural meaning of landscape was in many ways as central to Le Corbusier’s vision of design and his conception of architecture as it was to architects more commonly associated with the organic, such as Alvar Aalto and Frank Lloyd Wright.52 Common conceptions of Wright’s antipathy toward the city were challenged by the more recent show, which promised to document his comprehensive plan for the urbanization of the American landscape titled “Broadacre City.”53 Although positive in their new approaches, neither of these exhibitions and related publications, lectures, etc. took up the question of the relationships between ideas of landscape and city in their work and the correspondences between their approaches, still less, the bearing their approaches has on our more specific question concerning the interplay between concerns of ecology and culture. Our aim in the chapters that follow target precisely that interplay in the modern world.

Three scales of association Overall, this book has a simple structure. Following this introductory account of the book’s basic question and subject matter, there are chapters that examine three examples or scales of cultural ecology: domestic, monastic, and urban. Pre-modern and modern examples will be studied, the latter in the work of Wright and Le Corbusier. Obviously, these types of association54 could be accommodated and expressed in familiar architectural types, the house, monastery, and neighborhood; but, we want to stress, not only these. A domestic ecology could range from an individual dwelling, to a group of farm buildings, to a villa, with or without barns and agricultural fields. Similarly, a monastic ecology could take the form of a university college, an urban housing block, or a traditional monastery. Finally, urban ecologies could range from a summer camp, to a city neighborhood, to an urban precinct. Nevertheless, these three cultural ecologies emerged historically, still exist at present, and show the cultural content of ecological ideas and practices. Furthermore, and obviously, these three represent a sequence of scales. Size is at issue, but more important for us are the different scales of association: among those in an individual dwelling unit, among units in groups, and among groups in – also with those outside – a community. Of course the distinctions between 16

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the three are not absolute, for there can be aspects of community or monastic life in a domestic ecology, and so on. Our basic point is that each of the three integrates a specific way of life, culture, into a particular web of life, ecology.

Notes 1 Guattari, Three Ecologies, 19. 2 Orr, “Problem of Sustainability,” 3. 3 Although the term has had wide currency, one text that disseminated the label is Smithson and Smithson, Heroic Period of Modern Architecture. 4 Descola, Ecology of Others, 81–82; our italics. 5 Already in 1957, Paul Sears had lectured on “The Ecology of Man,” See Sears, Ecology of Man. 6 See Thomas, ed., Man’s Role Changing the Earth. 7 The phrase we have cited is from: Carson, “A Fable for Tomorrow,” 3. 8 Ibid., 278. 9 McHarg, Design with Nature, 24. 10 Ibid., 34. 11 Nevertheless, while still leading the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania he obtained for his colleagues, fellow researchers, and students the most up-to-date computer technology that was then available. 12 Although Roger Tomlinson had developed an early form of Geographic Information Systems in 1960, some historians describe McHarg as “the father of GIS.” 13 Ibid., 76. 14 Design With Climate is, for example, the first book mentioned in the “Phenomena and Technology Introduction” to Tanzer and Longoria, Green Braid. 15 In 2015, a reprint of the book was released with introductory essays attesting to its continued importance. See: Victor Olgyay, Design With Climate: Bioclimatic Approach to Architectural Regionalism. New and expanded edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015). For an account and a critique of the ways this book’s analysis and recommendations are typically rendered see: Leatherbarrow and Wesley, “Performance and Style.” 16 Olgyay, Design With Climate, 6–10. 17 Ibid., 13, 83. Our italics. 18 Marcel Breuer, cited in Olgyay and Olgyay, Solar Control and Shading Devices, 3. 19 Design With Climate, 14. 20 Solar Control and Shading Devices, 80; out italics. A parallel thesis was set out by Le Corbusier in Towards an Architecture: “Architecture is a thing of art, a phenomenon of emotions, lying outside questions of construction and beyond them. The purpose of construction is to make things hold together, of architecture to move us.” Le Corbusier, Towards an Architecture, 23. 21 Ibid., 10. For a discussion of the importance of artistic expression in his thinking see: Leatherbarrow and Wesley, “Frameworks.” 22 Solar Control and Shading Devices, 80; again, our italics, but with different emphasis this time. 23 His primary concern was for design focused on the local vicinity, even though the book’s full title indicated a wider frame of reference: Design With Climate: bioclimatic approach to architectural regionalism. The distinction between awareness (of the region) and responsibility (to the locality and for the project) may be helpful here. 24 Steward, Theory of Culture Change. The earlier history of the idea of cultural ecology is summarized in: Gunn, “Cultural Ecology.” Gunn describes Steward as the most influential figure in the development of cultural ecology. 25 Bauman, Culture as Praxis, 21, places Steward’s book in the “differential” type of culture, as opposed to his other two types, hierarchical and generic. 26 Steward, 30. 27 Ian McHarg’s later writing acknowledged this development, including “human ecology” in his account of ecological planning. In a 1981 description of the landscape planning program at the University of Pennsylvania, he wrote as follows: “It is next necessary to define human ecological planning. The central word in this compound noun has primacy: ecology has been defined as

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28 29

30

31

32

33 34 35 36

the study of the interactions of organisms and environment (which includes other organisms). The word human is adequately defined in standard dictionaries but human ecology is not. While ecology has traditionally sought to learn the laws which obtain for ecosystems, it has done so by investigating environments unaffected or little affected man; it has emphasized biophysical systems. Yet clearly no systems are unaffected by man, indeed studies of the interactions of organisms and environment are likely to reveal human dominance. Hence, ecology simply must be extended to include man. Human ecology can then be defined as the study of the interactions of organisms (including man), and the environment (including man among other organisms). However, if man is assumed to be implicit in both definitions of organisms and environment then the standard definition for ecology can apply to human ecology.” See: McHarg, To Heal the Earth, 143. Steward, Theory of Culture Change, 31; our italics. Explaining his professor’s ideas further, he wrote: “one of his greatest works, Configurations of Culture Growth (1944), deals with the superorganic nature of culture. . . . The book undertakes to show that individual achievements express but do not explain cultural climaxes.” Steward, Alfred Kroeber: Biographical Memoir, 203–204. See: Kroeber, Configurations of Culture Growth. Kroeber, “The Superorganic,” 163–213. Although Steward mentioned Herbert Spencer’s use of this term, the figure who was far more influential on Kroeber’s thinking, and thus the development of cultural ecology, was his dissertation supervisor, Franz Boas, who has been called “the father of American anthropology.” Interestingly, one of Boas’ teachers was Rudolf Virchow, a physical anthropologist based in Berlin who had engaged in a rather heated debate on the topic of natural selection with his former student Ernst Haeckel, to whom we will refer later in text. Zygmunt Bauman, in Culture as Praxis, introduced the term cultural ethos to describe the subject matter of Kroeber’s conception: “A. L. Kroeber seemed to ascribe paramount theoretical significance to the notion of ‘cultural ethos’, the total quality of a culture defined as ‘the system of ideals and values that dominate the culture and so tend to control the type of behavior of its members.’ ” Bauman, 28. Bauman then linked this concept to what the art historian Meyer Schapiro understood by the “style” of works of art, exemplary manifestations of a culture’s ethos. Describing this condition as hybrid or compound assumes the two-world prejudice implied in text before. Although we would like to reject that premise, we must recognize the degree to which it has been naturalized in all manner of thinking (philosophy, religion, law, and, of course, architecture); it is no longer seen as a premise, rather, a fact – nature is one thing, culture another. Their “coupling,” a “problem” for science according to Steward, is also our task. Perhaps the most useful recent critique of the two-world prejudice in contemporary anthropology is from the author cited above, Philippe Descola. In a chapter called “The Great Divide,” he first demonstrated how this “divide,” or two-world thesis is not only unknown in many cultures throughout the world, but historically rather limited in our own – in its extreme, dogmatic form, no more than a century old. He concluded his report with the following rhetorical question: “should we cling to such a historically determined way of dividing up the world in order to account for cosmologies that are clearly still very much alive. . . [or should we instead see the world around us as something like a] proliferating continuum.” See: Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture, 85–86. The limitations of an account constrained by the methods of the natural sciences are apparent in the following summary observation: “All men eat, but this is an organic and not a cultural fact. It is universally explainable in terms of biological and chemical processes. What and how different groups of men eat is a cultural fact explainable only by cultural history and environmental factors. All men dance, but the universal feature of dancing is bodily rhythm which is a human rather than cultural trait. Specific movements, music, attire, ritual, and other attributes of dancing which have limited occurrence and give dances meaning as cultural facts are not subject to universal explanation or formulation. A formula that explains behavior of all mankind cannot explain culture.” Steward, Theory of Culture Change, 8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1.3.1–4. Steward, 32. Ibid., 30; our italics. Haeckel, Generelle Morphologie.

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37 Haeckel’s Naturhaushalt – literally household of nature – is typically rendered as “economy of nature.” When Darwin’s Origin of the Species was translated, his phrase “economy of nature” was rendered as Haushalt der Natur. 38 On this term and its relevance to 19th century natural science in particular, see Voegelin, “Origins of Scientism,” 168–196. Voegelin’s opening characterization is as follows: “The splendid advance of the “new science” [in the 16th and 17th centuries] became the cause of an elation with far reaching consequences. . . . They began in a fascination with the new science to the point of underrating and neglecting the concern for experiences of the spirit; they developed into the assumption that the new science would create a world view that would substitute for the religious order of the soul; and they culminated, in the nineteenth century, in the dictatorial prohibition, on the part of the scientistic thinkers, against asking questions of a metaphysical nature. The results of this development lie before us today in the form of the scientistic creed.” 39 Haeckel, vol. II, 286–287. 40 Quotation by Ernst Haeckel from an inaugural lecture to the philospophical faculty in Jena, Germany, delivered in 1869 and translated into English in Allee, Principles of Animal Ecology, v. 41 Linnaeus, “Specimen Academicum,” 39. 42 Ibid., 40. 43 Prior to Steward, of course, was Alfred Kroeber, whose work transcended the typical boundaries of anthropology. The most indicative text was mentioned earlier: Configurations of Culture Growth. His topics in that text included sculpture, painting, drama, literature, and music, with occasional references, not a separate chapter, devoted to architecture. 44 See Zapf, Literatur als kulturelle Ökologie. Two of his key sources were: Bateson, Steps Toward an Ecology of Mind and Finke, Ecology of Knowledge. See also: Bookchin, Ecology of Freedom. 45 Environmental Humanities, vol. 1 (2012). 46 Olgyay and Olgyay, Solar Control and Shading, 10. 47 A similar suggestion and argument, without specific attention to cultural concerns, is made in: Porteous, New eco-Architecture. 48 Environmental determinism, environmentalism, and environmentalization all signify for us the analysis, design, and evaluation of architecture by environmental factors, often to the exclusion to other considerations. 49 We make this point in the study of Victor and Aladar Olygay cited earlier; see: Leatherbarrow and Wesley, “Performance and Style in the Work of Olgyay and Olgyay.” 50 Blake, Master Builders; Miller, ed., Four Great Makers; Fishman, Urban Utopias; Doremus, Wright and Le Corbusier; and Etlin, Wright and Le Corbusier. 51 Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern Landscapes, 2013 and Frank Lloyd Wright and the City: Density and Dispersal, 2014. 52 Bergdoll, “Project of an Atlas,” 21. 53 Museum of Modern Art, “Frank Lloyd Wrigth and the City: Density vs. Dispersal,” www.moma. org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1448. 54 Our use of the term scales of association no doubt recalls, but is not intended to directly elaborate the vocabulary proposed in the “Statement on Habitat”/ “Doorn Manifesto,” 1954. In that statement, each community was to be examined as a particular “total complex” in its “appropriate ecological field.” See: “Doorn Manifesto,” 183.

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Strange as it may seem today, a categorical division between natural and cultural phenomena did not exist in the ancient Greek understanding and experience of the οἰκός. Many sources confirm this, from both antiquity and more recent times. Explaining the term he coined, ecology, Ernst Haeckel indicated that the ancient stem of its first half meant household. Because he took the meaning of that word to be self-evident and said nothing more about it, we need to turn elsewhere for clarification of what οἰκός once signified, particularly the non-divisibility of environmental conditions and ways of living.1 For Aristotle, the household was a “natural economy.” Once again, we have familiar words coupled in an unfamiliar way. What might such a term have meant? Probably not what Carl Linnaeus meant by the “economy of nature.” Nor did Aristotle think there could be a “science” of the household, in the modern sense of that word. How could a historically defined cultural practice – sharing a holiday meal with family and friends for example – be seen as natural? The question has serious economic and ethical consequences today, when sharing is often the last thing we think of when faced with conditions of scarcity. In remote antiquity, the oikos was the principle institution in which the human interchange with nature was conducted. Interchange was not exchange; the household was not a market. Perhaps involvement is a better term, for it was not trade but labor that was required to sustain the domestic economy, manual work within the local environment that provided those who resided there with what was both necessary and desirable for everyday living. Life’s physical/biological necessities were not the only fruits of the struggle with and against the land, climate, and seasons; hard work also allowed the members of the oikos to free themselves for things and activities that were believed to be good in their own right: talking with friends during and after the meal or the making of beautiful things, stories and songs, for example. Who resided in the ancient oikos? It was not a family in the modern sense, not a grouping of blood relations. Parents and children were there of course, but also others, who were no less integral to the make-up of its little society: servants or slaves, if the house could afford them, together with all the provisions (artifacts and animals) that made their lives together both practical and pleasurable. Some members were freely united, husband and wife; while others, which is to say children, were there by birth, about which they had no choice; and still others by obligation, the servants and slaves. 20

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Aristotle’s text presented the oikos as a community (koinoia), the smallest of the several scales of society that made up the ancient city-state (household → village → city → state). This sequence seems to have been the historical progression of community types, even though Aristotle wrote in his Politics that the city was logically prior to the house, because the whole must precede the part.2 For modern readers, this first sequence is barely understandable, certainly nowhere in evidence, despite the fact that we still discuss and indeed design for a number of these scales. Nevertheless, the social and spatial arrangements of the household could be described as a domestic ecology, the term we will use in the two chapters that follow this one.3 It was not only scale that was at issue in distinguishing these types. Insofar as the oikos was intertwined with the natural world, it tied the larger communities, particularly the polis, back to the natural world as well, but indirectly, which is how a cultural framework as sophisticated and “artificial” as a city was thought to be also natural. Modern architecture inherited and transformed, even revolutionized, this thesis – comparable scales of association in cultural ecologies – but in ways that have been overlooked by much of modern historiography. Today, there is little physical evidence to exemplify the ancient oikos. One of the key reasons for this lack of evidence is the fact that the physical premises of the oikos exceeded what we tend to think of as a family residence (today’s apartment, condominium, or house).4 It was more like an estate or domain that included orchards, fields, gardens, barns, and so on. While farming was not addressed by Aristotle in the chapters of Politics that described the oikos, it was so central to Xenophon’s Oeconomicus of a decade or so before that later writers often described his dialogue as a treatise on both household management and agriculture. Far from a servile or base activity, farming was a vivid evidence of civility, striking though that seems, no less indicative than the possession of language, when compared to and distinguished from hunting and gathering in a “pastoral” culture.5 We have observed already that life in the oikos involved work. The ancient Greek word for labor meant both work and field.6 While some families worked lands that were separated from those directly attached to their house, most cultivated property immediately nearby. Current studies suggest that the vast majority of the citizens of ancient Greek cities, in 5th century Athens for example, not only lived at the margins of the dense city center, but had space for crops and animals within the boundaries of their household.7 The land most citizens worked was inherited and rarely transferred or sold, which meant cultivation and political involvement went hand-in-hand. This sense of “democracy” was anticipated in Hesiod’s Works and Days, for he wrote that justice and agriculture entered the world together. The limit of the city was the outer edge of the fields attached to the majority of its houses, and beyond that limit was the untamed countryside.8

Cooperative and productive arts Although the farm was all-of-a-piece in the ancient domestic ecology, its several crops required different ways of working the land. Fruit trees and vines, for example, required 21

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little attention, only watering and some pruning, working with processes that followed their own course of development and schedule (the seasons). Because apples and figs could be found on trees in uncultivated lands, the Greeks thought that fruit of that kind was a gift from the gods. Work in orchards and vineyards, then, only assisted or promoted the fertility of the earth. Before and during the classical period this type of labor was also seen as religious work, insofar as the Greeks, particularly the Athenians, understood themselves to be descended from the earth (Erichthonois, every Athenian’s ancestor, was the miraculous offspring of the Athenian soil).9 A different kind of labor was required for the production of cereals such as wheat and barley. Plowing and sowing were more active forms of engagement. The soil had to be broken, and that meant working against existing conditions. Breaking the soil required the use of instruments too. With the plow, truly productive arts were brought into agricultural practice, for no plow exists by nature. Another way to see the distinction between farming and the making of things like plows is to describe the first as a practice that did not involve the application of any kind of technique, still less, apprenticeship or instruction; instead, it was seen as an ability that could be acquired by observing and imitating the work of others. Its essential requirements were hard work, steady application, and conformity to the orders of the natural world (daily and seasonal cycles, climate, etc.). Manufacturing, the Greeks thought, was something different. Metalworking, carpentry, or pottery required instruction and could not be practiced (effectively) without it. Using the terms introduced earlier, we can say the first type of work is cooperative and the second productive.10 Nevertheless, in the ancient Greek oikos, both kinds of art were required, agricultural and artisanal. Insofar as both resulted in development or advancement, each was an instance of physis, akin to growth of things in the department of the world we call nature. Although it may seem paradoxical to us today (dedicated as we are to “design with” nature or climate) the ancient Greek house-farm was and was not part of the land. The earth that was worked was understood as both (natural) substance and (constructed) field, a gift of the gods on the one hand and a task for the arts on the other, the latter achieved through a process that was oriented toward an image or idea, such as a level, regularly shaped, or evenly subdivided layout. One reason for this is that crops of the same kind but planted by different families were sometimes grouped together, away from their oikoi, at the margins of the village or town. This point is significant – even if difficult – because it means the web of relationships that defined the oikos was both “natural” and “social.”11 In this conception, buildings were bound within natural ecologies. Sometimes they might be detrimental to them, other times neutral, or they might contribute to their continuance (sustainability).12

Self-sufficiency Despite the binding character of these “external” relationships, self-sufficiency was the basic goal of the ancient oikos, as it is of today’s “sustainable development.” Yet, with 22

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respect to the resident, no individual could achieve what the Greeks called autarky when alone. A pre-modern sense of self is implied here. Outside the domestic community, in its extended sense, a person could be neither self-sufficient nor happy.13 Both happiness and freedom required involvements. Within the group, however, there was a hierarchy. Ranking highest, at the center was the lord of the estate. The seat of his indoor activities was the andron, where dining and entertaining occurred, and this was surrounded by a number of dependent settings. Already in the 8th century, the andron had achieved its typical form: close to the entry, approximately square, ringed on three sides by low benches, its doorway often off-center, but a floor drain in the middle.14 Centralized power was not all that structured the oikos, its members were equally bound by friendship (philia), an ancient word with a wide range of meanings. Commonality of ownership among the husband and wife, for example, was based on commonality of affection. Ancient writers distinguished kinds of friendship, affection, and love for the various types of association: husband and wife, parents and children, masters and servants, and so on. On this last association, there was disagreement. In pre-classical times, as recorded in the Homeric poems, bonds of affection extended to the relationships between the head of the house and his servants. Aristotle differed: the servant or slave was not bound to the master by friendship, but obligation and duty. Xenophon, for his part, wrote that loyalty was the basis for the master–servant association; at least that would be its best form. Nevertheless, in both cases, the master was obliged to the servant by a sense of responsibility. But the key point is more general: merely living together in the same house, on the same grounds, was not thought to be sufficient for the community; the mutuality that defined the oikos required a sharing of something greater than life’s (biological or bare) necessities, such as a sense of justice, or of pleasure, or utility. Sharing of this sort was not a result of birth, but of choice, choices made by each (free) person in the household about the ways they wanted to live together. Just as the servant was duty-bound to the master, the master was responsible for the servant (health, clothing, and food, for example, but also fairness). The web of relationships, the culture that bound this type of community – this domestic ecology – together was no less strong than that which tied a plant or animal to its habitat. The ancient Greeks thought these ties were natural, even though they were also voluntary, historical, and indeed, cultural. The point we must stress above all others concerns is the extended and involved character of this type community. The internal relationships of hierarchy and love within the ancient oikos were complemented by interconnections with its immediate vicinity and neighbors; likewise for its architecture. Another two gods can be invoked here: Hestia focused inward and Hermes oriented outward were complimentary deities in Greek myth; their coupling gave the house its primary spatial order: a center and edge, oriented within and outside itself.15 The oikos was not a house, but an estate. The goal of household management – home economics – was certainly selfsufficiency, but its approximation depended on involvements with conditions beyond the house, over which, perforce, the oikos had no control. In this sense, the art of 23

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home economics was essentially the same kind of practice as farming – productive tampering with natural tendencies. Neither should be thought of as forms of control. Even if farmers coordinated their labors with daily and seasonal rhythms, they suffered the variations in weather. The natural world set limits on the estate’s independence, but also provided the means of both survival and pleasure. Animals, which were also due respect, formed part of the domestic community’s economy, as did the agricultural fields. Here, too, as within the house, toil was required for any positive yield. But again, greater ends were sought than the harvest itself: first, the preservation of the community’s philia, and second the pleasures of a free or unconstrained life, such as dance and song, which were, to a large measure, celebrations of even more basic desires, the love, mutual respect, and friendship that gave the house its cultural stability.

The ancient roman villa: two cultures as one Like the Greek oikos the Roman domus exceeded what we tend to think of as a residential building for a family. The singularity of a Roman house within an urban or rural setting cannot be disputed; but neither should it be comprehended as existing outside of the broader cultural ecology of a domus or household.16 To speak of the integration of a Roman house with its setting would be incorrect. The two were neither conceived nor understood as separate entities in the first place, and therefore merging them would be as unnecessary for a Roman as considering them separately would be implausible. This unbreakable oneness of the domus is illustrated in a mosaic from the 3rd or 4th century depicting the household of Julius in North Africa [Fig. 2.1]. Although positioned at the center of the mosaic, the house appears to be embedded in an ecological domain of fields, orchards, and gardens populated by members of the familia, as well as other living things, including horses, dogs, sheep, and fowl. Represented as an object within a setting, the house is shown with a second-level loggia and corner towers, presumably framing views from within of the surrounding terrain, while at the same time providing a focus for views in the opposite direction. In this sense, “looking at” and “looking from” architecture are two forms of active engagement operating in both directions, from within the house and upon the land, binding the two together, back and forth. Similar to the union of the house and setting, the tenants or slaves depicted in the mosaic appear to be bound together with the members of the landowners into a single familia, as distinct from a family related exclusively through marriage and blood. The top panels in the mosaic depict the domina, the lady of the household, sitting in a garden, while tenants or slaves on either side bring her ducks, olives, and a goat. In the background of one of the bottom panels other tenants or slaves bring the seated dominus, the man of the house, grapes, fowl, and a rabbit. To his side another tenant or cliens approaches with a tribute of two birds in one hand and a petition in the other, illustrating mutual obligations in a clear depiction of the “domus as an economic unit, the framework within which most agricultural production takes place.”17 24

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Figure 2.1  Dominus Julius Mosaic, 4th century. Musée National du Bardo, Tunis, Tunisia. Source: Boyd Dwyer, photographer. Wikimedia, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

But the oneness of a Roman domus did not exclude different manifestations of the house in urban and rural settings. What the Greek residence was to the oikos, the Roman casa was to the villa, no more than a part of a whole, albeit the part that concentrated villa life most compactly and represented it most elaborately. The centrality of the residential premises notwithstanding, the architecture of the Roman villa, like that of the Greek oikos, was in essence topographical. With respect to study materials available to scholars today, however, the pairing is asymmetrical. Unlike the imbalance of archaeological evidence and textual sources in the Greek case (more evidence in texts than physical remains), both writings and buildings exist in ample supply for the study of ancient Roman practice. The primary written sources on the Roman villa are the detailed letters of Pliny, Vitruvius’ treatise, and the texts of Cato, Varro, and Collumella, sometimes called the agricultural writers. Each author accented an important dimension of villa culture within its local ecology. Cato, for example, was less concerned with the cluster of residential premises within the villa estate than with ways of maximizing profits through agricultural production. 25

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While he offered little advice on the design or construction of the domestic buildings, he did explain the relationship between comfort and profit. If you build substantially on a good farm, placing the house in a good situation, so that you can live comfortably in the country, you will like to visit it, and will do so oftener; the farm will improve, there will be less wrongdoing, and you will receive greater returns.18 In short, a villa’s comfort was a means to a profitable end. Good siting was required of both the means and end, and they also depended on reliable routes back to town. The villa owner’s urban residence seems to have set the standard for comfort, which, if Cato’s urging is a fair measure of accomplishment, the rural site struggled to approximate. Still, there were clear advantages to the country location. The exploitation of the land – more largely, the environment – allowed not only financial profit but moral benefit. Work on the land was key for both advantages, either work with one’s own hands, or by association, the hands (backs and muscles) of a team of farm workers, often slaves. While Varro followed Cato’s convention that agricultural production, not residential architecture, was the appropriate theme for a treatise on agriculture, he expounded on the positive values associated with villa life. It was not without reason that those great men, our ancestors, put the Romans who lived in the country ahead of those who lived in the city. For as in the country those who live in villas are lazier than those who are engaged in carrying out work on the land, so they thought that those who settled in town were more indolent than those who dwelt in the country.19 Varro found hard work in the rural fields to be morally superior to the exercise in a gymnasium. Because the ancestral villa-owners worked in the fields, they were able to attain two objectives: “keeping their lands most productive by cultivation, and themselves enjoying better health and not requiring the citified gymnasia of the Greeks.”20 Pars rustica + pars urbana

The architectural implications of Varro’s sense of villa life emerged in his account of its defining moral antithesis, which wasn’t so much between the indolent life in the city and the active or productive life in the country, or between imported Greek and indigenous Roman models, as between the two parts of the villa itself, the pars urbana and the pars rustica. He was not only describing a coupling of enclosed and open spaces, nor of architectural and agricultural settings, but, more basically, of distinct yet interdependent dimensions of villa culture. Cato, for example, included among the elements of the pars rustica: cellars for oil, wine, and grain, bread ovens, pens or stables for livestock, and feed racks. Then as now, these places were sites of industry and labor, evidences of both skill and of care, as well as responsibility. The elements that entered into the make-up of the pars urbana, by contrast, included all those enclosures that would make a useful and 26

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pleasant residence, such as rooms for sleeping, cooking, and dining, baths, and rooms for meeting guests. Here especially patterns of living were apparent – more than that, legible. Despite the contrast between each pars, the coordination of their elements was the key task of the type’s design and construction, and a difficult one because of their contrasting origins and moral meanings. While Varro accepted the complex and dichotomous concept of a two-part villa, simultaneously straddling the cultural polarities of town and country, there were limits to his tolerance. Having a gymnasium in the pars urbana, for example, was for him the moral antithesis of the values associated with the pars rustica. In these days one such gymnasium is hardly enough, and they do not think they have a real villa unless it rings with many resounding Greek names – places severally called procoetion, palaestra, apodyterion, peristylon, ornithon, peripteros, oporotheca. As therefore in these days practically all the heads of families have sneaked within the walls, abandoning the sickle and the plough, and would rather busy their hands in the theatre and in the circus than in the grain fields and in the vineyards.21 Not only the rooms themselves, but also their orientation was seen by Varro as an example of the decline of the pars rustica, moving the villa closer to a pure pars urbana: What men of our day aim at is to have their summer dining-rooms face the cool east and their winter dining-rooms face the west, rather than, as the ancients did, to see on what side the wine and oil cellars have their windows; for in a cellar wine requires cooler air on the jars, while oil requires warmer.22 Like Varro, Vitruvius had little to say about the design of the pars urbana. What he did write only confirms the strong association of the Roman villa with the city. If something more refined is required in farmhouses, they may be constructed on the principles of symmetry which have been given above in the case of town houses, provided that there is nothing in such buildings to interfere with their usefulness on a farm.23 But in its overall planning, Vitruvius made an important distinction between a town house and a villa. The rules on these points will hold not only for houses in town, but also for those in country, except that in town atriums are usually next to the front door, while in country seats peristyles come first, then atriums surrounded by paved colonnades opening upon palaestrae and walks.24 To illustrate the inversion of these two domestic open spaces in Roman villas, WallaceHadrill pointed to the Villa dei Misteri at Pompeii [Fig. 2.2]. Unlike a typical Roman 27

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Figure 2.2  Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii. Floor plan, Amadeo Maiuri, La Villa dei Mistiri, vol. I, Plate A, 1931. Source: Courtesy of Soprintendenza Pompei.

urban house, in the Villa dei Misteri, the entrance is through the peristyle leading into the atrium with an exedra. At a single, brilliant stroke, Vitruvius turns the villa into the mirror image of the town house. In town you move from atrium to peristyle, in country from peristyle to atrium. To ‘urbanise’ the country is to stand the town on its head.25 28

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Among the principles of architectural order that Vitruvius found in this rustic urbanity, perhaps symmetry, in both the bi-lateral and proportional meanings of the word, was the most important, for the corresponding terms symmetria, analogia, and proportio implied both the due measure and interdependency of parts that characterize ecological arrangements of any kind.

Renaissance villas The tension between the “rustic” and “urban” parts of the ancient Roman villa can also be seen in its Renaissance reincarnation. The fact is worth noting because villas of this period have been frequently discussed in modern architecture, among the architects themselves and historians. A case in point is the Villa Medici at Fiesole (1457), which included gardens situated on two terraces and separated by function – although not exclusively – into a flower or pleasure garden on the upper terrace and a kitchen garden on the lower terrace26 [Fig. 2.3]. Among the gardens were a variety of fruit trees planted along the upper retaining wall and still cultivated there today: orange, lemon, and pomegranate. This would seem to indicate the presence of a pars rustica. The casa that stands on the site today would be a vivid instance of the urbana part. Yet, James Ackerman has argued that this estate was that of “a suburban villa without an agricultural function, the scale and form of which was accommodated to the choice of site with a

Figure 2.3  Villa Medici, Fiesole, c. 1450, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi. Source: Donata Mazzini, photographer, 2006. Wikimedia, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

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panoramic view.”27 But Ackerman’s is only one view of the case. A contrary interpretation has recently been offered by Raffaella Giannetto. On her account the absence of farm fields adjacent to the house and terraced gardens should more accurately be ascribed to the surrounding topographic conditions rather than to a deliberate intent to exclude the pars rustica, in pursuit of the ideals of transforming the pars urbana into a suburban villa. According to Giannetto, the owner of the villa “bought a large wooded area at Fiesole, which he had cleared of trees and divided into three smaller farms that yielded wine, wheat, beans, barley, spelt, and wood.”28 Historical documents also mention the use of the ground floor of the service building on the lower terrace for grape harvest as well as the storage of wine barrels. The relationships between these two parts became somewhat more complicated a century later, particularly in what might be described as the most famous of all Italian Renaissance “villas.” The problem begins with the “modern” understanding of the term. In his Four Books on Architecture, 1570, Andrea Palladio considered it inappropriate to categorize the Villa Rotunda as belonging to villa buildings, [fabricha di villa], due to its proximity to the city. Instead, he included the building in the second book of in “Chapter III: On the Design of Houses in the City.” There Palladio described the building as the owner’s place on a hill outside of town [suburbano] less than a quarter of a mile away from the city . . . which I did not think appropriate to include with buildings in the country [fabricha di villa] because it is so close to the city that one could say it is in the city itself. Moreover, throughout the Four Books on Architecture, he distinguished between a villa, an estate or farm, and the buildings for domestic and farming use, the case and fabriche di villa. In the Four Books, “the house of the owner is not called a villa but the abitazione or casa del padrone, casa dominicale.”29 Having classed the La Rotunda among city buildings, Palladio employed the theater, a decidedly urban type, as a metaphor to describe the surrounding countryside, not as wilderness, but as “completely cultivated”: The site is one of the most pleasing and delightful that one could find because it is on top of a small hill which is easy to ascend; on one side it is bathed by the Bacchiglione, a navigable river, and on the other is surrounded by other pleasant hills which resemble a vast theater and are completely cultivated and abound with wonderful fruit and excellent vines; so, because it enjoys the most beautiful vistas on every side, some of which are restricted, others more extensive, and yet others which end at the horizon, loggias have been built on all four sides.30 But not all of the views from the Villa Rotunda’s four porticos were “beautiful vistas.” Palladio’s description may well have described the building in an ideal state as

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drawn and published in the Four Books, but not the building as completed after his death by Vincenzo Scamozzi. The completed building included a barchesa (barn), designed as a long, two-story, rectangular block situated at a lower elevation than the main building [Fig. 2.4]. While not entirely blocking the view from the portico, the vista was substantially modified. The rear wall of the barchessa retained the sloped earth, and along with an opposite retaining wall, provided enclosure for a long and narrow entry court connecting the main building to the street.31 On its lower level, opposite the ramped entry court, the barchessa defined one side of a service court with an arcade sheltering the doors and windows of the storerooms. Witold Rybczynski has remarked how the barchesse, the villa’s “long barns, whose south-facing sides consisted of open arcades, provided sunny, protected outdoor areas for unloading wagons and doing farmwork”32 also demonstrated Palladio’s interest in incorporating local building traditions. Although in some villas Palladio intended them to be used not as barns but for functions typically associated with the main house, in either situation, the barchesse represented an intentional connection to the agricultural ecology of the surrounding countryside. Although the barchessa at the Villa Rotunda appeared to be entirely separated from the main house, the rusticated arcade led to “a vast cellar with broad brick-work vaults” beneath an elevated terrace adjacent to the main building where it was connected by a corridor to the main building.33

Figure 2.4  Villa Almerico Capra (La Rotunda), 1567–1571, Andrea Palladio,Vicenza. Source: Timothy Hendrix, photographer, 2006.

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A section of the Villa Rotunda’s buildings in their site drawn in 1960 illustrated the role of the barchesa in the ever-tightening double-entry sequences of a ramped forecourt up to a sloped piazza; monumental steps up to a deep portico; and a long, narrow hall to domed central room, the final destination of a ceremonial entry sequence [Fig. 2.5]. But the section of La Rotunda as drawn was deceptively modern in the manner in which the space appears to flow up the ramp and stairs and through the building. An illustration much closer to the nature of the interior spaces of the building can be found in the section-elevation published by Palladio in the Four Books.34 By far the most accurate and revealing depiction of the spatial compartition of the building was Ottavio Scamozzi’s cross-section drawn from measurements of the building and published in 177635 [Fig. 2.6]. Here the building is seen with severe division of the interior into rooms with a focus on the vertical – not horizontal – space of the main room beneath the cupola, either as it was originally designed by Palladio in a more vertical form, or later altered by him or Vincenzo Scamozzi. Like Colin Rowe, James Ackerman saw direct connections between the Renaissance and modern villas. He defined two types based on their interaction with their natural surroundings: the compact-cubic villa . . . often a foil to the natural environment, standing off from it in polar opposition, and the open-extended type . . . integrative, imitating natural forms in the irregularity of its layout and profile, embracing the ground, assuming natural colors and textures. To illustrate the paradigm of the first type Ackerman referred to the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano outside of Florence, as inscribed within a cube, faced with white stucco to emphasize its total polarity to the irrationality of foliage and rolling hills, and, to underscore this message, raised on a high podium to ensure that the contact of the residence with nature should not be intimate but removed and in perspective.36

Figure 2.5  Villa Almerico Capra (La Rotunda), Vicenza, 1567–1571, Andrea Palladio. Longitudinal section, Gilda D’Agarò, delineator, 1960. Source: Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio.

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Figure 2.6  Villa Almerico Capra (La Rotunda), Vicenza, 1567–1571, Andrea Palladio. Longitudinal section, Ottavio Scamozzi, 1778. Source: Ottavio Bertotti Scamozzi, Le Fabbriche e I Disegni di Andrea Palladio, 1776–1783, volume 2, plate 3.

Although Ackerman mentions Lorenzo’s extension of the villa at Poggio a Caiano continued the Medici’s “policy of developing villas as agricultural enterprises,” he described the building as “cubic, stuccoed, and painted off-white, and . . . sited on a hill in order to enjoy a panoramic view and also to be itself viewed.”37 Diminishing the agricultural aspects supported Ackerman’s thesis: the villa has remained substantially the same because it fills a need that never alters, a need which, because it is not material but psychological and ideological, is not subject to the influence of evolving societies and technologies. The villa accommodates a fantasy which is impervious to reality.38 To the extent, as Ackerman maintained, “the white-stuccoed podium-villa again became a major twentieth-century paradigm, notably in the Villa Savoye at Poissy and the Tugendhat House in Brno,”39 these modern manifestations of villa also were seen by Ackerman as accommodating “a fantasy which is impervious to reality.” In the chapter that follows, we will describe a rather different sense of the villa’s modernity, for which the hybrid nature of the pre-modern type provides useful – if recently neglected – keys for description and interpretation.

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Notes 1 The now common transliteration of οἰκός, omitting diacritical marks, oikos, is the term we will use in text. 2 Politics 1253a 19. Yet, in another treatise, one of his works on ethics, he wrote that “the household is an earlier and more necessary institution than the polis”; see: Nicomachean Ethics 1162a 16ff. 3 We realize this term couples words that originated in different language groups (Greek and Latin), and joins together ancient and modern meanings. Our hope is that usage will clarify our intention. The stem of the word domestic is introduced in consideration of the Roman villa and the associated notion of domus. That two-part terms of the sort we propose have ancient precedent will also be seen later, in our account of the villa’s essentially hybrid character. 4 Considering the several surveys and recent interpretations of sites such as Olynthos, there are some points of consensus about the form of the Greek house: the typicality of the central court, for example, also the clear distinction between the public and private parts of the house. A sharp separation of rooms for men and women is no longer assumed, despite the fact that ancient writers of great influence, Vitruvius for example, proposed exactly this division of spaces (the andronitis for men and gunaikonitis for women, children, and unmarried daughters). 5 Hunting is a special case: killing animals represented a break with “the pact of nature,” but also expressed the “savage” dimension of the person. On this point and the “civility” of farming, see: Vidal-Naquet, Black Hunter, particularly, Part 1, “Space and Time.” For Xenophon’s arguments, see: Xenophon, Oeconomicus. 6 Vernant, “Work and Nature,” 250. 7 One of the first modern texts to stress this point is: Osborne, Classical Landscape With Figures. 8 How much land was included in the typical ancient Greek oikos? Generally, about ten acres, for the purpose of subsistence farming. The land was typically fenced in or enclosed in some way, and partitioned into distinct areas for livestock, grain, olive trees, grape vines, or fruit trees. Cash crops were not intended, but surplus yields, particularly of olive oil and grapes were sold in the market. Because subsistence was the goal (not unlimited accumulation, for neither land nor labor was then capitalized), there were only small disparities of wealth among citizens of ancient Greek villages and towns. See: Hesiod, “Works and Days.” 9 This myth and its bearing on the early Greek ideas of land, the house, and the city is fully treated in: Loraux, Born of the Earth, 18ff. Conjugal labor – Aristotle called it “gamic,” from which we derive the term monogamous – was also described as plowing. 10 The ancient pantheon clarifies this distinction further. The Greek deities who presided over work on the land, Demeter and Athena, had comparable concerns but completely different forms of intervention: promoting fertility in the first case and empowering technical invention/production in the second. 11 The basic philosophical problem here is the notion that the cultural and natural conditions of human existence are categorically distinct. It is very hard for us today to accept any other conception: nature, we think, is what is given; culture, by contrast, is what we have made. Despite this, and the prejudice it represents, most recent studies of the ancient understandings of “nature,” rendered in Greek as physis, argue against this very separation. It is beyond the scope of this study to enter into this discussion. Two texts that provide good introductions to this problem, as well as the fascinating but demanding literature devoted to it, are: Haar, Song of Earth; and Folz, Inhabiting the Earth. Folz, for example, writes: “If nature is understood by means of self-emergence [physis], there can be no hard dividing line – let alone opposition – drawn between nature and history, nature and art, nature and spirit, nature and freedom, nature and grace.” Folz, 127. Apart from the writings of the ancient Greeks, the primary sources for these contemporary arguments include the poetry of figures like Rainer Maria Rilke, René Char, and Friedrich Hölderlin, and the philosophy and philology of figures like Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger, Julius Stenzel, and Friedrich Nietzsche. With respect to current anthropological literature, the most useful text for us has been the one we cited in this book’s Introduction: Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture. A comparison he introduced to show the historical and geographical limits of “the great divide” between nature and culture is particularly suggestive: while we tend to see their relationship dualistically (environment and society confronting one another from opposite sides of a clear boundary, the outer wall of a

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17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

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city or house for example) their relations were also seen concentrically in earlier periods of European history and so-called non-Western cultures. With respect to Germanic lands he observed: “Around small, widely dispersed hamlets surrounded by arable clearing, a vast forest perimeter extends and this is pressed into collective use. It is the scene of hunting and of gathering, where people go to collect firewood and materials for buildings and toolmaking . . . The transition from household to deep forest is thus a very gradual one.” Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture, 55. For a discussion of how barns contribute to the sustainability of farmsteads see: Leatherbarrow and Wesley, “Frameworks,” 84–95. At the scale of the city, Aristotle was emphatic: “man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the ‘Tribeless, lawless, heartless one,’ whom Homer denounces – the natural outcast is forthwith a lover of war.” Aristotle, Politics, 1253a 2–5. A good, relatively recent study that presents this conclusion is: Nevett, House and Society. In the title of an instructive chapter on their pairing, the names of these two are hyphenated. See Vernant, “Hestia-Hermes.” On this point, Phillippe Descola, to whom we have referred before, is clear and explicit. The domus was “not a geographical unit, as the silva [was], but an environment for living, originally involving agricultural exploitation [in which, under the authority of the paternal head of the family and the protection of the household deities, women, children, slaves, animals, and plants all found conditions that favored the realization of their true natures].” Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture, 49. Gardner and Wiedemann, The Roman House, 1. Cato, On Agriculture, iv, 2. Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, II.1. Varro, On Agriculture, II.2. Ibid., II.2–3. Ibid., I.xiii.7. Vitruvius, De architectura, VI.vii.5. Ibid., VI.v.3. Wallace-Hadrill, “Villa as Cultural Symbol,” 47. Giannetto, Medici Gardens, 57–58. Ackerman, Villa: Form and Ideology, 74; our italics. Giannetto, 84. See Villa in “English and Italian Glossary,” Palladio, Four Books on Architecture, 418. Ibid., Book II, 18. Pliny had used the metaphor of an “immense amphitheatre” to describe the site of his villa, bounded by mountain range of wilderness summits “covered with tall and ancient woods.“ Pliny the Younger, “Letter to Domitius Apollinaris,” in Pliny, Letters. “Lower than the villa itself, the arcades buttress the entrance passage at the west. If Palladio can be credited with planning the arrangement of the whole site, then perhaps this idea was also his.” Semenzato, Rotunda of Andrea Palladio, 34. Rybczynski, Perfect House, 160. Colin Rowe, in his often-read essay, “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa,” entirely neglected the barchesse. Many historians before and after have done the same. In 1944, a few years before the publication of “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa,” Rudolf Wittkower, Rowe’s professor at the Courtauld Institute, had published two essays interpreting Renaissance architecture in terms of irreducible principles, described by Pier Vittorio Aureli as “an intellectual framework for architectural form, superior to the functional, pragmatic or aesthetic goals to which architectural history was then still bound.” See: Pier Vittorio Aureli, “Geopolitics of Ideal Villa.” The elimination of the barchesa from Rowe’s analysis distorted the Villa Rotunda by portraying the building more as an isolated folly than as a part of a functional villa. “In this way,” wrote Aureli, “Rowe’s text reinforced Wittkower’s radical denial of Palladio’s site-specificity, apparent in the removal of the barchesse in his schematic drawings of the villas. These adjoining loggias were adapted from local Venetian agricultural sheds and were an essential component of Palladio’s villas, providing not only a sense of context but a semiotic distinction that allowed these buildings to be classified as villas rather than palaces. Palladio, Book II, 19.

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Scamozzi, Andrea Palladio, Volume II, Plate III, 120. Ackerman, Villa: Form and Ideology, 22. Ibid., 78. Ibid., 9. The dust jacket of Ackerman’s included an image of the Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano from a painting by Giusto Utens, c.1598; but as if to diminish the agricultural functions on the villa’s pars rustica in support of the classification of the villa as a “compact-cubic,” type, the image of the painting was substantially cropped to exclude the barchesse on the far right. Ackerman extended his discussion agricultural functions in: Ackerman, “Review of Martin Kubelik’s Die Villa im Veneto.” 39 Ackerman, Villa: Form and Ideology, 21–22.

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Modern Architecture: International Exhibition was the name of the first show on architecture held at the Museum of Modern Art. It opened on February 10, 1932, in the Museum’s original galleries on the twelfth floor of the Heckscher Building at 730 Fifth Avenue, New York City. In the exhibition, the works of Frank Lloyd Wright were on display in the same room with those of three other architects, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and J.J.P. Oud. The grouping of Wright with these three in the “Modern Architects” section of the exhibition must have appeared unexpected to those visitors who had read the statement by Alfred Barr, the Museum’s director, in the foreword to the exhibition’s catalogue: “The four founders of the International Style are Gropius, Le Corbusier, Oud and Mies van der Rohe.”1 The selection of architects in the exhibition and the decisions on the location of each architect’s work within the galleries had been made by the exhibition’s chief curator, Philip Johnson, “a twenty-four-year-old, recent graduate of Harvard University, [who] had no formal training in architecture or the history of architecture, having taken an undergraduate degree in philosophy.”2 The works of Gropius, one of Barr’s “four founders,” occupied most of the central room connected to all the other rooms, including the main room exhibiting the works of the other three “founders” along with those of Wright. Here in the main room of the exhibition photographs of the works of Mies and Le Corbusier were displayed in the most prominent position, on the back wall, with scale models of the Tugendhat House and the Villa Savoye side-by-side beneath them on the galleries’ main axis and clearly visible from the adjacent central room containing the works of Gropius. By contrast, the works of Oud and Wright were tucked away in the right and left corners of the main room, visible only after one had entered from the central room.

Musing on modern architecture Barr credited Wright with having been “since 1910 one of the chief inspirations of modern European architecture.”3 The exclusion of Wright from the list of the “four founders” in the catalogue, yet the inclusion of Wright’s work in the main room of the exhibition in close proximity to three of them – albeit in a less prominent ­location – is puzzling. Perhaps Barr considered his work to lack the characteristics of the International Style as defined by the director of the exhibition, Philip Johnson, and his 37

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collaborator, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, in their book, The International Style: Architecture Since 1922. Published to coincide with the exhibition, the year 1922 in the book’s title was important to the organizers of the exhibition and referred to the Chicago Tribune competition, which according to Barr in his foreword to the exhibition’s catalogue, “brought forth almost as many different styles as there were projects. Since then the ideas of a number of progressive architects have converged to form a genuinely new style which is rapidly spreading throughout the world.”4 But if Barr was ambivalent about Wright’s role in the “new style,” Hitchcock and Johnson were unambiguously clear in the text of The International Style about “a definite breach between Wright and the younger architects who created the contemporary style.”5 Unlike the “four founders” and many of the other architects represented in the exhibition, no photographs or drawings of his works were included in The International Style. Wright belongs to the international style no more than Behrens or Perret or Van de Velde. Some of these men have been ready to learn from their juniors. They have submitted in part to the disciplines of the international style. But their work is still marked by traces of the individualistic manners they achieved in their prime. Without their work the style could hardly have come into being. Yet their individualism and their relation to the past, for all its tenuousness, makes them not so much the creators of the new style as the last representatives of Romanticism. They are more akin to the men of a hundred years ago than to the generation which has come to the fore since the War.6 Hitchcock’s view of Wright’s position in the development of modern architecture had been formulated years before the opening of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition. In Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration, 1929, Hitchcock excluded Wright from “Part Three:The New Pioneers,” the section of the book dealing with Le Corbusier, Oud, Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and others, instead placing him in “Part Two:The New Tradition,” with Josef Hoffman, Peter Behrens, Auguste Perret, and others. Hitchcock described the “New Tradition,” which he claimed had reached maturity by 1910, as a form of eclecticism. One finds in general not such and such a combination of Archaic Greek and Late Gothic features or of Japanese planning and Mayan ornament, but rather Dutch fantasy modified by the more geometrical manner of Wright, the New-Rokoko [sic] detail of Hoffman in combination with the brickwork of the English, or the engineering of the French joined to a formal expression based on Berlin neo-monumentality.7 Although he labeled Wright “the greatest American architect of the first quarter of the twentieth century” and credited his “international influence” on “the later architecture of the New Tradition” especially in Holland, Hitchcock was critical of Wright’s “limited sympathy with the spirit of the machine” and his “cult of ornament.”Wright’s 38

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“approach to a pure architecture,” wrote Hitchcock, “is complicated with the Nature worship and the ecstatic and individualistic democracy of Whitman.”8 For his part, Wright had been less than fully cooperative with the organizers of the exhibition. After agreeing to submit work for the show, he delayed making a decision on which of his projects would be submitted, subsequently threatened to withdraw, and then finally agreed to participate with the stipulation that his essay “Of Thee I Sing” be printed and distributed at the exhibition in a pamphlet form. Feeling that the so-called ‘internationalist’ exhibition as it developed, was more propaganda than exhibition and totally in disagreement with the premises of the propaganda,” I desire to withdraw entirely. But being in some degree essential to the propaganda as the promoters of the exhibition see it, I have consented to go with them if I might state my own feelings in plain terms alongside their own statements.9 The selection of Wright’s projects for the exhibition included (in chronological order and left to right on the east wall of the main room) photographs of the Roberts House, 1907, the Robie House, 1908–09, and Taliesin, labeled “Taliesin III” and dated 1925 in the exhibition catalogue.10 In the 45-degree corner between the east and south walls was a photograph of the Millard House, 1921, while on the south wall were two photographs of the Jones House, 1931. Surprisingly, the centerpiece of his area of the exhibition was a model of the House on the Mesa, an unbuilt and newly designed project [Fig. 3.1]. The selection of these specific projects for the exhibition, displayed in chronological order, made a convincing argument for the progressive two-stage development of Wright’s domestic architecture from the more traditional sloped-roof and rustic materials of the Prairie Style (Roberts, Robie, and Taliesin houses) to the more contemporary flat-roofed textile-block houses (Millard, Jones, and the House on the Mesa). In such an argument, Taliesin, a house originally designed in 1911 as Wright’s home and studio-workshop and built on a hilltop near his mother’s ancestral home in Wisconsin, could be repositioned to mark the end of the Prairie Style era. The project that “turned the corner” in the development of Wright’s residential architecture, both literally in his built work as well as in the arrangement of the photographs in the exhibition, was the flat-roofed textile-block Millard House. But it had been built in 1921, one year before 1922, the date proposed by Hitchcock and Johnson to mark the beginning of the International Style and almost a decade before the construction of the Villa Savoye and the Tugendhat House – both on comparative display in the same room with Wright’s work. To compete with these contemporary houses, while at the same time to challenge the exhibition’s preoccupation with style and internationalism, Wright envisioned the hypothetical House on the Mesa as the next step in the development of his textile-block houses. Its position in Wright’s corner as the three-dimensional centerpiece and the culmination of the sequential narrative of the photographs on the walls of the earlier Prairie Style followed by the later textile-block houses was appropriate.The project, which had no actual client, was 39

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Figure 3.1  Modern Architecture – International Exhibition.The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 10 February–23 March, 1932. Source: The Museum of Modern Art. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/ Art Resource, NY.

designed especially for the 1932 exhibition as Wright’s response to the “new style” based on the needs of an “ideal American family” in a particular setting, an isolated, flat-topped hill near Denver overlooking the desert with a panoramic view of the Rocky Mountains in the distance.

Roofless rooms for open-air living Wright was deeply ambivalent about the invitation he received in 1931 to participate in the museum’s 1932 exhibition. Since the publication of many of his buildings and projects in Germany by Wasmuth in 1910, his work had been increasingly recognized as a precursor of modern architecture in Europe; but he felt Americans had neither sufficiently recognized nor appreciated his pioneering contributions. Encouraged by Lewis Mumford, Wright’s initial reluctance to participate in the show subsided, and he began working on the model of an unidentified project for the exhibition. Despite repeated requests over a period of months from the organizers of the exhibition for photographs and information on the model, Wright didn’t fully respond until early January 1932, only a month before the exhibition was scheduled to open. In a letter 40

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to Johnson, he described the model of the “Home on the Mesa” near Denver as follows: “Block-shell and copper in the main, and without windows in the conventional sense and with cross ventilation at the floors. The living room on the roof.”11 Wright included a photograph of the model in a letter to Lewis Mumford on January 19, 1932, with a handwritten note on the back describing “the new model of the ‘House on the Mesa.’ ” Of special concern were the ways in which it responded specifically to its regional climate: the living room and breakfast room set in a roof garden with a sheltered pool attached. The cantilever is here direct and simple. Except for doors the openings are all in the offsets of the wall-screens (windy climate) very hot sometimes. The walls start on the floor slabs so that a similar horizontal opening is at the floor level just inside the outside wall. This is to allow circulation of air over the floor[,] which is the way to keep cool when it is hot weather.12 So important to Wright were the architectural responses to the climate of the hypothetical house’s region that in his correspondence with Mumford, he included two free-hand sketches of the house’s unique system of natural ventilation. The ventilation offsets in the metal outer screen-walls allowed fresh air to enter, while the strong winds are blocked by the vertical panes. The offset concrete walls were designed to allow the cooler ground-level air to enter the house, and working in conjunction with the stepped window walls, would have provided for updraft and cross-ventilation. These sketches were similar to the detail drawing submitted to the Museum of Modern Art, but were not included in the exhibition [Fig. 3.2]. Wright’s scale model of the House on the Mesa must have compared favorably with the architectural style of the models of the other three houses in the main exhibition room: Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, Mies’s Tugendhat House, and Oud’s Pinehurst House – all depicted as flat-roofed, rectilinear, and unadorned buildings. In this regard, his project could be seen as belonging to the “new style,” a particularly important concern of the curators. But Wright’s project was distinct from these others in its depiction of the house’s connection to its surrounding landscape. Published in the exhibition’s catalogue, but not displayed in the exhibition, was “A Lot Plan of the House on the Mesa,” including a schematic first floor plan with a key to room uses and an outline description of some of the proposed materials of construction.13 A south arrow on the drawing indicated the main orientation of the house was to the southeast, solar orientation being a critical issue in designing a building for a specific climate, especially in the desert. By contrast, none of the other three houses in the main room of the exhibition had sufficient information regarding their orientation or connection to immediate site surroundings, either on display or in the catalogue. In his description of the model of the Tugendhat House in the catalogue Johnson recognized the deficiencies of using photographs and drawings to depict architecture. “The model of the Tugendhat house makes clear many things which are difficult to apprehend in the plans or photographs.” One of those things was the manner in which 41

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Figure 3.2  House on the Mesa, Denver, Colorado, 1931, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 3102.036.

the Tugendhat House related to the slope of the site. “The house is adjusted to the steeply sloping site by placing the street entrance on the upper floor while permitting the lower story of living rooms to open freely upon the garden.”14 Another feature difficult to depict in photographs and drawings was the Tugendhat House’s capacity to dramatically open to the garden and surrounding landscape, an important spatial and technical feature of the house. “The clear glass walls of the living rooms, which can be lowered electrically into the cellar, and the translucent glass walls on the street side exemplify the functional distinctions evident in the planning of the house.”15 Less convincing in describing the Tugendhat House’s capacity to connect the interior spaces to the landscape was Hitchcock and Johnson’s inadequate and misleading caption of the photograph of its garden façade published in The International Style. “The house is tied to its setting by a monumental flight of steps.”16 In his description of the model of the House on the Mesa published in the exhibition’s catalogue, Hitchcock interpreted the detached object-like qualities of the other houses in the exhibition designed by Le Corbusier, Mies, and Oud as “classical formalism,” against which he found the House on the Mesa to be “a striking aesthetic statement of romantic expansiveness.”17 Considering the drawings Wright submitted, particularly the lot plan and details, Hitchcock’s description may have missed an essential point. He failed to mention anything about the project’s responses to its particular environment – not a word about the details of the house’s innovative passive ventilation system, nor of the connection of the house to its surrounding landscape, both near 42

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and far. His original unpublished notes on the project emphasized the importance he placed on the house’s connection to the terrain. The sweep of the mesa with the magnificent views of the Rocky Mountains is felt in the arrangement and, as a foil, comes the sheltered bathing pool pouring into the ‘lake-for-swimming,’ its surrounding glass planes sequestered by the surrounding masses of trees. The house itself, as a whole, becomes a complete garden, open or sheltered at will.18 Wright’s concept of the house as “a complete garden” can be understood as operating at numerous scales of engagement with the environment. At the scale of the detail the ventilation offsets in the metal outer screen-walls allowed fresh air to enter while blocking strong winds, while the offsets at the floor level provided for the cooler ground-level air to enter. These offsets are best shown in an interior perspective drawing of the living room not on display in the exhibition [Fig. 3.3]. At the scale of overall configuration, the house was conceived as a long exterior “sun-loggia” connecting a semi-enclosed garden on the west with the raised platforms on the east wrapped by stepped-paned glass walls and woven metal sunscreens suspended from cantilevered roof slabs. This aspect of the project was best represented in the exhibition by the model, especially when viewed from the south. The edge of the garden trellises, loggia, and covered swimming pool along with the opposite boundary formed by the grove of trees, defined the next scale of the houses engagement with its setting: a courtyard-like garden containing wide stepped terraces and a rectangular pool, labeled by Wright as a “lake.” While evident in the lot plan published in the catalogue and also somewhat in the model on display in the exhibition, this semi-enclosed water-filled space was

Figure 3.3  House on the Mesa, Denver, Colorado, 1931, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 3102.019.

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Figure 3.4  House on the Mesa, Denver, Colorado, 1931, Frank Lloyd Wright. Aerial perspective from northwest, 1956. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York) 3102.021.

an extension of the house, best portrayed in a bird’s-eye perspective not included in the exhibition [Fig. 3.4]. This drawing also shows the floor-level offsets and the garden trellises. At the largest scale of the integration of the “compete garden” with its setting was the expansive space defined between the house and the mountains beyond. Although not possible to include on the scale model, this space was somewhat depicted in the bird’s-eye perspective and described by Wright as “the sweep of the mesa with the magnificent views of the Rocky Mountains.”19 “If one further imagines the Rocky Mountains rising behind the roofline of the house,” wrote Wojtowicz, “the integration of Wright’s architecture with its setting is completed.”20 But as much as the house was situated within a particular setting, aspects of the environment were not only external, but also internal to the house. At the same time, elements of the enclosure of the interior rooms – walls and roofs – were removed or substantially perforated. In April 1935, a few years following the closing of the Museum of Modern Art’s 1932 exhibition, Wright included the model of the House on the Mesa in another exhibition in New York City – the debut of Broadacre City at Rockefeller Center. He described the project as one of the Houses of Broadacre City with “roofless rooms for open-air living in pleasant weather.”21

A garden and a farm behind a workshop and a home Taliesin was represented in the 1932 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art by a single photograph [Fig. 3.5]. The view showed the residential wing (on the right) and 44

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Figure 3.5  Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York) 1403.0028.

the covered loggia connecting it to the “working room,” also known as the “workshop” (on the left) forming two sides of a courtyard. With a garden in the foreground, a courtyard in the middle ground, and mountains in the background, this view of Taliesin embodied an approach towards integrating a building with a particular setting that would later be evident in the House on the Mesa. Three increasing scales of association connecting the building and the landscape are visible in the photograph: a pleasure garden, a residential courtyard, and a distant view of the mountains. Originally constructed in 1911, the residential wing contained a living room, kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms for Wright and his family. The roofed loggia both connected and separated the residential wing and the “working room” for apprentices, providing what he called “a workshop and a home,” rather like the arrangement of his earlier Home and Studio in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois. Although this view of the “workshop and home” appeared in the Museum of Modern Art’s first exhibition on architecture as well as in many other publications on Taliesin, photographs of the opposite view have rarely been published [Fig. 3.6]. This view, looking from the residential courtyard toward the farm yard, continued through an open passageway at the ground level of the barn containing stalls for horses on the right and areas for cows, including feed bins and a milk cooling room, on the left. In the photograph the view terminated on a Holstein cow and calf grazing on a sloped 45

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Figure 3.6  Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, Frank Lloyd Wright. Henry Fuermann, photographer, c. 1912. Source: Henry Fuermann and Sons Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society, WHi-83020.

pasture. The entire upper level of the barn, seen in the photograph with its unarticulated horizontal opening, was a hayloft.22 Unlike the view exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and extensively published, the opposite view confirmed that Taliesin was, among other things, a working dairy farm. Taken together, these two views represent various scales of interstitial spaces connecting the building and environment along two different sequences: garden–courtyard–residence and lane–farm yard–barn. Each of these sequences terminated in a different landscape beyond the building: the courtyard–residence sequence in the distant wooded mountains and the farm yard–barn sequence in sloped pastures.

Taliesin tea time In the foreground on the right of the photograph looking towards the farm yard and barn can be seen the chimney and roof of the studio-workshop. Directly across the lane from the workshop were the stone retaining walls and steps leading to a hilltop garden. With a view of this garden framed through a horizontal band of windows in the workshop, there existed a secondary sequential connection between the workshop 46

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and the garden–hilltop perpendicular the other two primary sequences, farm yard– barn–pastures and courtyard–residence–mountains. While simple flower gardens were found alongside some Wisconsin farmhouses, an architect’s workshop would not normally have been part of a farmer’s domain. At Taliesin, the nature of a typical Wisconsin flower garden was transformed into a much more elaborate setting related to an architect’s workshop transplanted from an urban culture beyond the local agricultural one. Wright transformed the typical local flower garden using a number of architectural devices including retaining walls, steps, and a sitting wall. Atop the stone retaining wall at the foot of the garden steps, he positioned the “Flower in a Crannied Wall,” a statue designed by him and executed by Richard Bock.The statue was a plaster copy made for Taliesin, the original terra-cotta one having been produced for the entrance alcove of his Dana-Thomas House, Springfield, Illinois, 1902. The sculpture portrayed a realistic representation of a woman and an abstraction of a sumac tree, both emerging from the same material base. In her hand, the woman held and gazed upon a cube, apparently plucked from the crystalline tree. The name of the statue was taken from the first line of Tennyson’s untitled six-line poem, which Wright had carved into the back of the sculpture. Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower – but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.23 To the extent that Tennyson’s poem has sometimes been referenced as a metaphor for holistic interconnectedness, the conception of the “all in all,” Tennyson critics have seen this as an allusion to ecological thinking. “The ecological point of view is, first of all, holistic. It focuses upon the all-ness of nature.”24 Also carved into the back of the statue was a musical chord of three notes. The vertical, white, and smooth form of the statue contrasted with the horizontal, rough, and brown stonewall on which it sat marking an access point to the hilltop from the residential courtyard and the lane separately the workshop from the garden. Broad and shallow stone steps lead up to the hilltop where two oak trees, pre-existing the building, were incorporated into the Tea Circle, a semi-circular sitting wall where the entire Fellowship would meet for afternoon tea. “Here, Mr. and Mrs. Wright, apprentices, and guests gathered at four o’clock each afternoon to sip tea and enjoy one another’s company. The conversation, often spiced by famous guests . . . stimulated discussions of architecture and philosophy.”25 For Wright the extension of a place for afternoon tea into a pleasure garden situated between a residential courtyard and a farm yard was an embodiment of a reciprocal interchange of cultural activities with an ecological setting. The geometry of the Tea Circle was carefully constructed and positioned [Fig. 3.7]. Straddling the stepped garden and hilltop, the half-circle, exedra-like 47

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Figure 3.7  Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, Frank Lloyd Wright. Henry Fuermann, photographer. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York) 1104.0012.

wall wrapped around an existing oak tree which provided shade for those who sat there. “A clump of fine oaks that grew on the hilltop stood untouched on one side above the court,” wrote Wright, “a great curved stone-walled seat enclosed the space just beneath them.”26 The view from within the exedra was split, one side towards a lower courtyard with mountains in the distance on the left, and the other towards the valley with its fields, pastures, and picturesque man-made lake on the right. At the back of the group siting in the Tea Circle was a farm yard with a trough for horses and cows, while in front of them was the statue of a woman inscribed with a poem. That the Tea Circle was raised to the level of a roof overlooking a double prospect and itself the subject of a view from within the drafting room, only heightened the reciprocity between the rustic culture of the farmer, with his barns and fields and the urbane culture of the architect, with his studio-workshop and garden. As there was no text in the 1932 exhibition to put the single photograph of Taliesin in context, nor was a floor plan of Taliesin included in the exhibition, visitors to the museum in 1932 would not have been aware of the existence of the farm yard, nor of the studio-workshop, nor of the Tea Circle in the raised garden. The original 1911 48

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floor plan of Taliesin was not well known by architects and architectural historians at the time of the 1932 exhibition. The floor plan most associated with Taliesin was redrawn circa 1941, thirty years after the original building had been constructed, for publication in 1942 in Henry-Russell Hitchcock’s In the Nature of Materials [Fig. 3.8]. “Ever since it appeared in Nature of Materials, this plan has been the conventional representation of Taliesin I.”27 Although the redrawn plan shows furniture arrangement in many of the rooms and landscaping details in the immediate surroundings, especially in the hilltop garden, there are a number of subtle but significant differences with the original 1911 plan [Fig. 3.9]. In the 1941 redrawn plan, the label of the “farm yard” was changed to “courtyard,” and the original residential courtyard was incorporated into a driveway, eliminating any sense of the tension or possible integration of the duality of residential and agricultural uses. To add to the oversimplification, all three sets of gates in the 1911 plan were eliminated in the redrawn 1941 plan: the one into the original court, the one between the court and the original farm yard – labeled “court” in the 1941 plan – and the one in the passageway beneath the barn, these last two presumably to control the cows. Perhaps these and other labeling changes, for example, the re-designation of “wagon shed” to “carriages,” reflected the many adaptations and transformations that took place at Taliesin in the decades between 1911 and 1941; but as conceived in 1911, Taliesin was a home and a studio-workshop, as well as a farm and a pleasure garden. Wright and his family, apprentices, and laborers lived a life at Taliesin similar to those farmers who “were both at work and at home. Work and rest, work and pleasure, were continuous with each other, often not distinct from each other at all.”28 The change in the designation of the “farm yard” to “courtyard” may have been in recognition of the reversal in the entry sequence that

Figure 3.8  Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, Frank Lloyd Wright. Floor plan, c. 1941. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York) 1104.013.

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Figure 3.9  Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York) 1104.003.

had occurred over time.29 The most important feature of the hilltop garden, the Tea Circle, was not shown on either plan, although the trunks of the two “fine oaks” were depicted on both.

Straddling the cultural polarities One way to describe Taliesin is a house with two different wings forming “an enclosed, loosely U-shaped courtyard embracing the hill.”30 But this description misses the building’s original dual-identity formed around two different yet interrelated exterior spaces. One of those exterior spaces, the residential courtyard, was defined by the L-shaped wing containing the residence, loggia, studio-workshop, and apartment – what Wright referred to as “a workshop and home.”31 The other exterior space, the original farm yard later designated “courtyard,” was formed by another L-shaped wing containing the wagon shed and barn with a passageway leading to the pastures and farm fields beyond. In his Autobiography, Wright referred to Taliesin as “a garden and farm behind a workshop and a home.” His careful sequential pairing of “garden” with “workshop” and “farm” with “home” reveals his intentions, at least in the original 1911 plan.While one side of the each of these two exterior spaces was defined by the hilltop, the response to the slope of the hill and the manner of enclosure were different for each of the two exterior spaces. Low walls and broad stone steps integrated the residential court with the hilltop, while a continuous L-shaped wall incorporating a water trough for horses and cows retained the hill in the farm yard. The apartment with its living and dining room facing the court and its bedroom facing the farm yard straddled these two exterior spaces at the point where the two L-shaped wings met. Although the two exterior spaces were on the same level, a gate in alignment with the wall between the 50

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apartment’s living and dining room and bedroom separated the residential court from the farm yard. Wright’s idea of forming Taliesin around two semi-enclosed exterior spaces recalls the ancient Roman house, with its two spaces open to the sky, the atrium and the peristyle. As in the ancient Roman house the meaning of these dual open spaces – regardless of how these were labeled or relabeled by Wright – was “complex and ambivalent, simultaneously straddling the cultural polarities of town and country.”32 In a Roman urban house, the atrium was entered first; but in a rural house, as Vitruvius explained, the entry sequence was reversed, and the house was entered through the peristyle – much like the farm yard in the original design for Taliesin. As we have discussed earlier, many ancient Roman villas had dual parts, rustica and urbana, each centered around one of the two major semi-enclosed spaces, the peristyle and the atrium respectively. At Taliesin, the subsequent reversal of the of the original entry sequence from the residential courtyard to the original farm yard, as depicted on the 1941 plan, only brought Taliesin more in line with the ancient convention for Roman villas with their entry sequence through a pars rustica leading to a pars urbana. There is no evidence that Wright based the plan for Taliesin on a Roman villa. Although he traveled and lived in Italy in 1910, there is no record of his visit to a Roman villa, in Pompeii or elsewhere. While in Italy he did live for a time in Fiesole near the Villa Medici, designed by the architect Michelozzo Michelozzi for Giovanni dei Medici. In a letter written to Charles Ashbee during his time in Fiesole, he wrote “I have been busy here in this little eyrie on the brow of the mountain about Fiesole . . . overlooking the pink and white Florence, spreading in the valley of the Arno below.”33 According to McCrea, Wright “had especially studied Michelozzo’s Villa Medici.”34 Taliesin, Wright’s “eyrie on the brow” which he often referred to as “Shining Brow,” was designed a year after this letter was written. Similar to the villa at Fiesole, there were two semi-enclosed exterior spaces – albeit on the same level – associated with the different functions of adjacent interior spaces, a residential courtyard and a farm yard. Although the photograph on display at the MoMA’s 1932 exhibition showed only its pars urbana, Taliesin had been designed as a villa in the full sense of its Italian antecedents, even if these were unacknowledged by Wright. The title of the project on the original 1911 floor plan was “Cottage and Stable.” But Taliesin was much more than a cottage; it also included a working room for apprentices and a guest apartment. Likewise, Taliesin was conceived from the beginning to be much more than a stable, a place for keeping horses; it also included a dairy barn, milking room, and hayloft. None of this could possibly have been deduced by viewing the single one-sided photograph of the residential courtyard on display in Modern Architecture – International Exhibition. Without a site plan of the original 31-acre estate displayed in the museum’s gallery or published in the catalogue, it would not have been possible for a visitor to the 1932 exhibition to comprehend Taliesin’s dual nature.35 Decades before the 1932 exhibition, Wright had intentionally misrepresented the rustic character of Taliesin. In the series of drawings, he prepared in 1912 for publication in Western Architect in February 1913, “his presentation of his country home did 51

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not show it as it was actually built, but as Wright wanted it to be perceived by the public.”36 Included in the Western Architect essay on Taliesin was a drawing of a site plan showing the house as misrepresented in the other drawings in the publication, but with the lane shown more or less accurately [Fig. 3.10]. Also shown on the drawing is the Tea Circle including the trunks of the two oaks. As depicted in the site plan, the entrance sequence began northeast of the hill as the main road from Spring Green narrowed before passing over a bridge at a point where the dam and waterfall, designed by Wright, were visible to the left. Turning left off the main road onto the driveway an entrance space was defined by low stonewalls on either side of the gate with a view of the waterfall on the left, with the water garden beyond, and a view of the building on the right, crowning the hill in the distance. Passing through the gate, the driveway curved gently away from the hill between a pasture surrounding a water garden on the left and vegetable gardens on the slope of the hill on the right.The driveway proceeded around and beyond the hill and then turned one hundred and eighty degrees to the right in a long, irregularly U-shaped loop to ascend the hill between the vegetable gardens, now on the right, and a vineyard on the left with orchards beyond. Midway up the hill from the southwest the driveway straightened out perpendicular to the building and on axis with the gate to the residential court. The elaborate entry sequence depicted in the 1912 site plan demonstrated Wright’s early use of lanes and roads to establish sequential tableaux as well as to delineate precincts in the landscape. The views of the landscape presented sequentially upon entering the site from the main road would have acted to first define the unique domain of Taliesin as disassociated from other farmsteads in the region and then to reestablish it as both a working farm and a landscape. The frontal view of the building from the main road to the northeast was defined by two precincts separated by the driveway, a wooded hillside immediately in front of the building and a pasture surrounding a man-made lake on the left.37 Likewise the primary view of the building from the southwest – as one turned to ascend the hill – was defined by two precincts separated by the driveway, the vegetable gardens on the right and the vineyard on the left.Viewed clockwise on the site plan, these four precincts delineated by the winding driveway passed through the wooded hillside to the pasture, then vegetable farming, and beyond that viticulture and orchards. Legible geometries made the sequence apparent: that of an (apparently) unshaped land form to regular girds of vegetable terraces, grape vines and fruit trees.38 More than patterned landscape was intended. His 1912 site plan of Taliesin has been labeled a “dream of self-sufficiency,”39 yet, it was more real than dreamlike, and more productive than necessary for self-sufficiency. The plant order made on Wright’s behalf by Jen Jensen, a prominent landscape architect, suggests his aspirations surpassed the goal of a self-sufficient farm. Jensen ordered 285 apple trees, 300 gooseberry bushes, 150 currant bushes, 200 blackberry bushes, 175 raspberry bushes, and 50 grape vines – a total of 1,160 fruit trees and bushes . . . enough to start a midsize commercial orchard . . . enough fruit to feed several thousand people.40 52

Figure 3.10  Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Western Architect vol. 9, no. 2, February 1913, 17.

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Although a number of these plants died during shipping, Wright’s intent in placing such a large order was clear: Taliesin was to become much more than a cottage with a stable. I saw the hill crown back of the house, itself a mass of apple trees in bloom, the perfume drifting down the valley, later the boughs bending to the ground with the red and white and yellow spheres that make the apple tree no less beautiful than the orange tree. I saw the plum trees, fragrant drifts of snow-white in the spring, in August loaded with blue and red and yellow plums, scattering over the ground at a shake of the hand. I saw rows on rows of berry bushes. . . . Saw thickly pendent clusters of rubies like tassels in the dark leaves of the currant bushes. The rich odor of the black currant, I remembered and looked forward to in quantity.41 This marvelous passage indicates Wright’s sense of the Taliesin as combination of shaped terrain, a highly productive farm, and landscape of delight – beautiful, fragrant, and delicious.

Midway between a farm and a home By 1932, the year of the museum’s exhibition, the functions of the dairy barn, milking room, and hayloft had already been relocated from the house around “shining brow” to another location within the Taliesin domain in order to allow for the housing of fellows in the remodeled hayloft of the original barn wing of the 1911 building. Midway Farm, a new composite building, had been built on another hilltop midway between Taliesin and Hillside School, the building Wright had designed for his two aunts, Jane and Nell, the co-founders of the boarding school. Sometime before 1920, he moved the cottage belonging to his Uncle John to the top of this hill between Taliesin and the Hillside School. He also moved his uncle’s tall horse barn with louvers just below the relocated cottage. The lower level of this tall barn under the gable roof (seen to the left of the silo) was used as a horse stable, while the upper level was extended to form a bridge to the top of the hill [Fig. 3.11]. A portion of this upper level served as a chicken coop allowing the chickens to range freely on the grassy hilltop adjacent to Wright’s uncle’s relocated cottage. A new, long horizontal bank barn for dairy cows was built perpendicular to the relocated barn and parallel to the slope of the land. Like a traditional bank barn built into a slope, access was provided at the lower ground elevation to the lower level of the barn.42 But breaking from that tradition, he designed a series of covered spaces beneath stepped shed roofs on stone piers open to the fields for easy access by the cows to the pastures. Yet, again, like a traditional bank barn built into a slope, access was provided at the higher ground elevation to the upper level of the barn. But unlike a traditional bank barn the upper level was accessed through a farm yard court. His uncle’s house, now relocated above the farm yard, enjoyed a wide view of the valley over the roof of the barn. These deviations from the vernacular tradition 54

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Figure 3.11  Barn, Midway Farm, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin, c. 1920. George Cronin, photographer, c. 1929–33. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York) 3802.001.

indicate Wright’s desire to transform a utilitarian building type into an architectural work: aggregate and hybridized, yet composed. Although the upper level of a typical bank barn was used for the storage of hay, Wright opted to include a silo in the barn building complex, a more contemporary approach to the storage of food for the cows. The inclusion of a silo was based on his concern with fire, but also the realization that it was healthier to feed cattle silage than hay. A relatively new invention – introduced to Wisconsin in 1891 – the cylindrical silo type used by Wright was known as a Wisconsin or King silo, after it’s inventor, Professor Franklin Hiram King of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then known as the Wisconsin College of Agriculture. Experiments had shown that there was less spoilage of silage in a round silo versus one with corners. The silo was a double-walled type with the interior wall separated from the exterior wall by an air space for increased efficiency in drying the silage. The original silo appears from a surviving photograph to have been constructed of vertical wood staves held together with steel hoops joined at the end with bolts and nuts.43 Wright’s design of the silo was consistent with bestknown farming practices of the time with one exception: it was shorter than a typical silo. The height of a silo was critical with regard to the weight necessary to compress 55

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the silage as well as to increase the updraft necessary to dry it. He later added two additional silos side-by-side in the upper farm yard of the building complex with a furnace between them providing heat through open slatted floors. All three silos would have been more functional if taller, but according to Wright’s grandson, Brandoch Peters, the silos were kept short by Wright in order not to interrupt the roofline.44 While intent on adopting most of the characteristics of a traditional silo, in this instance he was unwilling to disturb the distant view of the valley from his uncle’s relocated house to build a more functional silo. Seen in reverse, from the valley, the height of the silo contributed to the work’s overall stepping profile, as it conformed to and accentuated the location’s slope. The new farm-building complex was intended to include residential as well as farming functions. A tower was built above the milk house at one end of the barn complex containing a glass-walled bedroom for a farm manager to observe the entire barn complex and pastures; but the access stairs to the bedroom were never built. At one point, the second level of the relocated horse barn was used as a Taliesin Fellowship men’s dormitory connected to the relocated cottage that served as an apartment overlooking the upper farm yard court. A portion of the upper level of the new bank barn was converted into a spacious two-bedroom apartment with a living room and porch facing the upper farm yard court on one side with views across the valley to the pastures and fields on the other side. Similar to the original 1911 Taliesin with its house, stable, and connected dairy barn, Midway Farm was conceived as a building complex incorporating both residential and agricultural functions, much as it remains today. In the decades between the acquiring of the original 31-acre property in 1911 to the expansion of property controlled by the Fellowship to over 3,000 acres by the time of Wright’s death in 1959, farming at Taliesin increased in scale, intensity, and diversity.45 Although labeled on the original drawings as a “cottage and stable,” Taliesin was conceived from the beginning as a productive dairy, fruit, and vegetable farm behind “a workshop and a home.” As a 1920 plan of the Taliesin farmlands revealed, during the first decade the land was primarily used as pasture for cattle along with numerous orchards, a vineyard, minor fields for crops, and a vegetable garden [Fig. 3.12]. By the early 1930s, however, Taliesin had become a diversified farm growing a diversity of crops and raising dairy cows, pigs, sheep, and chickens [Fig. 3.13]. The extent of the farm and the complexity of a diversified farming operation required an assiduous level of planning. “Garden planning at Taliesin is done in the same way as building planning,” wrote the apprentice Rudolph Henning in 1934. House, gardens, farms, and fields were imagined and designed as a productive landscape. “Using a large map of the farm and a box of colored pencils, the entire garden layout is planned.”46 These farmlands were much more complex and sophisticated than the original 1912 site plan. The landscape precincts are still evident in the 1934 plan of the farmlands, but the loop of the driveway was widened to enter through the original farm yard of the building rather than through the original residential court. The original entry sequence of wooded hillside, pasture, vegetable garden, and vineyard was still intact in 56

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Figure 3.12  Taliesin farmlands, Spring Green, Wisconsin. Plot plan, 1920. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York) 3420.005.

the early 1930s; however, in the final approach to the building the driveway divided the vineyard from the orchard. The expansion of the original property to the north had quadrupled its area adding extensive fields and pastures beyond the original 31-acre site. In these fields, together with those beyond (the 3,000 acres accumulated over time), were planted corn, barley, buckwheat, oats, peas, and potatoes – and in no small measure. Animals too were part of the diversified mix. The dairy cow pastures were shared with sheep and Midway Farm included a chicken coop and A-framed pig sheds. For all intent and purposes, by the early 1930s Taliesin had become an extensive diversified farm, not only meeting but exceeding its description in An Autobiography as “self-sustaining if not self-sufficient.”47 Rather like a modern Medici,Wright’s wealth, inconstant though it was, was in his farm.48 Although Wright didn’t specifically mention farming in his 1930 lecture on “The City” at Princeton University, he did call for “an acre to the family.”49 He understood 57

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Figure 3.13  Taliesin farmlands, Spring Green, Wisconsin. Planting plan, 1934. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York) 3420.009.

cities were “great mouths” of civilization and could develop in the past only because of existence of surrounding farms. With decentralization, the perfect distribution of food and supplies over the entire area of the countryside, one of vital elements helping to build the city has left it forever, to spread out on the soil from which it came: local products finding a short haul direct.50 He also envisioned work on farms as a therapeutic solution for poverty. As for the other poor – the discouraged, the unhappy – fresh air, free space, green grass growing all around, fruits, flowers, vegetables in return for the little work on the ground they require, would do more to abolish their poverty than any benefice mechanistic devisors can ever confer. But all of these fragmented comments taken together don’t constitute a program for the integration of urban culture and agriculture as was achieved on a smaller scale 58

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at Taliesin. Ecological though it was, the scale at which Wright constructed culture at Taliesin at this time was domestic – more than a single house, but not anything like a city. The wayside markets mentioned by Wright in the Disappearing City were conceived by Walter V. Davidson. In January 1932, Davidson commissioned him to design what he called “Little Farms” as well as roadside markets that would enable farmers to sell their produce directly to consumers along metropolitan highways (“short haul direct”). Davidson’s goal was to build one hundred Little Farms and a market near New York City and fifty farms and a market near Philadelphia. “Such a composite farm building as this one might be,” Wright had written in 1932 in The Disappearing City, “would be assembled of units consisting of a garage, a dwelling, a greenhouse, a packing and distributing house, a silo, a stable and a diversified animal shed.”51 By January 1933, he had produced a number of drawings of a Typical Little Farms Unit [Fig. 3.14]. In Wright’s design, the separate buildings of a traditional farm were combined into a single structure with two distinct entry courtyards, one for the farm area and one for the residential area, rather like the original Taliesin. A low silo, as at Midway Farm, stands at the crossing of office and residential wings, between these two courts. The stock runs, adjacent to the farm court, were separated by a silo and greenhouse from the residential part of the building.The residential courtyard contained parking and a summer garden. The main living room and the bedrooms faced onto a terrace with a pool and a yard in a rear courtyard formed by the greenhouse with its indoor pool. A floor-to-ceiling folding glass and metal frame wall suspended from the ceiling opened the living room to the rear courtyard.

Figure 3.14  Typical Little Farms Unit, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1932. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York) 3202.008.

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Like Taliesin, the Typical Little Farms Unit, later renamed Unified Farm, sought to combine the pars rustica of a modern farm with the pars urbana of a modern residence. Wright sought to integrate the building of the Unified Farm with its setting through various scales of exterior spaces – garden, courtyard, and distant view. He imagined there would be “many thousands of such integrated, yet independent farm units” in Broadacre City, his neologism for the union of the seemingly opposites: rural agriculture with urban culture.52 In writing about the first exhibition of the Broadacre City model at the Industrial Arts Exposition in Rockefeller Center in New York City in April 1935, he called the farm “the most attractive unit of the city.”53 At the opening of the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition in 1932, only one of the exhibitors in the main gallery could best have been described as a full-time farmer who was also a part-time architect. Wright’s dedication to farming, however, along with his passion for the Wisconsin valley, had taken root long before he built Taliesin in 1911.

Gospel of the farm Wright’s maternal grandfather, Richard Lloyd Jones, an “outspoken Unitarian in a country where Unitarianism was unpopular,”54 emigrated from Wales to the United States in 1844 with his wife, Mary, and seven children. One of those children, Anna, was Wright’s future mother. In “The Grave in the Woods,” a sermon preached in 1895 at Chicago’s All Souls Unitarian Church, Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Wright’s uncle, described the allure the United States had held in the imaginations of the Joneses as seen from Wales. They read with avidity of the possibilities over there where a poor man might own his home and cultivate his own acres . . . and more attractive than all that, where all these privileges were haloed with free thought – a rising gospel of human brotherhood and educational opportunity. . . . These home-keepers dreamed that the gospel of the open mind and the unrimmed fellowship which made a shrine of the hearth in the little cottage might find richer soil and more room to grow if transplanted to the beckoning fields of American.55 Traveling from New York to Milwaukee, the family arrived in Ixonia, Jefferson County, Wisconsin in 1845 where Richard Lloyd Jones purchased one hundred and twenty acres of heavily forested land in the Rock River Valley of Jefferson County in what was then the territory of Wisconsin.With the assistance of his brother, a log house was built and the arduous task of clearing the heavily forested land began. “My father,” wrote Jenkin, avoided the broad prairies or even the more accessible ‘openings’ that were available to the adventurous pioneer who dared to make a claim, because to the eyes of a Welsh immigrant the absence of trees suggested a desert. . . . So out of pathetic ignorance, he accepted the challenge to battle.56 60

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An enormous human effort was required to cut down the trees and clear the land for use as farm fields. Wright had not yet been born at the time; but retold the family’s story eloquently eight decades later. On weekdays grandfather believed in the gospel of hard work. Relentlessly he taught his children to add tired to tired and add it again until the fountain of energy he himself was, working out through his offspring, began to cut away the forests and establish a human decency where the wilderness was. A human smile, where before had been the Divine Countenance.57 Within a decade of arriving the Joneses farm had become productive; but the high cost of land due to an increase in the population in Jefferson County, combined with the unhealthy marshland nearby, and the rocky and relatively poor quality of the soil, caused the family to consider relocating farther west. “Too many rocks. Too much marshland. Every spring they suffered from malaria. Too many houses now. Too many people.”58 In 1855, the Jones family moved approximately eighty miles west of Jefferson County resettling into the farming community of Spring Green in Sauk County on the northern side of the Wisconsin River. Here the soil in the bottomlands was rich and fertile. The family prospered and by 1860 owned 415 acres and were producing “eight or nine times as much wheat and corn and oats”59 as had been produced on the Jefferson County farm. The need for the family to move again was caused by a number of factors which Wright neglected to mention in his own account. In order for the ten siblings to settle near each other as they reached adulthood, the Joneses needed more land. The “rich bottom lands of Sauk County that had yielded so well at first had lost their fertility after constant cropping, and the soil was too light and sandy.”60 Across the Wisconsin River to the south of Spring Green were the fertile valleys and rolling hills of Iowa County. In 1863, the Joneses purchased land there in the Town of Wyoming overlooking a broad valley “opening southward from the Wisconsin River and bounded by low, round hills.”61 Iowa County is located in southern Wisconsin, an area of the state bounded by the Lake Michigan on the east and the Mississippi River on the west. Unlike the uniform flatness of the states of Illinois to its south and Iowa to its west, the topography in much of Wisconsin is relatively diverse having been shaped by the advancing and retreating of continental glaciers. The glacial action tended to plane down the higher terrain while depositing rocks and soil in depressions and mounds. But Iowa County is situated in an unglaciated or driftless region of southwestern Wisconsin. Its topography was shaped not by glacial action, but by the erosion of rock. The terrain in much of the Iowa County, including the Wyoming area where the Joneses relocated in 1863, consists of rolling hills with rivers and streams flowing in well-defined valleys and depressions. According to a 1912 survey, the soil in the Wyoming area of Iowa County, where the Joneses had relocated, was a dark-brown Wabash loam 14 to 18 inches deep. This type of sandy soil was “found in the wider stream bottoms entering the Wisconsin River 61

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Valley, where it occurs as an outwash from these streams over the sand at the base of the bluffs in the main valley.”62 According to the survey the Wabash loam was “very productive” when sufficiently drained. The rolling hills on the lands purchased by the Joneses provided exactly such natural drainage. Beneath the soil in the area of Iowa County, are formations of regularly stratified layers of sedimentary Precambrian rock, a natural formation mimicked by Wright in the horizontal stonework of Taliesin. The Joneses were not the first settlers in the area. Other farmers had followed earlier miners and settled in the Wyoming area of Iowa County as early as 1843. At that time, native Americans were still living in the area. Nor was the Wyoming area a wilderness at the time of the arrival of the Joness. Helena, a village primarily established for the shipping of lead, had been built nearby on the southern bank the Wisconsin River in Iowa County as early as 1828; but the village had been abandoned during the Black Hawk war in the early 1830s. After the war a shot tower for the manufacture of lead bullets was erected nearby and operated through 1841.63 Although there was no longer a village by the time the Joneses relocated from Spring Green, the area of Wyoming offered many social amenities. A number of excellent schools had already been established by the time the Joneses arrived. The citizens of Wyoming enjoy school privileges excelled by few towns in the county; and these educational advantages were not attained all at once nor without much effort. In the fall of 1845, the settlers of Wyoming Valley banded themselves together and erected a small log schoolhouse. . . . Eventually, as the settlement increased, schoolhouses were erected in different parts of the town, and improvements in that respect kept pace with the general development, until now the educational advantages of Wyoming have reached a standard of superiority that might well be emulated by others more favored in some respects.64 Schools and churches were others parts of this valley’s culture. In addition to excellent schools, the inhabitants of Wyoming offered a diversity of active religions. Methodist religious services had been held in the schoolhouse as early as 1846, and a Presbyterian church had been built in the area.There were no Unitarian churches in the area, which may have provided the impetus for the Jones family to construct Unity Chapel in 1886. While farming was the dominant way of making a living in the Wyoming area, it was not the only vocation. A gristmill, a fanning mill for the separation of clean grain from threshed grain, and a maple syrup sorghum evaporator were built in the area. As early as 1846, a lumberyard was operating there followed by a furniture factory in 1850. A store was opened in 1852 followed by other merchants, shoemakers, carpenters, and a tavern. The Wyoming Post Office had been constructed in 1848 and a town hall, although not completed until 1881, was considered to be “one of the very best if not the best in the county.”65 Far from being an unsettled “wilderness” – the term Wright had used in An Autobiography – “socially, educationally and morally, the Town of Wyoming may be truthfully said to be superior to the majority of the towns in the county.”66 62

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Among the concerns of living in a rural culture in the early nineteenth century was the drudgery of farm work, especially for children. The conservationist John Muir, himself a child living in rural Wisconsin in the mid-19th century, described the hardship of life on a farm. The summer work, on the contrary, was deadly heavy, especially harvesting and corn-hoeing. . . .The hoes had to be kept working up and down as steadily as if they were moved by machinery. . . . In summer the chores were grinding scythes, feeding the animals, chopping stove-wood, and carrying water up the hill from the spring on the edge of the meadow, etc. Then breakfast, and to the harvest or hay-field. . . . An hour was allowed at noon for dinner and more chores we stayed in the field until dark, then supper, and still more chores, family worship, and to bed; making altogether a hard, sweaty day of about sixteen or seventeen hours. . . . In winter father came to the foot of the stairs and called us at six o’clock to feed the horses and cattle, grind axes, bring in wood, and do any other chores required, then breakfast, and out to work in the mealy, frosty snow by daybreak, chopping, fencing, etc. So in general our winter work was about as restless and trying as that of the long-day summer. . . . No pains were taken to diminish or in any way soften the natural hardships of this pioneer farm life.67 Like her two sisters, Jane and Nell, who later founded Hillside School, Wright’s future mother, Anna, escaped the drudgery of farm work and became a teacher. “Riding and walking across the sparsely populated countryside to one or another rural school,” wrote Twombly, must have fired in Anna a sense of mission that her commitment to education had already kindled. But it also awakened her to the forms and processes of nature, as her children later recalled. ‘Nature and knowledge,’ her daughter Maginel wrote, ‘those were her early and abiding passions.’68 In 1866, Anna married William Russell Cary Wright, son of a Baptist minister, from Hartford, Connecticut. A music teacher, lawyer, and Baptist minister, described by Grant Carpenter Manson as “artistic, visionary, moody, and egocentric,” he “appealed to and satisfied Anna Lloyd Jones’s desire for life on a more spiritual plane than the black earth of primitive Wisconsin could offer.”69 Frank Lloyd Wright was born in 1867, but he lived in the Valley of the Joneses for only two years. In pursuit of William’s career as a Baptist minister, the family moved to Iowa in 1869 followed by moves to Rhode Island in 1871 and Massachusetts in 1874. In 1878, the family returned to Madison, Wisconsin, but in 1885, the last year the eighteen-year-old son Wright saw his father, William filed for divorce from Anna. It was also the first year he began his architectural career as a draughtsman in the office of a Madison builder, perhaps by necessity.70 63

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It was during his years in Madison that Wright began spending summers living and working on the Jones’s farms in Spring Green. While he disliked the heavy physical work and long workdays, he loved the rolling landscape of his family’s farm and appreciated the abundance of nature made possible through farming. It was here that he would spend summers as a teenager living and working as a farmer, and here, upon the brow of one of those rounded hills overlooking the Wyoming Valley, where he would return in 1911 to build Taliesin. Many of the summers during these same years, Jenkin Lloyd Jones,Wright’s uncle, also returned to vacation in the valley where his father and brothers had their farms. Jones often gave sermons based on farm themes ranging from the county to the barn. Many of these sermons were derived from his own boyhood memories of life on a farm. The miracle of the harvest field is beyond distrust: here is no place for skepticism. Nowhere do the laws above more clearly establish their kinship with the laws below than upon the farm.71 Co-founder and editor of Unity, a Western Unitarian newspaper, Jones was founder and pastor of Old Souls Unitarian Church, Chicago. A Christian theological movement emanating from Poland and Transylvania and spreading through England and Wales, Unitarianism was named for its fundamental belief in God as one person, in contrast to the Trinitarian belief in God as three entities coexisting as one. Unitarianism also rejected the Christian doctrines of original sin and predestination. Although Harvard College was founded in 1636 as a Puritan institution, Harvard’s Divinity School was founded in 1816 as the first nondenominational divinity school in the United States. The appointment of the Unitarian Henry Ware as Harvard’s Hollis Professor of Divinity in 1805 represented a shift from the dominance of traditional Calvinist ideas to more liberal Unitarian ones. Boston became the center of Unitarian theology in the United States. By the late 19th century, however, under leadership of ministers like Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Western Unitarianism was moving away from the Unitarian doctrine of Boston. Western Unitarians developed their own theological perspectives separate from Boston.72 Understanding this dichotomy between a liberal western and a conservative eastern Unitarianism is essential to understanding Wright’s attitude towards the unification of religion, nature, and domesticity and their potential reification in architecture.73 The saga of the Jones family is the story of the transformation of a continent from a cultural ecology of Native American hunter-gatherers, to one based on the exploitation of the land through mining, agriculture, and industry. As was typical in many areas of the North American continent explorers, trappers, and traders were followed by surveyors and farmers. In the case of Wisconsin, as in many other regions, the Public Land Survey System created by the Land Ordinance of 1785 was an instrument of exploitation providing the means to efficiently plat, divide, and sell land to settlers.The Joneses, like other immigrants to the United States in the early 19th century, were attracted to the prospect of purchasing inexpensive land. Many of these immigrants were farmers 64

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equipped with steel tools, especially the axe and the plow, and arrived with farming techniques developed in another culture, including the use of oxen and other domesticated animals. As was the case with the Joneses, a large family with lots of children was an asset providing inexpensive farm labor. Decades later, in the Taliesin Fellowship, this role was performed by the apprentices. As these children reached adulthood, however, choices had to be made: subdivide the family’s land into increasingly smaller parcels; purchase additional land nearby, if available; separate the family and send young adults westward; or, as in the case of the Joneses, move the entire family west to a new location with an abundance of inexpensive land. The story of the immigration of the Jones family and their various relocations as they moved westward, eulogized by Wright in An Autobiography, was one of the exploitation of land and resources, a cycle repeated countless times by countless families across the North American continent.

Urban rusticity Neither Taliesin nor the House on the Mesa is typically described as a villa, that combination of rustic and urban types developed in ancient and renaissance periods. Wright rarely used the term, likewise historians of his architecture.74 Nevertheless, while these two projects represent this idea in different ways, we believe the term is entirely appropriate to their character as domestic ecologies, as in the pre-modern precedents we described in Chapter 2. How can Taliesin be considered as a villa? The key aspect of Taliesin that makes it a villa is the interdependence of its rustic and urban elements. The rustic elements can be discerned easily: dairy barn, vegetable gardens, orchards, and pastures.We’ve stressed that the scope of the enterprise was more than necessary for a working farm; the domain yielded produce far in excess of what was required for a family’s subsistence. No less important, if perhaps less obvious, are the “villa’s” urban elements. Entry through a loggia, an element usually found in urban architecture, would have been atypical in a Wisconsin farm, likewise the entry court – effectively a cour d’honneur – and the ornamental pool that extends through its length. Few if any farms in the area would have included an architect’s design studio, or workroom as he called it; that type of space would have been found in the city. No room on the plan is designated as library, but the importance of his book and print collection can hardly be exaggerated. If his dally life could be described as that of a farmer, it was one that was highly cultured. Perhaps the most striking indication of Taliesin’s rural urbanity is the Tea Circle. It was approached via steps that were unusually monumental for a farm house, one side of which was lined by a stone retaining wall, itself capped by the Flower in a Crannied Wall statue. Statues may have been found in ancient and renaissance villas, but not late 19th or early 20th century American farms. The statue’s prominence – the height and white plaster in contrast to its lower and darker base – clearly indicates is importance for Wright.The exedra-shaped Tea Circle, the culmination of this sequence, accommodated both the pleasure and social significance of the afternoon ceremony. Pre-existing terrain was both recognized and amplified by the geometry of the retaining wall and 65

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circle: the hill was cut and leveled so the seating bench could form a ring around the ancient oak. Of course, all of this was eliminated on the 1941 drawing of the project, published and widely disseminated in Hitchcock’s Nature of Materials (1942), as it was not shown in the drawings on show in the Museum of Modern Art exhibition. In so far as this schematic plan also eliminated elements particular to the working farm (water trough, farm yard, etc.) a clear sense of the tension or possible integration of the duality or residential and agricultural uses was eliminated. Accordingly, a traditional villa combining rustic and urban parts was remade into a modernist family house. Can the House on the Mesa be seen as a villa, even though it lacks specifically agricultural elements? We believe it can be, but in a different sense. In the renaissance period and in antiquity there were many villas that lacked barns and fields. But such a lack did not mean isolation from the natural environment.The House on the Mesa was sited in a particularly challenging environment, the desert: dry, hot, windy, and barren. No doubt this is one reason why there were no agricultural fields. He wasn’t given this site, it was one he chose, presumably for the challenges it offered. His concern for interconnections between domestic culture and the surrounding landscape is evident in the project’s highly specific architectural elements and gardens. In his letter to Mumford, Wright stressed the fact that the project had atypical elements. It lacked windows “in the conventional sense,” had louvered walls in their place, and “cross-ventilation at the floors.” The instruments that accomplished these “environmental controls” were not only effective operationally but also expressively, for one could see how the external conditions were transformed. The louvered wall, for example, admitted cool air through adjustable horizontal vents. Opening the vents would change the geometry of the grid of their closed positions. As the air moved vertically it caused the “woven metal sunscreens suspended from cantilevered slabs” to move. Environmental performance was both instrumental and legible. Wright’s letter to Philip Johnson mentioned an element of the project that is the most explicit indication of his desire to bind the house to its desert location; he wrote: “the living room set in a roof garden, with a sheltered pool attached.” Such a setting reappeared when he included the design in the 1935 exhibit of Broadacre City in Rockefeller City. He described it as one of the houses with “roofless rooms for open air living in pleasant weather.” In such a room, there is no division between exterior and interior: the pool is inside the building, likewise the sky, and of course the views into the far distance. All in all, the house was a “complete garden.” Wright’s unpublished notes on the project, cited previously, included a remarkable summary statement: “The house itself, as a whole, becomes a complete garden, open or sheltered at will.”The building is obviously part of the “whole,” for that is the ensemble of elements that allowed the opening or sheltering. But the lake and plantings were also part of the domain. And they were designed in response to the wider landscape: the mesa, the surrounding desert, and the distant mountains. The functions are not those of a working farm, nor those of a traditional villa. Yet, the wholeness, or unity of the elements of a work with those of its wider environment is the defining characteristic of a domestic ecology. 66

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Notes 1 Museum of Modern Art, Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, 16. 2 Riley, “Curator as a Young Man,” 36. 3 Museum of Modern Art, 13. 4 Museum of Modern Art, 13. 5 Hitchcock and Johnson, International Style, 42. 6 Ibid., 43. 7 Hitchcock, Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration, 95. 8 Ibid., 117–118. 9 Wright, “Of Thee I Sing,” 113. 10 By 1932, the date of Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, the twenty-one year old Taliesin had been twice partially destroyed by fire and rebuilt, once in 1914 and again in 1925. The exhibition’s catalogue lists Taliesin four times: “1911-Taliesin I, House, Studio and Farm Buildings Spring Green, Wis.,” “1914–1915: – Taliesin II, Spring Green, Wis.,” and “1925 – Taliesin III, Spring Greeen, Wis.” in List of Work; and “1914 – Tragedy at Taliesin” in Chronology of Life. 11 Wojtowicz, “Wright’s House on the Mesa,” 528. 12 Ibid., 528–529. 13 Museum of Modern Art, Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, 55. Also included in the catalogue, but not the exhibition, were photographs of the exterior of a project for an Office Building, 1894, and the interior of the Larkin Building, 1904–05. 14 Museum of Modern Art, 117. 15 Ibid. 16 Hitchcock and Johnson, 191. 17 Museum of Modern Art, 38. 18 Wright, 128. 19 Ibid. 20 Wojtowicz, 535. 21 Wright, “Broadacre City,” 60. 22 By 1929 the hayloft had been transformed into bedrooms for apprentices in the Taliesin Fellowship and most of the other functions of the original barn had been moved to Midway Farm. 23 Tennyson, “Flower in a Crannied Wall,” 1863. The poem was also published in William Gannett’s House Beautiful, designed by Wright and printed by hand by him and William H.Winslow, 1896–98. 24 Partridge, “Nature as Moral Resource,” 106. 25 Brierly, Tales of Taliesin, 13. 26 Wright, An Autobiography, 170. 27 Alofsin, “Taliesin Drawings and Photographs,” 113. See: Hitchcock, Nature of Materials. 28 Berry, Unsettling of America, 53. 29 By 1941 automobiles entered through the passageway beneath the barn rather than through the gate into the original residential court; but taken together the revisions as depicted in the plan redrawn in 1941 simplified the original complexities of Taliesin and obscured the original intentions of the architect. 30 Levine, “Story of Taliesin,” 8. 31 “a garden and a farm behind a workshop and a home.” Wright, 226. 32 Wallace-Hadrill, “Villa as Cultural Symbol,” 43. 33 Crawford, “Letters from Wright to Ashbee,” 67. See also: Ashbee, “Taliesin, the Home of Frank Lloyd Wright and a Study of the Owner.” 34 McCrea, Building Taliesin, 27. See also: Bulletti, Frank Lloyd Wright a Fiesole. 35 Alofsin, “Taliesin I: Drawings and Photographs,” 98. 36 Ibid., 114. 37 The panoramic views of the landscape from within the main living quarters and working room within the building were focused to the northeast, on the two precincts separated by the driveway, the wooded hillside and the pasture surrounding a water garden. 38 Interestingly, this passage could also be seen as moving thorough landscape types that narrated the evolution of mankind’s struggle to procure food from the land, from the wooded hillside of the hunter-gatherers to the pastures of the shepherds.

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39 40 41 42

Alofsin, 136. McCrea, 176. Wright, 225. The organization and ecology of the traditional bank barn is set out in Leatherbarrow and Wesley, “Frameworks,” 86–89. 43 Apps, Barns of Wisconsin, 139. “The wood-stave silo, popular throughout Wisconsin and the entire dairy region of the country, was built of 2-inch by 6-inch tongue-and-groove staves placed vertically and held together with steel hoops that were joined at the ends with iron lugs and nuts.” 44 Leffingwell, American Barn, 161. 45 Creese, “Taliesin and Beyond,” 245. 46 Henning, At Taliesin, 198. 47 Wright, 227. 48 See the discussion of Medici wealth in Giannetto, Medici Gardens. 49 Wright, Modern Architecture, 109. 50 Ibid., 110. 51 Wright, Disappearing City, 66. 52 Ibid. 53 Wright, “New Community Plan,” 254. 54 Manson, Wright to 1910, 3. 55 Jones, “Grave in the Woods,” 280. 56 Jones, “Transformation of a County,” 23. The land was purchased from the government for one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. 57 Wright, 107. 58 Barney, Valley of the God-Almighty Jones, 45. 59 Ibid., 46. 60 Ibid., 49. 61 Manson, 3. The use of the word town is somewhat misleading. In southern Wisconsin, a town is often coterminous with a “survey township,” established to plat land but not necessarily as a political jurisdiction. Each town with a county was mapped by the Public Land Survey System and subdivided into 36 sections of one square mile or 640 acres each. The various plots of land purchased by the Joneses in Iowa County were located in sections 25, 30, 31, 32, and 36 in the current Town of Wyoming. The land upon which Taliesin was built is located in section 30,Town of Wyoming, Iowa County, Wisconsin. To minimize confusion, we use “Wyoming area” rather than the “Town of Wyoming.” 62 Lounsbury, Soil Survey Iowa County, 21. 63 The tower was located on the land later purchased by Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Wright’s uncle, and redeveloped as Tower Hill Summer Camp. 64 History of Iowa County, 842. 65 Ibid., 843. 66 Ibid., 841. 67 Muir, Story of Boyhood and Youth, 201–203. 68 Twombly, Wright: Life and Architecture. 69 Manson, 2. 70 Manson, 11. 71 Jones, “Concerning Soil: Plowing,” 41. 72 Founded in Meadville, Pennsylvania in 1844, the Meadville Theological School was a Unitarian seminary established to train ministers for life on the western frontier. It moved to Chicago in 1926 and in 1930 merged with Lombard College, a Universalist institution, and becoming the Meadville-Lombard Theological School. 73 The definitive study of Western Unitarianism Charles H. Lyttle’s Freedom Moves West. A more recent study – including the influence of Jenkin Lloyd Jones – is Tucker’s Prophetic Sisterhood. 74 See Ackerman, “Villa as Paradigm,” for summary statements on Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier as villa architects.

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4 UP ON THE ROOF

With few exceptions, Wright’s project for a House on the Mesa being one, the Museum of Modern Art’s first architectural exhibition in 1932 displayed works of architecture with slight information about their cultural and ecological contexts. Perhaps this resulted from the fundamental difficulty of exhibiting a work of architecture in a museum. Unlike the exhibition of painting or sculpture, only representations of architecture can be exhibited in a gallery, not the work itself.1 Accordingly, among the representations of the works of architecture designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret on display in the Modern Architects section of the Museum of Modern Art’s 1932 exhibition was a single photograph of the rear (garden) façade of the Villa Stein-de Monzie [Fig. 4.1]. While the artistic quality of the image must have been both obvious and striking, there was no scale model of the building on display, nor were there any other photographs, exterior or interior – nothing to provide the visitor with information about the building’s use or setting. Nor were floor plans of the building exhibited, even though they would have made it possible for a visitor to understand how the building was furnished and used by the inhabitants. Nor was a site plan included, which would have provided some sense of the building’s relationship to its site, as well as to its surrounding context. A site plan may also have made it possible for a visitor to ascertain the building’s orientation with regard to the front (street) and the back (garden), as well as to the movements of the sun. A plan of the site’s surrounding context would have shown the relationship between the building and the landscape, both near and far. No written description of the building accompanied the single photograph, just the caption “Le Terrases, Stein House, near Paris.” A brief written statement by the owners, architects, or curators might have explained the building’s contents as well as its context; but none was provided.2 The catalogue, Modern Architecture – International Exhibition, included a different photograph of the building, a portion of the front (court) façade. As with the photograph of the rear (garden) façade in the exhibition, the cardinal orientation was not mentioned in the caption. A work of artistic composition was put on show, a work that exemplified the modern style.

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Figure 4.1  Villa Stein-de Monzie, Garches, 1928, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. L1(10)26.

The written comments in the exhibition’s catalogue also slighted the building’s contents and context in favor of characterizations of the architect and the history his stylistic development. The Stein House at Garches of 1927–1928 and the additions to the Church villa of 1929 continued the development of the individual dwelling begun with the Vaucresson villa and the Ozenfant house. Each year Le Corbusier’s contribution of ingenuity in construction and imagination in design has been better coordinated; each year he has come nearer to reformulating the concept of house, not merely as a màchine a habiter, but as a lyrical manifestation of architectural beauty. In his later work there is no hesitation. Le Corbusier composes in a wholly new style with as assured a hand as any Baroque architect in the style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.3 In the absence of a site plan, floor plans of each level – including the roof – a scale model, and a written description, it could not have been possible for visitors to the exhibition to understand how the design of the Villa Stein-de Monzie related to the specific inhabitants, the building’s contents, and location. In their zeal to proclaim the arrival of a new style, Hitchcock and Johnson presented modern buildings as objets 70

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d’art displayed in the manner of paintings and sculptures in a salon-like setting. Johnson instructed that the photographs of the buildings should be “hung in the same manner as paintings.”4 Hitchcock and Johnson described the building much like a painting: “Covered terraces, which are included in the simple rectilinear volume of the building, produce an asymmetrical composition. The prevailing color is cream-white. At the back of the terraces one wall is grey and one green to emphasize the planes.”5 In their book, The International Style, the photograph of the rear (garden) façade included in the exhibit was published along with floor plans of the building; but only the second level, labeled “Main Floor,” and the third level, labeled “Second Floor,” were included. A plan of the first level might have provided some sense of the architect’s deliberate positioning of the building in the middle of a long and narrow rectangular lot, equally dividing the site into three precincts: forecourt with driveway, main building, and yard with a grove in the rear. A plan of the fourth level would have depicted the terrace on the roof, an important destination of the architectural promenade within the house. Furthermore, the labeling of the building as the “Stein House,” in both the exhibition and the book was inaccurate and misleading. By omitting “de Monzie” from the name of the villa the inhabitation of the house by two families, the Steins and the de Monzies – as was intended from the beginning of the project – was concealed. “From the beginning,” wrote Carrie Pilto, the plans suggest a shared lifestyle around a single living room – library, dining room, and kitchen, with separate apartments for the Steins [Michael and Sarah] and Gabrielle, [de Monzie] and her adopted daughter Jacqueline. Part of the architect’s challenge was to give equal weight to each family’s private spaces while accommodating rooms for guests, quarters for live-in staff, and the Stein’s art collection.6 The fact that were two families in the house was decisive in the design, as was its use as a gallery. Since the owners had furnished the house with Italian Renaissance antique furniture, it may have been the decision of the architects, rather than the curators, not to display photographs the interior spaces of the building in the exhibition. Le Corbusier was well aware of the potential conflict between his client’s taste in furniture and the style of his architecture. “I have to be very careful when I take [on] my clients,” he wrote to Michael Stein, “so that they don’t spoil my house with their furniture.”7 But the Steins, avid collectors of modern painting and sculpture, were hardly antagonistic towards their architect’s avant-garde aesthetic. “After having been in the vanguard of the modern movement in painting in the early years of the century,” wrote Michael Stein, “we are now doing the same for modern architecture.”8 Nevertheless, the owners furnished their new home with antique furniture in stark contrast to the abstract modern forms of the building. The inhabitants included two American expatriates Michael Stein, older brother of Gertrude Stein and his wife Sarah, collectors and promoters of modern art, together 71

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with Gabrielle Colaço-Orsorio, the estranged spouse of Count Anatole de Monzie, and her adopted daughter. Gabrielle de Monzie’s wealthy father had an indirect connection to modernism as the financial backer for the invention of Ripolin paint used by Picasso as primer for his canvases and by Le Corbusier as the finish coat on the walls of a number of his buildings. “Law of Ripolin, Coat of Whitewash,” wrote Le Corbusier in 1925, “elimination of the equivocal. Concentration of intention on its proper object. Attention concentrated on the object.”9 Unsuccessful in their attempt to locate a suitable house in the south of France, the Steins and Gabrielle de Monzie hoped to construct a new residence outside of Paris. As members of a modern cosmopolitan Parisian culture of expatriate artists and art collectors they considered themselves free from provincial societies and capable of living anywhere in the world. In 1925, they visited Le Corbusier’s full-scale Immeuble-villas (apartment-villas) prototype, the Pavilion of Decorative Arts, at the International Exposition of Modern Decorative Arts in a Paris. “We have decided, Madame de Monzie and ourselves,” wrote Sarah Stein in a letter to the painter Henri Matisse, “to settle in the vicinity of Paris. . . . For lack of a house already built, we have found a plot of land in the Plaine de Garches and we will build.”10 The lot purchased by the Stein’s and Madame de Monzie in Vaucresson was located in Garches, a residential suburb of Paris developed in 1896 and advertised as available lots in a well-wooded area with a large civic park, and a train station connected to Paris with thirty-two commuter trains per day. The lot’s shape was long and narrow, with a length approximately seven times its width. It was oriented on a northeast–southwest axis along its length with the street, now the Rue du Professor Victor Pauchet, to the northeast. In the garden plan prepared by Le Corbusier in November 1926, the main building was shown positioned in the middle of the site, which, due to its width, effectively divided the remaining open space equally into two defined areas, one at the front, another at the rear of the building [Fig. 4.2]. Adjacent to the front of the building to the northeast, towards the street, was

Figure 4.2  Villa Stein-de Monzie, Garches, 1928, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret. Plan of the garden, 1926. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 10411.

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an entry court, labeled cour sable (sand court), bordered on either side, to the right and left, by dense rows of ornamental deciduous trees. Adjacent to the rear of the building towards the southwest was a lawn bounded on its southwestern edge by a small grove of trees connected by a paved path to a stair and terrace extending from the second level. Access to the front court from the street required passing through a sequence of spaces. The first of these was defined by a gatehouse and a vegetable garden followed by an allée of flowers with an orchard to the right. Shifting the driveway to one side of the narrow lot allowed for the area of the orchard to be maximized and undivided by the driveway. The layout of the orchard included more than a few fruit trees planted for ornamental effect: thirty, planted in a dense grid. The proposed vegetable garden was substantial in size, occupying an area approximately equal to the footprint of the main building.11 For Dorothée Imbert, the contrast between the 1926 site plan and “the calculated casualness of the realized design remains puzzling.”12 Gone were the vegetable garden and the orchard. In their place was an array of evergreen plants distributed throughout the property, laid out by a landscape contractor working for Gabrielle de Monzie, perhaps, as is often the case in suburban properties today, planted to provide privacy or block unsightly views. Those evergreens were supplemented with a few flowering shrubs and flowers providing spots of color within an otherwise dark green landscape. While the owners may have supported the vanguard of modern design in the building itself, it appeared they considered the interior furnishings and the garden to be outside the purview of the architect’s control. “The tension created by juxtaposing Matisse paintings and Oriental art objects, Renaissance furniture,” wrote Imbert, “and the sheer volume of the villa was echoed by the contrast between architecture and landscape.”13 But is contrast what the drawing indicates? On the site plan the building is represented more like a garden parterre than an architectural floor or roof plan. Moreover, the A–B–A–B–A grid pattern of the main building is shown extending into the landscape of the real garden as well as into the front court.This arrangement established a direct connection between the two exterior spaces, front court and rear garden, in and through the main building’s structured bays. The alignment of the driveway with the “A” bay of the garage, along with the alignment of the “B” bay with the proposed gazebo in the rear garden, wove the building and its site still more closely – as if the two were to be seen as one. Contrast is far less in evidence than connection, even non-distinction.

Geometries of the ideal villa For Colin Rowe, the rectangular A–B–A–B–A grid of the Villa Stein-de Monzie had more to do with the mathematical proportions of the garden façade than with the manner in which the building and site were integrated. In “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa,” he described the similarities between the Villa Stein-de Monzie and the Villa Foscari, designed by Andrea Palladio and constructed circa 1558–60. Both, he observed, had been “conceived as single blocks, with one projecting element and parallel principle and subsidiary façades.”14 Although one might assume that an analysis of

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the façades of the two buildings would compare the front or rear of each to the other, Rowe compared the front façade of the Villa Foscari, facing the Brenta River, to the rear façade of the Villa Stein-de Monzie, facing the garden – as if actual orientations didn’t matter. Perhaps a comparison of the rear garden façades of the two would have substantially diminished Rowe’s thesis regarding the similarities between a Renaissance and a modern villa. He described the garden façade of Villa Stein-de Monzie as “a series of horizontal strips, alternating void and solid, a system which places equal interest in both centre and extremity”15 [Fig. 4.3]. In both buildings, “six ‘transverse’ lines of support, rhythmically alternating double and single bays are established.”16 But according to Rowe’s interpretation of the garden façade of the Villa Stein-de Monzie, the center double bay in the five-bay, 2–1–2–1–2 structure of the overall façade was incorporated into each of the three-bay 2–1–2 substructures, resulting in the dispersal of the overall center. For Rowe, the three bays of openness on the left and the three bays of solidity on the right overlapped each other in the center double bay of the overall façade, which acted as a peripheral bay for each of the two substructures. A single bay functioned as the center of each group of three bays within each of the substructures yet contributed to the centered composition of the overall façade, what Rowe referred to as “equal interest in both centre and extremity.” “The diagonal of the staircase,” he wrote, “forms the balance.”17 No one can doubt the ingenuity of Rowe’s account. We suspect, however, it would have surprised Le Corbusier, although impressed Hitchcock and Johnson. Another way to interpret the garden façade is to see the rectangular block divided proportionally according to the ratio, A : B = B : (A + B), as printed boldly on the drawing of the façades published by Le Corbusier in 1929, a year after the substantial completion of the building. In such an interpretation, the area of B (2 + 1 + 2) on levels two and three maintains the solid face of the overall rectangular block of the building which emphasized the deep penetration of exterior space into the interior of area A. Once this step is taken, the building ceases to be an autonomous composition and becomes instead the site of connections between the wider vicinity and the work itself. The effect of exterior space pushing into the building was emphasized by the surface of the covered garden extending as a terrace with a diagonal stair descending into the garden. Much more than a feature that “forms the balance,” as Rowe described it, the stair was a critical element in denying the overall center of the building, while simultaneously connecting the projecting terrace on the second level to the ground level of the garden. Le Corbusier emphasized the critical role of the stair in the composition of the façade by providing it with its own diagonal regulating line, the application of which resulted in raising an artificial mound to correspond with the level of the stair’s landing. Regardless of the ambiguities of the bays in relation to the compositional centers and sub-centers, the use of only two diagonal regulating lines on the garden façade – one for the overall rectangle of the building and one for the placement and angle of stair – depicts the façade’s unity as well as its non-centrality. Next in significance to the concept of exterior space pushing into the depths of the rectangular block of the building was the diagonal stair extending as an element 74

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Figure 4.3  Villa Stein-de Monzie, Garches, 1928, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret. Source: L’Architecture vivante, printemps-été, 1929, 17. © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017.

beyond the face of the rear façade and connecting the garden path on the ground level with the projecting terrace, covered garden, and interior spaces on the second level. In treating the garden elevation of the Villa Stein-de Monzie like the flat surface of a painting with insufficient recognition of the penetration of the exterior space into the 75

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interior, and vice versa, Rowe may have mistaken a secondary compositional consequence as the primary intention of the architect. For Rowe, the covered garden was the unfortunate result of the impossibility of achieving “horizontal extension” of the interior space between the floor slabs within the building due to the rigid bounding lines of the rectangular block, which is fundamental to the program. Elaborate external development is, therefore, impossible, and Corbusier logically employs the opposite resource, inversion in the place of extension, gouging out large volumes of the block as the terrace and roof garden, and exposing them to the outer space.18 But the Villa Stein-de Monzie had little to do with the “horizontal extension” of the space between the floor slabs.The rectangular block of the building acted to emphasize the deep penetration of the double-story open space of the covered garden into the building open above to the roof terrace and with a corresponding large-scale opening to a terrace extending into the rear lawn towards the grove of trees. The garden, ostensibly “outside” the building not only mattered to Le Corbusier, but was part of the building’s “internal” definition. Although Rowe mentioned regulating lines, he offered no explanation for their use in the Villa Stein-de Monzie other than “Corbusier has carefully indicated his relationships by regulating lines, dimensions, and figures.”19 He did include a drawing of the harmonic division of the golden section rectangle, from Matila Ghyka, The Geometry of Art and Life implying that the diagrams are somehow related to the façade of the Villa Stein-de Monzie. But other than a general statement in the drawing’s caption, “the golden section is the basic form of countless works of art, including Palladio’s Villa Malcontenta and Le Corbusier’s Villa at Garches,” Rowe offered no explanation. Perhaps to support his compositional interpretation of the building, when the garden façade was redrawn for the original publication of the Rowe’s essay in the Architectural Review in 1947, both of diagonal regulating lines shown on Le Corbusier’s published drawing of the façade were deleted. Beyond issues of composition, Rowe’s interpretation focused on the mathematics of the building, specifically with regard to the Renaissance interpretation of the Pythagorean concept of musical concords as the basis for beauty in music and architecture. Although Andrea Palladio had used the musical concords to dimension the length, width, and height of rooms – what Rowe described as “diffused thorough the internal volumes of the building” – Le Corbusier’s use of mathematical ratios in the Villa Steinde Monzie occurred “only in the total block and the disposition of its supports.”20 Where Palladio had recorded many of these dimensions on the published floor plan drawings – what Rowe referred to as “cryptically explanatory dimensions” – Le Corbusier referenced a single mathematical equation, A : B = B : (A + B), as we have said. But this equation for the division of a line in mean and extreme ratio, also known variously as the golden ratio, golden section, or golden mean, had nothing to do with harmonic proportions based on an ancient musical scale, as suggested by Rowe.21 The 76

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golden section, known to mathematicians for centuries, is the division of a line into two segments such that the ratio of the shorter segment (A) in relation to the longer segment (B) is equal to the ratio of the longer segment (B) in relation to the sum of the shorter and longer segments (A + B). The publication in the early 20th century of books like D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s On Growth and Form, revived and stimulated the interest of architects and artists in the possible existence of geometrical keys to unlocking organic form. Wrote Le Corbusier in 1927, “Nature is revealed to us in its mathematics more and more every day by science and its popularization.”22 Much like the musical analogy from early centuries, the biological analogy offered architects an opportunity to develop artificial forms using the same geometrical principles found in natural forms. Rather than use the ratios of musical intervals, for example an octave (2 : 1), a fifth (3 : 2), or a fourth (4 : 3), to determine the proportions of the building, Le Corbusier ultimately turned to the ratio of the golden section, but not exclusively. But given the relationship between the widths of the bays labeled by Le Corbusier on the elevation drawing as 1 unit or 2 units of measurement, the ratio of A : B (3 : 5) cannot possibly be equal to the ratio of B : (A + B) (5 : 8) Rowe admits this: “in actual fact the figures 3 : 5 = 5 : 8 thus represented are only approximate.” In placing the golden section ratio alongside the drawing of the garden façade, Le Corbusier only “indicates the ideal with which he would wish his façade to correspond.”23 Although construction on the Villa Stein-de Monzie was substantially complete in the fall of 1927, the drawing of the garden façade with regulating lines, published in the Oeuvre complète, 1937, had been drawn in Le Corbusier’s atelier in September 1928, approximately one year after construction.24 Moreover, the regulating lines on the 1928 drawing, presumably drawn for Le Corbusier’s article on “Tracés régulateurs” in L’Architecture Vivante, 1929, differ from those shown on a 1926 pre-construction drawing as well as those depicted in a post-construction sketch published in Precisions in 1930 – all-in-all, three different versions at least. An examination by Herz-Fischler of the archival drawings of the Villa, along with those of other projects by Le Corbusier, demonstrated that it was not uncommon for regulating lines to differ in the various versions of the drawings and sketches made for a particular project, for example Villa Schwob, Villa at Vaucresson, and the Maisons La Roche-Jeanneret. Herz-Fischler also observed that “none of the drawings for any of the pre-Garches buildings involve the golden number or the equilateral triangle. The regulating lines always consist of perpendicular and parallel sets of lines.”25 Le Corbusier’s writings on regulating lines in the years preceding the design of the Villa Stein-de Monzie offer only general statements about their importance. “The main purpose of the system appears to be that of verifying or correcting the original design. There are comments about perpendicular and parallel lines, but there is no mention of the golden section.”26 Based upon HerzFischler’s review of the documents, it is clear that “Le Corbusier did not hesitate to change his writings or drawings about the regulating lines after the fact to accommodate his constantly changing views and systems.”27 In the Villa Stein-de Monzie, as in other projects, he did not use geometrical regulating lines to generate architectural form, only to confirm initial intuitions and make minor adjustments and corrections. 77

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The non-dogmatic use of the regulating lines by Le Corbusier varied from building to building, and in some cases between earlier and later drawings of the same building. The various sets of regulating lines for a single building before, during, and after construction were neither developed chronologically nor understood as a change from one system to another. Instead, Le Corbusier saw each system as “a new verification and confirmation of his original work.”28 In 1927, the year the Villa Stein-de Monzie was completed, Le Corbusier received a copy of Matila Ghyka’s Esthétique des proportions. Receiving Ghyka’s book may have lead him to ultimately write the equation for the golden section across the top of the 1928 drawing of the garden façade as well as to reinterpret the 2–1–2–1–2 bay structure as approximating the golden section ratio.The reconciliation of the system of diagonal regulating lines with the alternating rhythm of the double and single bays – all under the golden section ratio – did not concern him. He sought another unity, not between systems of proportions within a single façade, but the unity of the work of architecture with the world of nature, made possible through geometry and mathematics. Nature in this sense was not seen to consist of physical phenomena that were palpably manifest in landscapes and gardens – water, land, trees, hedges, fruits, flowers, and other living things – but of the “internal” and lawful structure of those things, the rules or principles of configuration that define their essential form. Nature thus understood is not only out- but inside the building, in its essential core. In “A Timely Book,” an unpublished essay on Matila Ghyka’s Esthétique des proportions written in 1927 – the same year the Villa Stein-de Monzie was constructed – Le Corbusier wrote: “And the natural world that surrounds us, and the creative hand of man issuing forth from the mind, are walking hand in hand on the same line of harmony: the one explains the other, expresses the other, united.”29 When nature is understood as the regular or lawful structure of things, design can bypass the assumed distinction between the ambient environment and built works, because they can walk “hand in hand on the same line of harmony.” In his later writings, Le Corbusier proposed that architectural design should sign a “pact with nature.”The corresponding geometries of Villa Stein-de Monzie’s gardens and façades present just such an agreement.

Gardens above and below the roof In addition to concealing its use as an art gallery and residence shared by two families, the mislabeling of the building by Hitchcock and Johnson as the “Stein House” was inaccurate and misleading on another level: its domain included more than a single building. Less a villa in Varro’s ancient Roman sense of the term, yet unlike a typical French maison, the Villa Stein-de Monzie was closer to a hôtel particulier, and therefore similar to Le Corbusier’s Maison Cook, a project conceived at approximately the same time, also for an American expatriate. A private place of temporary lodging, the hôtel particulier had evolved by the 18th century in France as a freestanding building located on a site between an entrance court (cour d’honneur) at the front and a garden at the rear. Built to exhibit art and to enjoy the open space, sunlight, and greenery from a 78

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covered garden and a roof terrace, the Villa Stein-de Monzie was as much an art gallery as a house, as much a museum of antique furniture as a dwelling. Despite the garden plan prepared in 1926 with its vegetable garden and orchard, the final project as built is closer to a hôtel particulier than to a villa, at least in an ancient sense. The two axonometric drawings of the Villa published side-by-side in 1929 revealed the differences between the front and the rear, as they corresponded to the differences between the two exterior spaces, the front court and the rear garden [Fig. 4.4]. The front, facing the entry court (the drawing on the right), presented an overall symmetrical four-story rectangular solid with localized asymmetries and minor projections. The building would have appeared as a complete object of destination seen in the distance upon entering the driveway from the street. Almost filling the entire width of the site from side-to-side the façade served as a visual backdrop and spatial enclosure for the entry court. By contrast, the rear, facing the garden (the drawing on the left), was presented as an overall asymmetrical three-story form with localized symmetries. In comparison to the relatively flat front façade, the second-level terrace on the rear

Figure 4.4  Villa Stein-de Monzie, Garches, 1928, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret. Source: L’Architecture vivante, printemps-été, 1929, 15. © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017.

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projected far into the landscape, providing a runway for the huge two-story volume of exterior space to penetrate deeply into the rectangular form of the building. Seen from the rear garden, the entire fourth level of the building had become a roof terrace. The horizontal strip windows on the rear façade, twice the height of those on the front, allowed for high and wide panoramic views of the garden.The choice of an axonometric drawing to represent the building, rather than an eye-level view in perspective, put emphasis on the flat roof, typically an uninhabitable sloped surface of a building. But in the Villa Stein-de Monzie the roof became a destination and place of inhabitation, equal in importance only to the covered garden. More than providing unobstructed views of the lawn and the grove of trees in the distance, the covered garden and the roof garden were exterior spaces penetrating into the building. While the front of the building was a flat-faced object of symmetrical composition with only a limited capacity to view or open to the court, orchards, and vegetable garden from within, the rear of the building offered the inverse, an increased capacity to view out into the lawn and grove of trees with only local symmetries in an otherwise asymmetrical composition of open and closed volumes.30 In the Villa Stein-de Monzie, there were also two exterior living spaces incorporated within the dwelling: a suspended garden terrace on the second level, partially covered and extending into the rear yard, and a roof garden on the fourth level overlooking the site and beyond. Le Corbusier had published sketches of these two garden types side-by-side in the “Theorie du toit-jardin” section of his article “Ou en est l’architecture?”31 [Fig. 4.5]. The roof garden (right) was illustrated as a substantially roofless outdoor space furnished with a chair and table in front of a framed opening in an exterior wall, while the covered garden (left) was depicted as a substantially roofed outdoor doublestory space open on one end. Both of these sketches had been originally included in an illustrated letter to a client regarding the design of a Villa Meyer at Neuilly-sur-Seine. The scale and level of detail of the illustration of the roof garden on the right convey a

Figure 4.5  Villa Meyer, Le Corbusier, Paris, 1926. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 31514.

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sense of solitude within two distances: the close-up and tactile relationship to the food and drink on the table, along with the plant and pair of gloves on the shelf beneath the window; juxtaposed with a distant view through the rectangular opening to the tops of trees and a ruin-like structure in the distance. The ruin-like structure drawn in the background of the framed view from the roof garden was Le Grand Rocher, one of the extant follies in the Parc de la Folie Saint-James in Neuilly-sur-Seine. By contrast, the covered garden was illustrated as a room without a wall opening to the trunks and branches of trees beyond. The covered garden is located at ground level, not elevated. The relative size of the human figures in the illustration gives the space of the covered garden a huge, almost monumental scale with its depth exaggerated by the use of one-point perspective. Perhaps Le Corbusier thought the scale would represent the outdoors. An elevated covered garden, what Le Corbusier described as a jardin suspendu, was the primary feature of the apartment-villas prototype, the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, built in 1925. For Le Corbusier, an L-shaped dwelling enclosing a covered garden, sometimes on the ground level, as in the Villa Meyer, and sometimes on the second level, partially covered and partially open, as in both the Villa Stein-de Monzie and the Villa Savoye, was the primary concept for the design of a villa and the primary space for the life it intended. The apartment-villas were also the primary unit in the urban housing blocks proposed in 1922 in the Plan of a Contemporary City for Three-Million Inhabitants.32 As such, the L-shaped type with covered garden was considered to be applicable to city or rural settings, whether aggregated into housing blocks or freestanding as a villa. The same could be said of the roof garden, the garden illustrated by Le Corbusier side-by-side with the covered garden. The roof garden had appeared in a number of projects prior to Villa Stein-de Monzie, including the houses at the Weissenhof Siedlung in Stuttgart. A solarium or roof garden was the final destination of the ascent of the exterior and interior stairs in the Maison Citrohan, regardless of its setting, whether depicted by Le Corbusier in the city or on the shore of a lake. Being up on the roof, however, offered more than a view. Along with the covered garden, the roof terrace provided space within the Villa for “physique culture,” exercise, but also for relaxation, and contemplation.The first dwelling designed by Le Corbusier to fully embody the concept of the roof garden as the primary destination was not the Villa Stein-de Monzie, but the Hôtel Particulier à Boulogne-sur-Seine, the Maison Cook, constructed in 1926. Unlike the horizontal spatial sequence in a typical French hôtel particulier from court to building to garden, the sequence within the Maison Cook was vertical, terminating in a roof garden overlooking the street. Le Corbusier was aware of the revolutionary nature of the reversal of the movement sequence, from horizontal to vertical. Of the Maison Cook, he wrote, “The classic pattern is reversed. The reception is at the top of the house. We come directly to a roof garden dominated by the vast forests of the Bois du Boulogne; we are no longer in Paris, we are in the countryside.”33 Similarly, the roof garden in the Villa Stein-de Monzie was an exterior destination reached through an interior ascent. Like the Cook house, the Villa Stein-de Monzie had a forecourt and a garden; but in neither case could the garden be described 81

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as a destination of a horizontal movement sequence through the buildings from their forecourts. Unlike the Maison Cook, the Villa Stein-de Monzie had a suspended garden on the second level, partially covered and partially open to the roof garden on the fourth level. More like its apartment-villas antecedents, the suspended garden was an exterior rectangular space enclosed on two sides by a two-story L-shaped block of interior spaces. Much more than providing views of the landscape, the capacity to capture exterior space within the exterior volume of the building as a room without a wall, while at the same time to exploit the flat top of the building as a room without a roof, provided the inhabitants with new opportunities to live outdoors within the envelope of building. In this sense, the site of the Villa Stein-de Monzie could be described as horizontal architecture, while the building – at least from the rear – as a vertical landscape.Thus, we have a second sense of non-distinction between the building’s enclosed spaces and its ambient environment – more concrete than the connective geometries. Perpendicular to the garden’s architecture, the building’s vertical landscape conflated conditions ostensibly distinct: sheltered and shadowed enclosure with outward reach and extension, or familiar furnishings with variable weather, and most broadly, highly sophisticated domestic culture with a rather unremarkable local ecology.

Virgilian dream The Villa Savoye, designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, was represented in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1932 exhibition, Modern Architecture – International Exhibition by a scale model with attached floor plans and two photographs [Fig. 4.6]. The original proposal for the exhibition had consisted of nine scale models representing different building types designed by leading architects around the world. But the range of building types in Modern Architects section of the exhibition was ultimately narrowed with emphasis on single-family houses, and photographs and drawings were included with the models.34 One of the photographs, an exterior view of the eastern corner of the Villa, depicted the front and side of the building. The other photograph was an interior view from the second-level living room through a sliding-glass wall onto the roof terrace. Unlike the Villa Stein-de Monzie, floor plans of the Villa Savoye were included in the exhibition, which, along with the interior photograph, gave the public a general idea of how the main floor on the second level was used and furnished. While the “Ground Floor” level floor plan was included in the catalogue, the driveway was excluded along with any details of the immediate surroundings. As with the Villa Stein-de Monzie, no site plan of the Villa Savoye was exhibited, which might have shown the building in relationship to the land, perhaps revealing the surrounding context as well as the building’s solar orientation. At least the model included a small portion of the site around the building, intentionally shifted on its base to allow more of the driveway to be shown. This can be seen clearly in the press photograph taken of Le Corbusier during his visit to the United States in 1935 standing next to the model made for the 1932 exhibition [Fig. 4.7].The orientation of the model towards the camera reveals the essential aspects of the building: a double driveway penetrating a loggia-like porte cochere with a second-level 82

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Figure 4.6  Modern Architecture – International Exhibition.The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 10 February–23 March, 1932. Source: The Museum of Modern Art. Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, NY.

roof terrace and exterior ramp leading to a solarium equipped with windscreens. Like the Villa Stein-de Monzie, no written description accompanied the model, photographs, and drawings. Even with the scale model and floor plans of the Villa Savoye, it must have been difficult, if not impossible, for visitors to understand the building in relation to its cultural and ecological contexts. The exhibition catalogue included the floor plans and one photograph of the house, an external view from the eastern corner, opposite from the view in the photograph on display in the exhibition. Also included was a description of the building by HenryRussell Hitchcock, concluding with a generalization on architecture, anonymity, and individuality. It is inevitable in the discussion of such a house to emphasize the aesthetic side of modern architecture. But the adjustment of the plan and the adaption of the structure are no less masterly. It is moreover imbued with a personal spirit as Wrights’ best work always has been. Much of modern building, particularly in the field of housing, must be impersonal to the extent of anonymity. But modern architecture has also a place for individuality and genius which is primarily artistic.35 83

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Figure 4.7  Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1931, Le Corbusier. Photograph of the architect beside the model at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935. Source: Acme Newspictures, Inc.; Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (NYWT&S Collection).

Like the Villa Stein-de Monzie, the written description of the Villa Savoye in The International Style did little to explain the cultural or ecological aspects of the project. The white second story appears weightless on its round posts. Its symmetry is a foil to the brilliant study in abstract form, unrestricted by structure, of the blue and rose windshelter above. The second storey, as shown by the plan, includes the open terrace within the general volume.Thus the single square of the plan contains all the varied living needs of a country house.36 There were subtle hints of the building’s surroundings in the photographs included in the exhibition. In the one labeled “View from the north,” a field and trees are visible in the background. In the other photograph, “Interior View,” the living room, wall of glass, roof terrace, and horizontal strip windows with trees beyond suggested an important connection between the interior rooms, the exterior roof terrace, and the distant landscape – much more than a view of the interior.Two curious photographs appeared in The International Style, both of the second level. One depicted the sliding-glass wall splitting the view into the living room and terrace.The other was of the opposite view 84

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from the entry hall, through the open door onto the roof terrace, with a horizontal opening to the trees beyond. The extreme length of the horizontal window did much more than frame a view of the landscape, as would any traditional window opening in a solid wall. By widening the prospect beyond the cone of vision – as if one were in a landscape rather than in a building – the horizontal window breached the interior’s interdiction of the exterior established by the wall. Unlike window walls – with glass from side to side and floor to ceiling – the boundary wasn’t made fully transparent, only transformed into a device capable of merging near and far horizons; specifically, the sill with the forest edge. Labeling the building as the “Savoye House,” in both in the exhibition and the book, The International Style, was inaccurate. Le Corbusier had always considered it a villa, at least in the sense the word was being used by him at the time. In “The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa,” written in 1947, Rowe compared the Villa Savoye with the Villa Rotunda, designed by Andrea Palladio, built between 1566 and 1571, and completed in 1589. Although separated by centuries, Rowe thought that the two shared a “certain similarity of site,” although he found the Villa Rotunda’s landscape to be “more agrarian and bucolic, [for] there is less of the untamed pastoral, [and] the scale is larger, but the effect is somehow the same.”37 Le Corbusier had described the site of Villa Savoye as “a big lawn, slightly convex. The main view is to the north, therefore opposite the sun.”38 Two things were apparently important in his succinct description of site: the view and the solar orientation. As these faced opposite directions, a decision would need to be made as to which would prevail and which would be secondary in the design and siting of the building, or at least how one or both might be adjusted accordingly. Rowe, for his part, made his own adjustments. He combined two different passages from Le Corbusier’s text into one quotation convenient to his argument. Le site, une vaste pelouse bombée en dome aplati . . . La maison est une bolte en l’aire au mileu des prairies dominant le verger. Il est à sa juste place dans l’agreste paysage de Poissy. Les habitants venus ici parce que cette campagne agreste était belle avec sa vie de campagne, ils la contempleront maintenue intacte du haut de leurs fenètres en longueur. Leur domestique sera inserée dans un rève virgilien.39 The first three sentences of the quotation (ending with “Poissy”) were written by Le Corbusier in reference to the Villa Savoye, the final two sentences in reference to the possible construction of similar buildings in the countryside of Argentina, not in the suburbs of Paris. This same house, I should set down in a corner of the beautiful Argentine countryside . . . rising from the high grass of an orchard where cows continue to graze. . . . The inhabitants, who came here because this countryside with its rural life was beautiful, will contemplate it, maintained intact, from their 85

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hanging gardens, or through the four sides of the long windows. Their home life will be set in a Virgilian dream.40 The effect of combining the two quotations into one and representing it as referring to the Villa Savoye site was to justify Rowe’s conclusion: Le Corbusier’s description was “unavoidably reminiscent” of Palladio’s – “no less lyrical, but rather more explosive.” Le Corbusier, we’ve seen, described the site much less lyrically:“a big lawn, slightly convex.” Beyond a “similarity of site,” however, the two have little in common. The central element in the Villa Savoye is a ramp, part of series of sequences that first encloses and compresses space and then releases and expands it. The sequence begins outside the building, with a lane that turns into a double driveway, leading to a U-shaped porte cochere. From the first-level entry hall one moves up an interior ramp to a second-level entry hall and then out to the roof terrace before ascending the exterior ramp to a solarium.The ramp occupies the center of the building, at the expense of shattering the center bay of the structural grid. The ramp becomes the center – not a figural domed space as in Rotunda, but its opposite, a figural object. The section of the Villa Savoye fractures forever the myth of the horizontal space of the “five points” and the “constructive revolution” [Fig. 4.8]. The horizontal planes are stepped and punctured; not

Figure 4.8  Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1931, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret. Section, 1929. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 19448.

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a single horizontal surface on any of the horizontals levels of the building – including the ground plane – is an unbroken plane. Insofar as views from the building were not confined to the plot on which is was built, the project’s site must be seen even more widely than the lane approach might suggest. A villa, we stressed in Chapters 2 and 3, always includes more land than the ground on which its house sits, land that is often, although not always cultivated. The amplitude of the domain is partly indicted by the orchards on the Villa’s “convex lawn” that Le Corbusier repeatedly sketched. Beyond this extension of villa space were the wooded landscapes. Still further was the town beyond. Poissy-sur-Seine is situated approximately seventeen miles from of Paris. In the neck of one of the meandering loops of the river Seine, bordered on one side by the Saint Germain-en-Laye national forest and on the other by the southwest bank of the river, lies Poissy, the ancient town of Piniacum established along a Roman road adjacent to the Pont Ancien. The castle at Poissy, once an important residence of the Carolingian Emperors, had been given by Philip the IV of France (also known as Philip the Fair, 1268–1314), to the Dominican nuns in 1304, who transformed it into a convent for women of noble birth. The monastery was named the Abbey of Saint Louis after king Philip’s grandfather, Louis the IX, (1214–1237), who was born at Poissy and canonized in 1297. It was in the Abbey’s refectory, the largest hall in France at the time, that Catherine de Medici convened the colloquy on the reconciliation of Roman Catholics and Protestants in 1561. During the French Revolution, the nuns were expelled and the property was subdivided and sold to several buyers. Most of the Abbey’s buildings were demolished in 1796. By the time of the construction of the Villa Savoye, the remains of the Abbey included the stone enclosure wall with its towers and gatehouse, the barn, and the fishpond. Although the existence of a building, perhaps a hunting lodge, on the former fief of Villiers, the land to the west of the Abbey of Saint Louis, is reflected in maps of the 18th century, the extant Château de Villiers was constructed on the site in the mid-19th century.41 In 1928, the Château’s fifty-two-hectare estate was subdivided into three parcels and sold by the Marquise. Donat Agache purchased twenty-five hectares as the site for a new house; the Kuhlmann Company acquired twenty hectares, including the Chateau, which was transformed into a holiday home for the children of families working in their factories; and seven hectares (seventeen acres) were purchased by Pierre and Émilie Savoye as the site for a new villa. The many-sided parcel purchased by the Savoye’s was thus bounded along the northeast by the enclosure wall of the former Abbey of Saint Louis; along the north and west by the lands of the former estate; and along the southeast by an adjacent property and the Chemin de Migneaux à Poissy, now the rue de Villiers, an old road connecting the village of Poissy and the Migneaux area. An architect concerned with the integration of a building into its cultural and ecological contexts would have had much to work with in such a location. The plot of land on which the Villa was built must have been appealing to the Savoye’s not only for its size, but also for its location to west of the Village of Poissy in the meadow of an old farm surrounded by farmland and situated between a former abbey and a château. The site was, as Le Corbusier observed, relatively flat with a slight 87

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mound at an elevation of approximately forty meters above the southern bank of the river to the north. Partially enclosed by the old stonewall of the abbey and surrounded by a band of trees, it offered a high level of privacy along with a spectacular vista to the north across the wide and flat valley of the Seine to the horizon of distant hills. An aerial photograph taken in 1944 shows the relationship between the orientation of the building (lower left corner) and the landscape, near and far [Fig. 4.9]. So important to the architects of the Villa Savoye was the precise angle of the view that the living room on the second level of the house is oriented towards the northwest, a less than ideal orientation with regard to the sun, since it provides little or no sunlight during most times of the day and year and brutal late-afternoon sunlight during others. Nor is it oriented with respect to the angles of the existing road and lanes. Instead, its ordinal directions align with an axis running from the southeast to the northwest towards a distant location along the Seine River. Two conceptions of the natural context are thus at play in Villa Savoye’s siting: the environment as an ensemble of views, alternately natural and historical, and as a pattern or schedule of environmental forces,

Figure 4.9  Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1931, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret. Aerial photograph, June 7, 1944. Source: Reproduced by permission of The National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP), Edinburgh, United Kingdom.

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kinds of sunlight (brightness, shade, glare, and heat) through the hours of the day and seasons of the year. Despite the vast area of the site, all the early studies by the architects placed the house close to the proposed entry gate at the turn in the road, perhaps to preserve as much as possible of the open land. The orchard seen in many of the sketches had ample room in this clearing. The image was not an empty gesture, the aerial photograph from 1944 shows that over 100 trees were planted, more like a crop than an ornamental grove. While one early sketch of the house location on the plot plan shows it parallel to the road, later sketches shift the angle of the house to the northwest, shifting the axis of view from the stonewall enclosing the abbey to the north towards the open lands of the adjacent Chateau and the valley of the Seine to the northwest. Driving onto the property from the rue de Villiers (formerly the Chemin de Migneaux a Poissy) past the gardener’s lodge on the right, one turned left onto a lane pre-existing the villa that ran at an angle neither parallel to the road nor perpendicular to the house [Fig. 4.10]. Turning right from this lane onto the driveway the vehicle

Figure 4.10  Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1931, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret. Site plan, 1930. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 19546.

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shifted into a frontal relationship to the house, not centered on the façade, but aligned with the bay of covered space on the right defined by the recessed walls of the house on the left and freestanding posts or stilts, pilotis, on the right. The orientation and direction at the beginning of the movement sequence were thus precisely determined. The driveway penetrated the house on the right beneath the second level, then circled around the supposed back of the house – where the main entry to the building was actually located – and returned on the other leg of the driveway towards the apparent front of the house.This U-shaped space carved out of three sides of the first level can be seen as a hybrid form: an ancient logia plus a contemporary porte-cochère. On one set of drawings, this hybridized space is labeled “abri,” implying a natural sheltered space typically found on the side of a hill beneath overhanging rock [Fig. 4.11]. Such a label may well have implied a spatial archetype found in nature. This abri was defined beneath the second level, between the walls on its inner edge and a line of pilotis along its outer edge. In addition to their support function, these pilotis framed views of the landscape nearby from within the abri in the direction of travel and along the periphery on the right. The wide-open horizontal views from the roofed and compressed space of the abri on the first level can be seen as an inverted prefiguration of the roofless solarium on the third level. The architects of the Villa chose not to orient the house in relation to an existing road or lane, but instead towards a distant view, although the target of that view may have been more generalized and ideal than specific and real – basically fields and forest.

Figure 4.11  Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1931, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret. Ground level and basement plans, 1929. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 19439A.

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Orienting the house to the northwest, however, was in direct opposition to the principles of orientation according to the axe heliothermique, a term made renowned in an exhibition at the 1930 International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) by Le Corbusier.42 A floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall mur de verre coulissant (sliding-glass wall), on the southeast side of the living room facing the roof garden compensated somewhat for the lack of sunlight through the living room’s northwest view window. It was the architect’s solution to a situation where “l’orientation du soleil est opposée à celle de vue.”43 Thus, the building found its place on the site in two ways: binding itself to the natural and historical figures that oriented its prospects, and both opening and closing itself to the movements of the sun. The programmatic requirements for the Villa were simple: a weekend house for a married couple with one child where the family could enjoy the rustic surroundings of Poissy, a rural village in the late 1920s.44 As constructed, the Villa included the main house, gardener’s lodge, stonewalled kennel, and the orchard we’ve noted, with its trees planted in a grid that didn’t align with the ordinal orientation of the house, but north–south, on the cardinal axis. Within the building’s limits on the first level were a three-car garage, an entrance hall, laundry, two maid’s rooms, and a chauffeur’s apartment. The main living areas were located on the second level and included a roof garden, a combined living-dining room, kitchen, a master bedroom suite with a boudoir and bathroom, a child’s bedroom with bathroom, and a guest room with a bathroom.45 Although in an earlier design a solarium and boudoir were located on the third level, the boudoir was moved to the second level and connected to the master bedroom suite when the design was revised for budgetary reasons.46 The house also included a partial basement. With the exception of the columns, ramp, and stair, the interior partitions on the second level of the house are “free” from the levels above or below. An interior ramp in the center of the house connects the first level to a secondlevel free plan, with access to living room, bedrooms, baths and kitchen, as well as to the roof garden. An exterior ramp connected the roof garden on the second level to the solarium on the third level. An internal spiral stair joins together all levels of the house, from the solarium down to the basement. The shape and form of these vertical elements, the ramp and the stair, are given figural significance and, at least in the case of the ramp, compositional importance. Neither the ramp nor the stair seems to be free of the structure. The stair is connected to one of the columns, and the ramp fits precisely within the space defined by six columns. As for the rooms on the first and second level, other than certain functional relationships with regard to proximity, privacy gradient, and access to windows for light and air, the architects appear to have been indifferent to their form or configuration. On the second level, the main living level of the house, the rooms are rectangular in shape and dense packed next to each other with respect to the windows and column location along traditional hallways for circulation. None of these rooms for day-to-day activities, including the living-dining room, seem to have any connection to the promenade as it passes up the ramp from the entry hall to the opening in the windscreen wall. One travels from the first level to the third without going through any of the rooms on the second level, with the exception of a small corner of 91

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the hall. The promenade does incorporate the roof terrace on the second level, however, at the point of the ramp’s transition from interior to exterior. The significant spatial sequence of the Villa Savoye, abri–entry hall–ramp–roof-garden–solarium, bypasses all of the rooms on the second level, which, along with the configuration and lack of composition of the rooms, suggests that the house was intentionally designed with two orders: a ceremonial one for the promenade and a mundane one for everything else. A well-known perspective drawing of the view from beneath the abri on the second level across the roof terrace into the living room with the landscape (orchard, woods, and river bend) framed by horizontal opening and windows captures the essence of the Villa Savoye [Fig. 4.12]. Much like the Immeuble-villas project that preceded it, theVilla Savoye is a suspended outdoor space defined by a two-story L-shaped block of interior spaces. Unlike the Immeuble-villas, but true to its precedent in the Charterhouse of Ema, the roof terrace is only partially covered.47 The final destination in the Villa Savoye is not the partially covered roof terrace on the second level, but the solarium on the third, shown in the perspective above the living room with a spiral stair leading to a rooftop outlook on the fourth level. The roof and floors of the house are constructed with a “lost tile” system of pouredin-place concrete. The minor reinforced concrete beams formed between the hollow tiles are supported by girders below the slabs running from the front to the back of the house.48 Although Le Corbusier wrote in “The Plan of the Modern House” that “the simple columns of the ground floor, by their suitable plan, frame the landscape with a regularity that suppresses all notions of ‘front’ or ‘back’ or ‘side’ of the house,”49 the cantilevered second level differentiates the southeast and northwest front and back from the sides and gives the house a definite front–back orientation, even if there is ambiguity as to which is front and which is back. This uncertainty is caused by the location of the main entrance door on the apparent back of the house, the northwest

Figure 4.12  Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1931, Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeanneret.View, 1928. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 19425.

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façade opposite the road frontage; but the slots of space defined between the pilotis and the edges of the overhangs create thick implied thresholds and clearly delineate the front and back of the house from the sides. The girders run front-to-back and are supported on cast-in-place reinforced concrete columns arrayed on a four-by-four grid of 4.75-meter bays.The selection of an even number of structural bays rather than an odd number places a line of columns through the center of house running from front to back. This decision by the architects has the effect of denying any possibility of an axis of entry or vision through the center of the front of the house and reinforces through negation the significance of the peripheral penetration of the front of the house. From the apparent back of the house, however, entry is through the center on axis with the ramp. To accommodate the ramp, an additional half-bay is inserted into the central structural line of girders creating an A–A–B–A–A rhythm of five bays from side to side of the house. Perhaps the insertion of the ramp at such an obviously difficult and illogical location relative to the structural bays was done to reinforce the primary idea of the house as a vertical journey. That one winds back-and-forth four times on the ramp going around-and-around the centerline of the house reinforces through repetition the concept of the ramp as the most significant figural element in the Villa Savoye.The stair was seen by the architects as being another kind of spiraling vertical figure penetrating the horizontal floor levels. “This spiral, a pure vertical organ,” wrote Le Corbusier, “is inserted freely into the horizontal composition.”50 Evident in Le Corbusier’s description of the Villa Savoye in Precisions is the significance of the vertical movement through the horizontal layers of the house, as well as the hierarchical differentiation between the use of the ramp for ascent and the spiral stair for descent. From inside the entrance, a ramp leads easily, hardly noticed, up to the first floor (second level), where the life of the inhabitants goes on. . . . Receiving views and light from around the periphery of the box, the different rooms center on a hanging garden. . . . From the hanging garden, the ramp, now on the outside, leads to the solarium on the roof. . . .This is connected by a spiral staircase three stories high down to the cellar dug in the earth under the pilotis.51 The exterior walls of the Villa Savoye were constructed of two layers of hollow concrete masonry with an air space between them. The concrete masonry was covered with “jurassite” plaster, a Swiss version of ciment-piere in which Jurassic limestone was used.52 Although the original exterior colors are yet to be verified, sufficient evidence exists to assume that the walls on first level were dark green, to reinforce the sense of a recess in shadow beneath the floating white rectangular solid of the second level.53 The walls of the solarium on the third level were light pastel colors, described in The International Style as a “white second story . . . weightless on its round posts. Its severe symmetry is a foil to the brilliant study of abstract form, unrestricted by structure, of the blue and rose windshelter above.”54 The interior walls throughout the house were constructed of hollow clay masonry of various thicknesses depending on location, 93

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covered with plaster, and painted.The treatment of the color of material surfaces in the house follows the hierarchical goals of a “work of art” established by Le Corbusier and the painter Amedée Ozenfant in “Le Purisme,” published in the fourth issue of L’Esprit Nouveau, 1920.55 “The work of art is an artificial object which permits the creator to place the spectator in the state he wishes.”56 In the case of Purism, the goal of art was “to put the spectator in a state of a mathematical quality, that is a state of an elevated order”57 through the compositional means of “choice of surface, division of surface, co-modulation, relationships of density, color scheme.”58 Color is not only the last and least significant of the five compositional devices, but Ozenfant and Le Corbusier warn of its potential to destroy other primary compositional means since “color has properties of shock (sensory order) which strike the eye before form (which is a creation already cerebral in part).” Throughout “Le Pursime” the authors, one an artist and one an artist-architect, established implicit connections between a work of architecture and painting. This is especially evident in their description of “surface,” the first of the Purist compositional devices. “Space is needed for architectural composition; space means three dimensions. Therefore, we think of the painting not as surface, but as a space.” In the Villa Savoye, as well as the other houses designed by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret between 1922 and 1928, the Purist dictum “a painting is an association of purified, related, and architectured elements,”59 might be reversed as “a work of architecture is an association of purified, related, and painterly surfaces.” In the case of the Villa Savoye, the painterly surfaces extend beyond the house incorporating the natural surroundings, as re-revealed through the experience of sequential tableaux, and the house itself becomes part of a much larger Purist composition, a division and co-modulation of an “architectured” setting, not as space, but as a surface including the field, trees, and sky – those historical and natural conditions beyond the building’s immediate vicinity that were variously and sequentially framed by its several kinds of openings. Though rendered as painterly surfaces, the walls of the house had weight; but not the traditional load-bearing function traditionally associated with walling, since their weight, along with the weight of the roof and floors, was supported by columns. The possibilities of view and daylight implicit in a free façade, a façade libre, were exploited by creating a continuous horizontal opening from corner to corner on all four of the exterior walls enclosing the second level. Le Corbusier described the Villa Savoye as “a box raised above the ground” “in the center of fields” “perforated all around, without interruption, by a long horizontal window . . . overlooking orchards.”60 Windows were installed into the entire horizontal openings on the southeast (front) and northwest (back) façades. Most of the horizontal opening on the northeast façade received windows, with the exception of a small terrace adjacent to the kitchen; but along the southeast façade (visible in the photograph), the majority of the horizontal opening was unglazed along the roof garden with the only exception being the narrow end of the living room. Windows on all four sides of the house were either fixed sashes, identifiable by their narrow mullions, or operable windows with sliding sashes, identifiable by their wider mullions. Sliding, as an operation of opening, brought the concept of horizontal orientation of the windows to the level of a detail. 94

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Although the Villa Savoye is often referenced as the ultimate manifestation of the “five points of a new architecture,” a theoretical conclusion of successive experiments first drafted by Le Corbusier and Jeanneret in the late-1920s, a comparison of the house with the much earlier theoretical model of the 1914 maison dom-ino may be more productive in an attempt to understand the true formative principles of the house.61 The obvious understanding of the word dom-ino refers to the similarity in the pattern of freestanding columns – called poteaux,“posts,” not pilotis, by Le Corbusier, in the plan of a prototypical house with a domino.While the term refers to the possibility of a gamelike combination and recombination of a modern prototypical house structure, its hyphen suggests associations with other meanings. The hyphenated word dom-ino has possible connections to other ancient Latin terms derived from ‘dom’such as in domus, a household or home, and domi, to be at home. In this sense maison dom-ino might be understood as a maison domus, a “house-home,” or maison-domi, a “house to be at home in.” In either case, a modern French word for house is being combined with an ancient Latin term for home. The maison dom-ino is a theoretical model of a “house-home” without walls, windows, or doors, and like the Villa Savoye, it also implies thresholds of space along its front and back faces. These slots of space are formed between the columns and the edges of the horizontal floor and roof slabs and act as thickened thresholds. Like the Villa Savoye there is no center depicted in the maison dom-ino. Similar to the Villa Savoye, the maison dom-ino has an even number of structural bays blocking any possibility of a central spatial axis without modification to the structural grid. In the maison dom-ino, the stair is positioned outside of the enclosed space as a figural projection of the rectangular form. The intention of the maison dom-ino is obvious: one is meant to enter off-center through an implied threshold and climb the stair to the roof. As such, the maison dom-ino is the theoretical model for the idea of a machine à habiter, a vertical journey in a “contrivance for the effect of dwelling.” Much has been written since 1930 about the Villa Savoye, a house designed by a painter-architect in association with another architect, but perhaps only Robert Slutzky, another painter, got it right. This house is a machine for viewing. The curved forms on the roof further evoke the metaphor, suggesting a roll of film stretched around two spools, with the center portion cut out like a camera aperture, framing first the sky and then the arcadian landscape as one progresses up the internal circulation ramp.62 Despite a biased interpretation of the “five points” as technical achievements, Giedion, too, had also once gotten right the essence of the new architecture. In his 1928 description of the housing project designed by Le Corbusier at Pessac in Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete, he wrote: The flat contours of Pessac merge with the sky: the suspended canopies over the roof gardens form the transition. The color scheme is taken from 95

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Figure 4.13  Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1931, Le Corbusier. Marius Gravot, photographer. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. L2(17)44.

Jeanneret’s [Le Corbuiser’s] paintings: ethereal sky blue and light green, a more intense brown. The interplay of the units can be judged neither spatially nor plastically. Only relations count. . . . Still photography does not capture them clearly. One would have to accompany the eye as it moves: only film can make the new architecture intelligible!63 In the case of the Villa Savoye, the final frame in the filmic sequence was the relatively small rectangular opening punched through the windscreen wall [Fig. 4.13]. The sill of this opening extended inward providing a built-in table. Here, the table top, an important image in Purist painting, extended from the opening in the windscreen wall as both a locus of domestic dwelling and a definitive plane along which the view to the distant horizon of nature is progressively re-disclosed as one moves up the ramp.

Modern equilibria Despite their commonalities, the two houses we have studied in this chapter are essentially two different manifestations of domestic equilibrium. The Villa Stein-de Monzie is best seen as a hôtel particulier, a private space of temporary lodging, historically fronted by an entrance court, with a garden at a rear, as we have previously mentioned. But a 96

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visitor to this hôtel would have been surprised – maybe even shocked – to pass through a cour d’honneur with a vegetable garden, vineyard, berry bushes, and ornamental shrubs, together with the expected axial and honorific axis toward a symmetrically composed façade. Complementing the façade at the entry point was not a porter’s lodge, but a gardener’s dwelling, equipped with a bench seat inserted into a formal parterre of vegetables. The conjunction of opposites couldn’t be more extreme. Certainly, it was not by accident, rather an explicit intention to couple together elements normally kept distinct, elements that were to be seen as complimentary and interdependent. Mutuality of elements that are typically seen as categorically distinct can also be seen in the approach to Villa Savoye. In the Poissy neighborhood in which Le Corbusier’s Villa was sited, houses would typically have been approached along an axial drive that terminated at the house’s front façade. In this case, however, the axial approach leads, surprisingly, not to the front, but the back of the house, with entry at the rear. The intermediate space, between front and back, was, we’ve seen, given an atypical name, abri, a natural sheltered space typically found on the side of a hill beneath overhanging rock. The overhang is not “natural” in this instance, but rather a covered drive lined by window walls on one side and pilotis on the other. Although well-defined, the driveway abri was not enclosed, for the columns framed views of the surrounding landscape in the direction of travel along the periphery, partly wooded landscape, partly orchard. Arrival meant entering a space that was at once under the house and in the orchard, viewing through the lines of columns into the trees in the distance, as much within the landscape and inside the house. Despite the differences of approach and arrival at the Villa Stein-de Monzie and Villa Savoye, both entry sequences were oriented toward second-level suspended gardens, each of which demonstrated the same mutuality of elements as the forecourt and driveway abri. Figural elements of vertical movement were instrumental in these sequences: the freestanding stair in the case of the Villa Stein-de Monzie and the ramp in the case of Villa Savoye. Both suspended gardens included covered areas. The first surprising aspect of these “gardens” is that it they are “suspended,” not hung but raised above the ground level. But the term garden in these cases did not exclude those furnishings and provisions typically found in interior spaces: chairs, tables, framed apertures, and other elements that accommodated patterns of domestic life. In the case of the Villa Savoye, the windows had no glazing. The orchards were in view, but also lunch on the table. These garden rooms were not enclosed by ceilings, the absence of which allowed views of the next instance of combining interior and exterior elements. The terminus of the vertical journey occurred in both houses on the third level: roofless rooms equipped with single unglazed windows. In the Villa Savoye, this room was labeled solarium; in Villa Stein-de Monzie, it was toit-jardin. The sky was as much a part of these rooms as the walls and framed views. Within the thickness of the windscreen wall of the Villa Savoye Le Corbusier established another planting bed – as if the ground had been raised a third time – but the most obvious function of the wall was to focus the view through the opening that terminated the ramp approach, a view into the far distance, above the orchard, toward the Seine. In this much discussed and rightly 97

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Figure 4.14  Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1931 Le Corbusier & Pierre Jeaneret. G. E. Kidder Smith, photographer, c. 1959. Source: Courtesy of G. E. Kidder Smith, Jr.

celebrated space, perhaps the matter of reciprocity between interior and exterior conditions has not been fully appreciated. The table that terminates the vertical ascent not only frames a view of the orchard, but serves as a support for the meal it provides. Like the forecourt gardens at the Villa Stein-de Monzie, the abri-drive at the Villa Savoye, and the suspended gardens of both houses, this single element indicates Le Corbusier’s desire to restore the equilibrium of parts of a single domain – less as a fact than an image64 [Fig. 4.14].

Notes 1 Well-known exceptions to this rule include buildings in the Columbia Exhibition, the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau, Wright’s work in the MoMA courtyard; Skansen, a museum of authentic vernacular buildings, and Colonial Williamsburg, a recreation of a district of a town, employ re-enactors in costume to describe the buildings and explain some of their cultural and environmental context. 2 At the time of the exhibition Hitchcock was familiar with the contents of the Villa Stein-de Monzie. In defending the houses designed by the New Pioneers against the “mysterious AngloSaxon prescription” that houses must look like “homes,” he pointed out “that an American family has been able very fully to make of Le Corbusier’s most extravagant villa Les Terrasses a home . . . true in the symbolically material sense as well as in the spiritual sense. For the house is furnished

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with fine articles evidently gathered together during a lifetime and not merely with modern pictures and radios.” Hitchcock, Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration, 218–219. 3 Museum of Modern Art, Modern Architecture: International Exhibition, 74. 4 Riley, International Style: Exhibition 15, 75. 5 Hitchcock and Johnson, The International Style, 125. 6 Pilto, “The Steins Build,” 167. 7 Behrens, Cook Book, 59. Frank Lloyd Wright had expressed similar reservations about clients destroying the unity of his interiors with their old furniture. 8 Pilto, 167. 9 Le Corbusier, “Law of Ripolin,” 192. 10 Pilto, 168. 11 Le Corbusier’s interest in the ancient Roman house is evident in Towards an Architecture. A comparison may be apt in this case. Like an ancient Roman villa, the Villa Stein-de Monzie defined exterior spaces representing the pars urbana and the pars rustica; but consistent with Vitruvius’s description, the entry sequence found in a typical Roman urban house was reversed, with entry through the villa’s pars rustica leading to the pars urbana containing the atrium. If the pars rustica of the Villa Stein-de Monzie was represented by the vegetable garden, orchard, and sand court, the pars urbana might have been represented in the house by the two-story, atrium-like, partially covered terrace open to the rear garden. 12 Imbert, Modernist Garden, 156. 13 Ibid., 158. 14 Rowe, “Mathematics of Ideal Villa,” 101. 15 Ibid., 102. 16 Ibid., 101. 17 Ibid., 102. 18 Ibid., 103. 19 Ibid., 102. 20 Ibid. 21 “Many people assume that the names ‘golden ratio’ and ‘golden section’ are very old. . . . However, the use of the adjective ‘golden’ in connection in with [phi] is a relatively modern one.” Markowsky, “Misconceptions About Golden Section,” 4. 22 Cohen, “Le Corbusier’s Modulor,” 10. 23 Rowe, 103. 24 Herz-Fischler, “Le Corbusier’s ‘Regulating Lines,’ ” 55. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., 54–55. 27 Ibid., 55. 28 Ibid., 57. 29 Quoted in Cohen, 11. 30 If, again, comparison with ancient models is appropriate, the Villa Stein-de Monzie was a villa sub-rustica, more than a single-family suburban house, but less than a complete villa. Like living in its ancient antecedent, inhabiting a modern villa meant living substantially outdoors. An ancient Roman dwelling typically contained two exterior living spaces: an atrium, or court, and a hortus, or garden. 31 Le Corbusier, “Ou en est l’architecture?” 26. 32 We will return to this project and type of space below, in our consideration of monastic ecologies. In monastic cells, too, outdoor living, with near and far views, was framed by a L-shaped enclosure. 33 Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, Oeuvre Complète de 1910–1929, 130. 34 Riley, 104. 35 Museum of Modern Art, 77. 36 Hitchcock and Johnson, 127. 37 Rowe, 101. 38 Le Corbusier, Precisions, 136. 39 Rowe, 101. 40 Le Corbusier, 139.

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41 The château belonged to Jean-Léonce Frederick, Baron Hély Oissel, (1833–1920), a banker and politician, and later his daughter, wife of the Marquis de Segur. 42 Le Corbusier, Radiant City: Elements of a Doctrine of Urbanism to be used as the Basis of Our Machineage Civilization, 160. 43 “the solar orientation is opposite to that of view.” Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, “Maison Savoye à Poissy 1928,” 187. 44 “Les heures claires,” “The Clear Hours,” was the name given to the villa by its original owners, Pierre and Émilie Savoye. 45 Sbriglio, Le Corbusier:The Villa Savoye, 182. 46 Benton, Villas of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, 191. 47 As with our earlier observations of L-shaped spaces, this one, together with the allusion to the Ema Charterhouse – one of Le Corbusier’s lifelong models – will be taken up in our study of monastic ecologies. 48 Ford, Details of Modern Architecture, 241. 49 Le Corbusier, 139. 50 Ibid., 136. 51 Le Corbusier. Later writings, particularly the Poem to the Right Angle, elaborate the passage from earth-bound horizontality to upright standing under the sun in terms that present the natural world as the framework for human self-realization. Perhaps nothing quite so profound was intended in this summary explanation of Villa Savoye, but surely the passage narrates vertical movement as environmental orientation. 52 Sbriglio, 134. 53 Klinkhammer, “Color Concept of the Villa Savoye,” 189. 54 Hitchcock and Johnson, 127. 55 Ozenfant and Jeanneret, “Purism,” 58–73. 56 Ibid., 60. 57 Ibid., 66. 58 Ibid., 67. 59 Ibid. 60 Le Corbusier, 136. 61 Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, “Les maisons Dom-ino,” 23–26. 62 Slutzky, “Aqueous Humor,” 43. 63 Giedion, Building in France, 176. 64 Villa Savoye was indefinitely abandoned by the Savoye family in 1940 and subsequently occupied by German and American troops during the Second World War. In the years following the war the house was used as a barn during the period when Émilie Savoye farmed the land. In “Stompin’ on the Savoye” Time magazine reported in 1959 “the machine for living became a machine for farming.”

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Although we tend to think of monastic culture as reclusive and introverted, which in part it surely was, just a little historical study shows that life in a cloister neither required nor allowed uninterrupted isolation from the world beyond its walls. Departure from a home, village, or town may have been the future monk’s first step toward monastic life, but the reform that life required resulted in re-engagement with what lay outside the monastery building’s protective walls; not always involvement with some other settlement, just as often with agricultural lands, and in the very early period of the Western tradition, with uncultivated terrain. The interdependence of life in and outside the cloister is clear in many aspects of monastic culture – patronage, hospitality, education, and medicine, for example – but especially so in the kinds of work undertaken by monks, work that was alternately manual and spiritual. Examples of manual work could include indoor tasks, like cooking and cleaning in the kitchen or building furniture and utensils in the workshops, but also outdoor chores like planting and harvesting in an orchard, vineyard, or the fields, or work on waterways, alongside mills, for irrigation purposes, and so on. As places of physical labor, both the claustral buildings and their surrounding lands were parts of a wider topography typically described as the monastic precinct, which was all-of-a-piece, although heterogeneous in its make-up. Of course, the kinds of work required of the monks and the products of that work varied among the different Orders and the locations in which their premises were sited. Only Carthusian monks, for example, knew how to make Chartreuse liquor in the forested hills north of Grenoble – that’s still true today. Similarly, among the many monastic settlements in England that farmed sheep and produced wool, Fountains Abbey was the most impressive, possessing approximately 15,000 sheep in the year 1208. Also varied were the degrees of dedication to manual activity.The Cistercian commitment to agricultural work in the fields set them apart from the Benedictines, whose ecclesiastical proceedings St. Bernard thought were overly elaborate.The Dominicans, by contrast, were at home in libraries and were wellpracticed at giving sermons and lectures. Labors of the spirit – which is to say the opus dei – also took several forms: prayer, reading psalms, and singing hymns. Although analytically separable, manual and spiritual activities were seen to be wholly interdependent in the regimen and routines of monastic life, by virtue of their shared integration into the rhythms, patterns, and material conditions of the natural world.Thus, a double 101

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combination defined monastic culture: manual with spiritual work and both with the cloister and its vicinity – valleys, hills, towns, or cities. The notion that pursuits like farming and praying were inseparably bound together is hard to imagine today. We tend to see these kinds of work (if that’s an acceptable word for today’s forms of spiritual life) as sharply distinct, even opposed; the first is productive, although often tedious, and the second is pursued for its own rewards, no way to make a living.Yet, this very distinction had little force in monastic culture. Activities the Benedictines named ora et labora (prayer and manual work) were said to be entirely reciprocal: the reading of scriptures and recitation of psalms were described as spiritual labor, and conversely work with one’s hands was believed to be an indispensable part of spiritual life.1 Ancient texts had authorized this this premise. John Cassian, sometimes called John the Ascetic (360–435), whose Institutions and Conferences were among the foundation stones of the entire tradition of Western monasticism, cited a precept of the Desert Fathers to explain the mutuality of spiritual and manual labor: [T]he Offices that we are obliged to render [the duties performed by a monk as a method and sign of spiritual discipline] . . . are celebrated continuously and spontaneously throughout the course of the whole day. For they [the monks] are constantly doing manual labor alone in their cells in such a way that they almost never omit meditating on the Psalms and other parts of Scripture [while they work] . . . taking up the whole day in Offices that we [also] celebrate at fixed times.2 Cassian does not say but records suggest that labor in the cells could range from transcribing texts to weaving baskets – although both occurred elsewhere too. Albeit prohibitive, a minor and much later but amusing evidence of the concurrency of work and prayer that Cassian describes is a reminder to a 12th century monk at Cluny not to sing psalms while working in the bakery, lest his saliva fall into the dough. The locations of spiritual and manual activities were also believed to be reciprocal: hymns in the chapel, readings in the chapter house, or recitations in the refectory corresponded to labor in the bakery, at the olive press, the fish ponds, or the orchard. Religious, like agricultural work was typically collective.The analogy we introduced in previous chapters can now be extended: what the combined rooms and open spaces of the Greek or Romans houses were to the oikos and villa, the cloistral buildings were to the monastic precinct. Although the scale was different, here too unity or equilibrium ruled relationships among the parts.

The monastic precinct The beginnings of a typical monastic settlement were often doubtful because the locations in which monasteries were built were often very poor in quality. Availability was directly linked to undesirability. When abbots and their followers were “given” sites by 102

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local rulers or wealthy families, not very much was given away. The name of the first Cistercian monastery, Cîteaux, is of uncertain origin, but one explanation illustrates the kind of site these communities were typically given: cîteaux translates the Latin cistercium, which meant bog or marshy ground. Although undesirable, the lands were not always unoccupied; in many instances woodlands were already in use by groups of peasants, who had, however, made few significant improvements, nothing like the forest clearings, marsh draining, canal cutting, and lake digging that resulted from Cistercian enterprise.3 Thus, monastic sites were not so much given but constructed; which is to say, the “nature” in which they were established had been artificially shaped before the work of building began. We will see equivalent examples of constructed nature in the modern examples to be studied in the following chapters. What sorts of locations were seen to be propitious for monastic settlements? A few of the characteristics that defined the typical Cistercian sites can serve as an example. Normally, the precinct was a place where a valley opened westward and was enclosed by hills or mountains on the remaining three sides (thus, not an open plane or a slope), alongside a well-supplied stream (not a river, which would have put the precinct at risk of flooding, nor by a pond, which could over time grow lifeless, nor near a lake, whose boundaries would exceed observable limits). In some commentaries on monastic culture, the interior of the landscape (the valley), was associated with the interior of the monk (the soul), each an unpromising site that required unending work. Once a piece of land with these characteristics was identified, the monks, together with a band of worker lay brothers began the task of settling or appropriating the site. Thanks to decades, even centuries of accumulated experience, shared by members of monasteries within the Order, builders could put into practice advanced skills in water management, land clearing and cultivation, and building construction. In the time between the 12th and 15th centuries monks were Europe’s best foresters, agronomists, and stock breeders; experts in fisheries, mining, and smelting; and superior to most others in producing wine, honey, fruit, and all manner of crops. As a result of monastic industry, locations that were unpromising for human occupation were transformed into local ecologies that survived for decades and centuries as largely self-sustaining. Monastic Orders were, in fact, the economic engines that powered the development and transformation of much of the European countryside.

Canterbury as an example A particularly vivid example of monastic expertise in skills we would today think of as hydrological engineering is the water system of Canterbury Cathedral Priory, depicted in a wonderful map of the site from the mid-12th century [Fig. 5.1]. It was not a Cistercian but Benedictine site. Yet, comparisons are relatively easy because the type of layout St. Bernard was to recommend (for Cistercian settlements) was largely based on the Benedictine precedent. The Canterbury map, a drawing by Prior Wilbert, shows the several ranges of buildings attached to the Cathedral and within the precinct, as well as its several gardens, pools, and yards. Also shown are the conduits, pipes, and 103

Figure 5.1  Cathedral Priory, Canterbury, c.1150. Waterworks Drawing. Source: Eadwine Psalter, 284v–285r. Courtesy of the Master and Fellows of Trinity College Cambridge.

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water courses that link these settings together: pipes shown in green carried fresh water; those in orange-red, the water that had passed through the central cloister; in red, the water that flushed the privy; yellow, a sludge soak-way; and brown, rainwater runoff and drainage. The entire compound is shown to be enclosed within a boundary wall, doubled by the city wall that parallels it, giving the impression of a world unto itself. Yet, the monastery wall is opened for the entry of the water, from its source outside. The long body of the Cathedral is shown at the top of the page, with a pair of cloisters flanking its north side. The one on the right, perfectly square in plan, includes ranges for cellarer, refectory, chapter house, and dormitory, together with a prominently situated place of washing, lavorium, used by monks before entering and when leaving the refectory. Outside this cloister, but connected to the refectory is the kitchen, with a vine growing up its wall, also a larder and pantry; near that, a gatehouse leading to the large open court, with a guest house for the poor on its other side. All of these buildings surrounded the kitchen garden, the geometry of which was far less regular than that of the main cloister.The smaller, infirmary cloister on the left includes a prominent water tower, on the sides of which are gutters sized to drain the large church roof. The right-hand side of this cloister’s interior contains a herbarium, likely containing medicinal plants, enclosed by the arcades on three sides and a lattice fence on the other. On its opposite side, this cloister also connects the church to the infirmary, with its own lavorium, well, little chapel, and kitchen. Further to the north was the long, freestanding block containing the latrines or necessarium. To its side, another long block which served as the monk’s bathhouse. Beyond these two open enclosures is the open court that includes the bakehouse, brewhouse, granary, Abbot’s guest house, and main gate. The water system connects all of these buildings, courts and gardens together. The supply, we noted, was external to the double-walled enclosure. Before it entered there (in a pipe crossing a small moat on or below a bridge), it passed from a water tower that was supplied with fresh water from a source half a mile away (and ten meters higher in elevation), through the four settling tanks shown at the bottom of the map. Between these tanks sites of field-work are shown, first cornfields, then vineyards, and lastly an apple orchard, each separately irrigated by subsidiary water lines. The fields were worked by monks, lay brothers, and possibly villagers – a community bound together not despite but because of their differences, and the distinct contributions each member could make to the well-being of the whole. The fields and waterworks clearly indicate the outward reach and extra-mural involvements of the double-walled, inward-facing compound. Once inside the walls, the water was conducted to the great tower attached to the side of the church, which provided the head of water that supplied all the precinct buildings through the web of pipes and conduits shown on the map.The sequence was significant: the cleanest water (straight from the distant hills) went first the fountain house in the infirmary cloister (a distribution point, but also place of ablutions for the monks entering the church), then to the great cloister’s lavorium, and then a number of other places in the site (refectory and kitchen, the infirmary complex, and bakehouse and brewery), with waste water sent to the latrines. In addition to linking the buildings 105

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together, the network extended to an elaborate piscina or fishpond, as well as a large basin in the cemetery. Three obvious functions were accomplished by this elaborate system: supply, flushing or cleaning, and managing run off. But the central presence of the water tower, equipped with its gutters, together with the basins that marked the entries to the monastery’s key settings, and the fountains and pools, suggests that the resource was also put on show, that practical and representational purposes went hand-in-hand. Of course, the system’s performance – utilizing but not exhausting the water’s source, the economy of its distribution, and the handling of inevitable waste – was good ecological practice. But more than that, architectural legibility that resulted revealed the benefits of community’s members working together, with themselves and with the resources of its location.

Alone in the natural world From its very beginnings, the monastic tradition coordinated a way of life, governed by one or another version of The Rule, and the material conditions of the natural world.The type of terrain in which the tradition began – desolate hillsides and parched sands – was patently unpromising; not only isolated, but barren and unyielding. For the faithful encouraging models had been provided: Jesus’ time alone in desert was one model, John the Baptist’s career along the banks of the Jordan River another. While neither locale was desirable for an ordinary life, the desolation allowed these figures and the monks who imitated their retreat undisturbed and direct contact with their god.4 A still more ancient pattern for desert living had been set, of course, with the exodus of the Jews into Sinai, and their forty-year wander. Moreover, the Baptist’s life was said to be modeled on ancient Elijah’s, because of their similarly prophetic voices no doubt, but also because of more material similarities: both wore garments of hair and leather belts and were believed to have subsisted on locust, although some scholars now think John ate honey cakes and was a vegetarian, like the members of the Essene sect to which he is sometimes connected because they too practiced baptism and preferred desert living. A less distant model for Western monks, however, was St. Anthony the Great (251– 356), often called the founder of monasticism. He too sought the desert’s burning sun and nightly chill as the right context for holy living. Secluded behind the high walls of a ruined fort, he remained on his own for about twenty years, although visited by pilgrims, whom he refused to meet face-to-face, even if he consented to their offerings of food. After his first rather obstinate two decades, he accepted the followers who had settled in nearby caves and huts, but only for a couple of years. A very great number of followers had come – some historians say 5,000 – but they couldn’t prevent him from going into retreat once again, and remaining in relative isolation for his remaining forty-five years. Alone in his desert cell, St. Anthony perfectly exemplifies the eremitic type of monk. ἐρημία is the Greek word for desert.5 Their caves, huts, or cabins were located in the 106

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otherwise uninhabited lands of in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. At the origins of Western monasticism, particularly in southern France, near Tours, hermit monks also occupied cave-like dwellings in limestone cliffs. Although these places could hardly be called architectural, their spatial attributes, simple though they were, were key in later monastic building practices: the simple profiles of timber or stone, together with the shadows they cast. Nevertheless, small groups of hermit monks formed over time, as we have seen, members of which came together only occasionally to share the holy sacraments. Those who formed these groups were later called coenobitic monks; the ones who stayed in a single place were hermits or anchorites. Who, or better what was the eremitic monk, and what kind of life (or culture) did the desert ecology and its primitive architecture sustain? Without prejudice, one can say the hermit was both less and more than a person; sequestered in an unadorned timber or stone vault, among animals, living rather like them, the hermit monk was approximately subhuman; yet, at the very same time, he or she was understood to be semi-divine, if not by selection than self-formation, thanks to isolation from the world’s distractions and near-perfect conformity to ideal models. Half-savage and half-angel, the ascetic’s life was simultaneously dissipated and affirmed in its struggle to hold together the limits of human capacity. Albeit paradoxical, mournful joy is the sentiment typically associated with this type of existence. It is hardly surprising that Anthony’s followers were astonished at his good health when he emerged from decades of seclusion. Portraits from later centuries – text-based and no doubt exaggerated – show evidences of denial in the emaciated bodies of the Desert Fathers, but also signs of peace in the faces lost in contemplation.6 Isolation from others, together with the sufferings that resulted from desert life, put the eremitic monks in direct contact with the target of their devotion. The most conspicuous elements of the “desert” ecology were the sun and stars, sand and stone, and shadows. Although the last of these resulted from the interplay of the others, shadows can be taken as the first premise of desert living. Withdrawn from the heat and glare beneath a woven or carved roof, hermits were sheltered because they were shaded.7 Water was of course required, also desired, because there was rarely enough of it. Of the three orders of human time – chronicle, calendar, and clock – only the third obtained legible expression on the sunbaked surfaces (the shadows). No evidences of local events were chronicled in lasting marks, and only a few signs of seasonal variation could be seen, the traces of periodic rains and flooding. Prominent instead was the overwhelming image of hourly change, the sun’s daily transit across the sky, ruling daily patterns. Thanks to the isolation of their dwellings and the blank record of their site, desert monks were not only largely freed from their past, but also compelled to make themselves anew. At the beginning and throughout the monastic tradition wastelands set the stage for a life of poverty. Natural conditions provided a way of life – the one that would develop into monastic culture – with its image and orientation, for the regularity of desert rhythms, the hard law of incessant repetitions, provided a perfect model for the soul’s conformity to The Rule, Benedict’s or any other designed to order daily life, particularly its habits, rather like the geometry, elements, and rhythms of the cloister walk. A 107

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pact with nature had been signed,8 binding a form of existence to its chosen environment, requiring complete submission.

Alone-together, rules, and habits Given the monk’s habit of seclusion, a nagging question troubles the history of monastic culture: what would induce the ascetic to leave the isolated spot – if only for a while – and spend time with others? What force would be strong enough to drag the solitary soul from its “joyful mourning” into conversation and communion? In point of fact, the rituals of an anchorite’s consecration closely resembled those of a funeral rite, suggesting that retreat meant ‘death to the world.’ What might resurrect a spirit that had voluntarily entombed itself, cause it to embrace the vita communis? In his opening distinction of the four types of monks, St. Benedict was rather brief about why among the types of monk cœnobitics were the best: they live in monasteries and serve under a The Rule and an Abbot. Historians report that The Rule, in its several formulations, was imposed on early groups to give them organization. The reverse principle is probably more accurate: The Rule expressed a way of life, not only its outgrowth, but articulation. Our question, however, is slightly different: why was The Rule of the Community substituted for The Rule of the Desert? If not substituted, how combined? That they were reciprocal cannot be doubted. A corollary concerns the topographical and architectural conditions of living under a community sort of rule. Are there types of terrain and spatial configuration that are particularly conducive to living alone and together? And if wastelands were the best locations for hermetic retreat, what kind of ecology was conducive to the buildings and landscapes of community life? We have already observed that desert monks quit their huts in order to participate in the holy sacraments. About this participation they had little choice, for the models they followed took part in a number of communal practices; in fact, they authorized them. Rites of cleansing through ritual bathing (tevilah) bound together the members of the 2nd century Jewish sects we mentioned, leading some scholars to associate John’s practice of baptism with pre-Christian traditions. The sacrament of communion had, of course, been instituted by Christ at the Last Supper, and was, no doubt, the most compelling institution of sharing for hermit monks. Sharing is a particularly good way of dealing with scarcity. Much later, during the centuries of Western monasteries, anchorites whose cells were compacted into the walls of churches took communion and listened to sermons and hymns through slightly widened cracks in their walledup enclosures. Still another inducement to involvement was the so-called great commission, according to which the faithful were charged to communicate the Christian message widely. St. Anthony’s occasional departures from his cell allowed him to preach in nearby cities and at home, to the hundreds who had gathered there. The same was true for all the other great Desert Fathers, hermits, and anchorites: Saint Simeon, who delivered his homilies from the pillar on which he sat for thirty years; also, John Chrysostom, later Archbishop of Constantinople but no friend of Jewish Christians; and 108

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thirdly, the Egyptian Pachomius, who is commonly viewed as the first to have founded a monastery in the West, in the year 320. His regulations disciplined labor, conversation, diet, and prayer. Some historians argue that The Rule he devised was inspired by his time as a Roman soldier. Little is known about the topography and architecture of the Pachomian monastery, nor if its appearance was in any way a legible sign of The Rule to which its members had submitted themselves. Regardless of who established The Rule, its precepts and practices were habituated by members of the community. Habit is, of course, the stem of a group of terms that are particularly apposite to not only the daily life, but the architecture of monastic culture.9 In fact, this term is unavoidable in all accounts of monastic buildings and landscapes that seek to connect spatial forms with the way of life they accommodate and represent.The monastic habitat was not only where the community resided, but also where it could thrive, and thrive as a community. As far as monasteries are concerned, the term cohabitation is redundant. Although today we tend to use the word habit to refer to ways of acting, thinking or behaving that are particular to an individual, in the monastic context, habits were always shared, insofar as all who were involved agreed to submit themselves to practices outlined in The Rule.The vow of obedience meant conformity to and repetition of prescribed behaviors.Yet, cohesion more than constraint appears to have been the outcome of monastic discipline. Clearly it is wrong to say practices such as these were natural, because they were learned; but insofar as they were also, through time, absorbed into forms of conduct that unfolded unreflectively or without premeditation, they surely seemed to be given by nature. This observation restates an ancient thesis: “habit is a second nature.”10 Thus any habit was – and in modern secular equivalents still is – a rather strange sort of acquisition, for once obtained, rather like a possession, it was taken to be entirely native to the person or group who adopted it, as if something added to the person had been there by birth.11 In architecture we have called this hybrid condition constructed nature. As for the person, thanks to habitual practice what one had built-up over time seemed to be what one had always been.With this little paradox at its very core, habitus can be taken to signify “a way of being and a way of acting.”12 While acceptance of monastic vows required a personal decision that dramatically changed the individual’s life, outward evidences of conduct and appearance made that inner resolution visible and legible to others. From its very start, the rules of the monastic tradition privileged a particular site for this type of showing, personal dress, the monk’s habit. As before, here we confront a topic that will be misunderstood if it is seen as chiefly personal, for habits of dressing were always shared among members of a monastic society: all of the monks in a given Order wore the same garments, although differences of rank were indicated by nuances of attire.The conclusion of postulancy and the beginning of a monk’s novitiate, for example, was publically celebrated and symbolized by the acceptance of the community’s habit. Voluntary participation in a common way of life was through this means put in clear evidence. The white, black, or brown tunic pointed to a particular way of being in the world: Carthusian, Benedictine, or Franciscan. The adoption of a habit might, then, seem to efface the individual, but this is only the case in degraded performances. Each time the prescribed form of behavior was 109

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resumed the initial (personal) decision to join the Order and accept its discipline was renewed. Perhaps we are too quick to think mechanism when describing the enactment of a habit, for the resumption of an act in the context of changed circumstance always prompted an adjustment of the norm, slight thought it may have been, to achieve the desired end or bring the performance into closer proximity to the underlying idea than the past performance would have done. Habit is by definition a settled disposition. But when practiced it was also kind of behavior, tendency or inclination that was principle mutable, through unforeseen, unending, and, as we said, generally minor innovations. Habits were always cut to fit. Mechanical performances were of course possible, even a tendency when practiced for long periods of time, but this is not to say they were inevitable.13 The “law of the limbs” was also an “idea in action,”14 no matter whether the habit was made apparent in a way of behaving or a manner of dressing. Every settled disposition was also a tendency of behavior. Inertia was coupled with spontaneity. The embodiment of rules, principles, or ideas that were believed to be unchanging, not only took several forms, but forms that could in principle change unceasingly. Important for us is the fact that the monk’s dressing or wardrobe, as a habitus, was not the only embodiment and indication of life according to The Rule; the same was true for the monastic buildings within the wider precinct – the enclosed and open settings the members of an Order typically inhabited. Insofar as the surfaces of these spaces were construed as vestments (claddings), they, too, indicated the habitus monachorum, the communal way of living under The Rule. The same can be said for the configurations of rooms, their measures, geometries, and rhythms. Like the monk’s body and its vestments, the settings that expressed The Rule, the spatially situated habits, were structured, palpable, and legible. The adoption of habits makes it plain that sharing was in monastic culture the preferred way of dealing with scarcity – sharing of land, crops, and meals, but also of knowledge, skills, experiences, and appearances. Of course the mutuality that resulted went hand-in-hand with doctrinaire precepts (religion), but could be distinguished from them, and in the modern period indeed was. We will show that for architects like Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, monastic communities could exist and be ecological without being clerical. Insofar as a key dimension of modernization has been secularization, this premise was essential in this ecology’s modern development. Sharing resources would be required, also a sense of mutuality or equality, and an acceptance of the economy of means. In the examples, we will study the natural world was both the context of and model for this type of culture.

Le grand Chartreuse Perhaps the most explicit architectural manifestation of the complementarity between the spaces of solitude and fellowship governed by The Rule and expressed in habits is the type that we will see particularly fascinated Le Corbusier, the Carthusian monastery15 [Fig. 5.2]. Its origins are well documented. St. Bruno (1030–1101) played the role

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Figure 5.2  Carthusian monastery, Clermont. Floor plan. Source: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, “Architecture Monastique,” Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, Paris: A Morel, 1875, Fig. 27.

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of founder. He was born in Cologne and educated at Reims, where he became head of the city’s great episcopal school and friend of Pope Urban II, whom he had taught there. He also had contact with Robert of Molesme, who helped form the Cistercian Order. The intrigues and disappointments of his administrative life strengthened Bruno’s resolve to abandon those types of involvement, but instead of following the newly formed Cistercian way with Robert, and after a period of wandering in the forests and marshes of eastern France, he won support from the Bishop of Grenoble, who apparently anticipated the request, having had a dream about Bruno and his small group of followers standing in an uninhabited clearing under a crown of seven stars. Sometime later, the Bishop took them to a rather wild spot in the Alps called Chartreuse, a valley surrounded by the precipitous slopes of an inhospitable and inaccessible limestone massif, covered most of the year with snow.16 Obviously, the heat and sands that were so liked by the Desert Fathers couldn’t be found there, but the place was similarly desolate. In that spot, Bruno and his followers established the first Charterhouse monastery, as well as the Carthusian way of living. The simplest way of describing their habit is to say that Carthusians combined more perfectly than most Orders the two fundamental impulses of the entire tradition: “individual and communal life.”17 They wanted nothing more than solitude, but recognized the need for and benefit of fellowship. Acknowledging this double demand, Bruno gave each of the twelve their own little house, but required all to appear in the shared spaces – the church, chapter house, and refectory – at the appointed hour, in keeping with what was called the horologium vitae. Of course, some forms of work also brought them together. Although used commonly in histories of monasticism, the term cell in accounts of Carthusian living requires a little elaboration, for the unit’s size, position, and perimeter definition suggest it was really a little house [Fig. 5.3]. It was twice removed from the shared cloister, first by the cloister walk and second by an internal passage that often contained a stair.Within the unit, there were several settings: an anteroom (the only one that was heated), a bedroom large enough for a table or two, an adjoining room used for work, a small larder, and long corridor that led to the latrine. But that was not all. Each house had its own garden or yard for work, three or four times larger than the house, sheltered within enclosing walls. Why the work space? Each monk was expected to practice a skill that would be of use to the monastery as a whole.The results of this type of industry would be enjoyed at mealtime, of course, but also places like the scriptorium or armarium, if the monk was better with pen and paper than a trowel or chisel. This configuration (rooms plus work yard or garden plot) also acknowledged the principle of ora et labora, although that phrase came later. In addition to the individual and shared spaces (the cloister of houses wrapping around the cemetery, together with the church, chapter house, refectory, and prior’s house), there was a set of spaces, generally on the west side, for the lay brothers, the conversi and donati, who not only managed many of the physical needs of the monastery but served as a protective interface between their secluded enclosure and the world beyond. Within the walls of the monastery, however,

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Figure 5.3  Cartusian monastery, Clermont. Floor plan of monks’ cell. Source: Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, “Architecture Monastique,” Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, Paris: A Morel, 1875, Fig. 28.

the equilibrium between spaces for individual and collective life was carefully and elaborately constructed. That type of balance is exactly what the modern equivalents would be designed to achieve.

Notes 1 The Rule of the Master, 224 and 209. See also, Agamben, Highest Poverty, 23. 2 Cassian, Works, 92 and 59. See also, Agamben, 20. 3 In the history of Cistercian monasteries in England, Scotland, and Wales, there are many instances in which peasants were relocated to nearby villages. Apparently, this allowed the monks to settle “far from the concourse of men,” despite pre-existing settlements. On the Cistercians in and outside the British Isles, see: Kinder, Cistercian Europe.

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4 We will see in Chapter 7 that this very point was stressed by Frank Lloyd Wright in his rather rhapsodic, although secular, account of the “desert” location of his Ocatilla Camp. 5 Hermit is the way the term comes into English. The Latin eremita was based on the Greek ἐρημίτης, itself cognate with ἐρημία, meaning desert, and ἐρῆμος, which referred to any uninhabited, empty or desolate place. 6 A comparable image from the modern period we will consider in the following chapter is Le Corbusier, staring out the window of his Cap-Martin work shack, with drawings on the wall beside him and his work table beneath his hands. 7 Shelter, shade, and shadow are cognate words. The idea that the interconnections between these three account for architectural origins has a long history. Although his overall characterization was negative, given his clear preference for “life on the savannah,” Frank Lloyd Wright attested to the archetypal nature of this type of living situation in his “shadows in the wall” story in The Living City. A positive account, describing the cave shadow as architecture’s origin was offered by Sverre Fehn in “Dimensions.” 8 Although from Le Corbusier, this phrase suits the monastic life very well. See Le Corbusier and de Pierrefeu, Home of Man, 97. 9 No one in recent years has elaborated the social and spatial meanings of the term habit more fully than the anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu, although his concern was not monastic culture.To cope with the range of meanings he intended he adopted its antecedent form, habitus, the Latin root of both the French and English derivatives. He rarely cited, but often invoked meanings associated with the early use of the ancient term.While cognitive, the habitus, according to Bourdieu, always obtains a corresponding and perceptible “objectivity.” Alternative terms for this second characteristic might be palpable manifestation or embodiment. It is evident in modes of human practice; in part their instrument, but also their emblem. As such, the habitus can be likened to one or another of the many “tools of institutions.” Among these tools, of course, are architectural settings, which are always palpably manifest, durability being one of their chief virtues. The second key point is that habitual structures are neither invented for nor maintained by individuals themselves; it is groups that source and sustain them.The habitus, Bourdieu maintains, is essentially communal. He often repeats that it is socially structured and influential on social structures. A third and no less decisive characteristic of the habitus is its historical nature: a product of history that shapes collective practices as they unfold over time. Habit formation is, thus, a dialectical process, for in all instances of their construction an acute awareness of existing conditions is coupled with alertness to unique opportunities for invention. All three dimensions – the “objectivity” of the habitus, its communal origins and outcomes, and its historical nature – can be discovered in the institution that has concerned us in thus far, the monastic ecology. 10 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1152a30. 11 Paul Ricoeur made this same point in the following terms: “an acquisition which does not become inscribed into nature would no longer be a habit.” See: Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, 283. 12 The classical source for this observation is Aristotle, and the key term is hexis. Two meanings of that term were distinguished, state or condition and disposition or tendency.The matter does not end there, because habit (the regular repetition of certain actions) was described by Aristotle with the word ethos. On the matter of habit as a “way of being” see also, Agamben, 13. 13 In recognition of the creativity at the heart of habitual performances, Félix Ravaisson, whose Of Habit (1832) has been the primary source for most recent reflections on the topic, insisted on the inseparability of performances that seem rather automatic (habits whose repetition tended toward the routine) and those that demonstrate recalibration or attunement (habits remade in face of changed circumstances, for the sake of a closer approximation to their aim or purpose). 14 Ibid., 57–59. 15 Viollet le Duc provided a good diagram of the type, generalized in its particulars, as is true for all types, but very helpful nevertheless. See Viollet le Duc, Dictionnaire raisonné. 16 The distance between Le Grande Chartreuse and Le Corbusier’s La Tourette is about 100 kilometers. 17 The terms Le Corbusier used for this coupling were individual and community.

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In a confession of affection meant to be provocative, Le Corbusier once recalled that at the Salon d’Automme exhibition in Paris (1922) he had “taken on a mistress: HARMONY.”1 Why this association and affection? It was, he explained, his response to one of the fundamental dilemmas of modern life. The first decades of the 20th century had witnessed a fundamental crisis, the individual against the collective, a crisis that had to be overcome through whatever means possible, for either on its own was an absurd alternative. The isolated individual, even if a genius, would inevitably lead a partial, broken life, and the mass man, even if familiar, would continually suffer anonymity. Throughout his work and life Le Corbusier sought a coupling of people and places that would achieve a state of equilibrium, or, as suggested in the 1960 admission, harmony. He believed that his first step toward that end was taken with the Immeuble-villas (apartment-villas) project, for with that design “town-planning and architecture [had] suddenly come alive: the basic cell and the whole conception”2 [Fig. 6.1]. A spectrum of three scales was implied in this new beginning, ranging from the individual cell (the single villa-apartment), to the ensemble of cells bound together in a block-size building, to the entire city of three million inhabitants. The newly found key to harmony was the scale in-between, the type of association that would bring the individual and collective together.

Apartment-villa-monastery The name Immeubule-villas (apartment-villas) – hardly a common term – indicates that the project was for domestic accommodation. It was one of three basic types in Le Corbusier’s plan for The Contemporary City; the other two were the sixty-story towers and the redent housing blocks. But the hyphenated term, apartment-villas, like so many of his compound words, pointed to a break from assumed types. Two were to be understood as one; the individual cell was somehow both a villa, typically found in the country, and an apartment, typically found in the city, which is to say both in a modern sense. The organization and programming of the whole building partly explains how life in an apartment could be like that of a villa. 115

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Figure 6.1  Immeuble-villas, Paris, 1922, Le Corbusier. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 19069.

Each of the block-size buildings was designed to be five stories tall and contain 120 units.3 Two basic types of space were both distinguished and integrated, collective and individual. By comparison with norms in Paris and other European cities, the provisions to be shared by the residents were unusually varied and generous. Each block was like a little city within the city. The project’s urban generosity was exemplified in the provisions for dining. All residents were to benefit from a special purchasing service that would select and then obtain food for the meals. Le Corbusier had expressed doubts about the freshness of foods typically brought from the provinces to the city: too many intermediaries increased staleness. Although residents would have had their own cooking facilities, highly trained chefs would also be on hand. Meals could be enjoyed in either the individual cells or the public dining room, which was somewhat like a refectory, but situated, like so much of the building’s public life, up on the roof, under the sun. A system of “streets in the air” and vertical circulation was organized to make the roof landscape a destination that was not only accessible but inviting. Cleaning services were likewise provided for all, both room cleaning and laundry, in the manner of a hotel. Recreation and physical culture figured largely in the design: on the roof of each block were an open-air solarium and 300-meter running track. On the ground level at the block’s center were tennis courts. Other ball courts and fields were distributed among the surrounding parks and gardens. Le Corbusier didn’t say, but one imagines allotment gardens would have allowed residents to grow flowers and vegetables, as they could do in the urban housing he designed for Pessac-Bordeaux a few years later. Although this extended and elaborate list of shared services approximates in some ways the lifestyle of villa culture – healthy diet, exercise/work, and outdoor 116

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living – the spaces of the individual unit were also meant to indicate the appropriateness of the term villa-apartment. Each of the L-shaped “cells” was not one, but two story.4 Its double-height living room formed one of the side walls of a private and semi-enclosed garden that was called either a terrasse-jardin or jardin sus­pendu (suspended gardens).5 His perspective shows a terrace with a relatively open and hard floor surface – he stressed this garden wouldn’t get your feet wet – ivy and flowers were rooted in perimeter boxes so they could climb the walls. Both the garden and the glazed end wall of the living room faced the street, as did those of all the other units above, below, and to the sides. Under the sun’s brightness, the window walls and garden loggias presented a play of contrasting lights and darks, animating the façade. The balconies that extended the living rooms through the glass walls also played a role in modulating the building’s outer surface, giving it scale and casting a pattern of shadows. They also created small viewing decks within the slight depth of the glass surface. The written description offered eight years later in Precisions indicates his intention with respect to the urban image: [W]ith such buildings, a new module determines the façade. These window walls, enlivened by the big holes of the gardens (six meters), bring a new architectural vision. The appearance of the city will change; the scale of city plans will be based on an architectural module of six meters instead of the present one of three.6 In addition to allowing air and light into the cells, the suspended gardens, equipped with outdoor furniture and the planting boxes, brought together opportunities of the private unit (dining or reading, for example, but more basically, inwardly focused activities) with those of the shared spaces on the roof and at the building’s base (exercise and tending to plants) [Fig. 6.2]. This conjunction – body (sport and recreation) and mind (reading and contemplation) – seems to have been what Le Corbusier had in mind when he used the word villa to define the type of apartment that would overcome the crisis of modern living.The term he used to describe the project in Towards an Architecture pointed in the same direction: “domestic economy.”7 Despite the aspirations toward villa life, together with this allusion to this ancient idea of oikos, his model for the grouping or assembly of apartment-villas into a single building was not essentially domestic. It was instead monastic, surprising though that may seem considering the project’s secular context. In the explanatory text he provided in Complete Works, Le Corbusier wrote: [T]he Immebules-villas . . . spontaneously arose from an after-lunch memory of an Italian Carthusian monastery in Ema (serene happiness), which I scribbled on the back of a restaurant menu. The key to urbanism is a man who can be horrified by the disorganization of the urban phenomenon or delighted and overwhelmed by the attention given to specifically human needs.8 117

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Figure 6.2  Immeuble-villas, Paris, 1922, Le Corbusier. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 19082.

This explanation suggests a double conflation types: first, a private apartment with modern villa, and second, an ensemble of apartment-villas with monastery. For the individual unit the resulting transformation would be something like a villa-­apartment-cell. That term was not his, but perhaps it indicates the aim of the ­typological invention. No doubt this approach to modern urban living by way of the monastery was indirect, even strange. Secularization was certainly required. Among the shared spaces in the apartment-villas, there was no chapel. Le Corbusier could have obviously turned to other models of urban living – residential models – in Europe or the United States. Why one that was monastic? Why or how would the monk’s way of living provide a model for the recasting of relationships between the individual and the collective that would overcome the fundamental crisis of modern times? The evidence adduced thus far suggests it was not an interest in organized religion that recommended the monastery, but the ways monastic life was structured or organized – the ways the members of the community were simultaneously alone and together, and at work in the natural world.

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Carthusian culture Le Corbusier’s interest in the Chartreuse d’Ema, not far from Florence, was neither casual nor passing [Fig. 6.3]. He praised it many times, in print and private letters, from the years of his youthful travels to just months before he died. In written correspondence about his own monastery design, La Tourette, to which we will turn below, he observed that “his whole life had been guided by a visit while he was young to the Chartreuse d’Ema.”9 The full range of ideas he had been given by the place can be gleaned from a number of his many references. For example, a rather late statement about the thinking behind the Unité d’habitation in Marseilles, explained the connection between his interest in harmony (at Marseilles) and his experiences at Ema: “The Chartreuse d’Ema near Florence made me conscious of the harmony which results from the interplay of individual and collective life when each reacts favorably upon the others. Individual and collectivity comprehended as fundamental dualism.”10 Earlier accounts, by contrast, characterized monastic living in rather more personal terms. A letter sent to his parents in 1907 explained: “I would like to live all my life in what they call their cells. It is the [perfect] solution to the working man’s house, type unique or rather an earthly paradise.”11 Not only does this allusion to the working

Figure 6.3  Carthusian monastery, Galluzzo, (near the river Ema), outside of Florence, c. 1341–65. Source: Scala/Art Resource, NY ART486130.

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man’s house anticipate the apartment-villas project, but it shows that he wanted to be seen (at least by his parents) as a “worker.” Moreover, it seems as though he thought the lives of modern workers were or should be somehow monk-like. Making due with less was important (thrift and frugality more than renunciation), as was the regimen the community followed, according to diurnal and seasonal patterns.12 The letter we have cited (one among many sent home – 682) was drafted in the first days of a study tour through Italy. Two undated drawings also survive from that visit, a plan and section of a single cell.13 His concerns with monastic life are apparent in what he chose to draw and write about – also what he neglected. As shown in his plan and section, the monk’s cell includes an ensemble of rooms, an open-air loggia, and a semi-enclosed garden [Fig. 6.4]. That each is one cell among others is clear from the lateral extensions he sketched. Next to the cell’s L-shaped plan, one can see the roof of the neighboring loggia. In section, on the left side, he roughed out the arched covering of the cloister walk, parallel to but separate from a passage within the cell (two parallel corridors also appear in the apartment-villas plan). On the right side of the Ema cell, beyond the garden wall, he has shown the steep slope outside the monastery, on which cypress trees and bushes grow.That the garden was significant is plain from the care Le Corbusier took when drawing plants in both elevation and plan (as in the hanging gardens of the apartment-villas). The garden was also equipped with two water basins, one “with a bucket and chain” for drinking water and the other for irrigation. His written annotations characterized the ensemble, although it was small, as a unified whole: “this monk’s cell in the Certosa d’Ema would serve wonderfully for worker’s housing because the individual building is fully self-sufficient. Marvelous calm; the big wall would block the view of the street.”14 He also noted the “splendid” view of Florence and the foothills of the Alps, framed by a window at the end of the loggia, equipped, he noted, with seats at the base of the embrasures, which created a small viewing spaces within the wall thickness. Once again, we were presented with a similar situation in the apartment-villas. Many of his later interior perspective drawings depict a contemplative spectator in such a position, either sitting or resting on a balcony railing.15 Four years after this first encounter with Ema, at the end of his Journey to the East, his enthusiasm for the place was undiminished16 [Fig. 6.5]. The sketches from this second visit record once again what he took to be the cell’s key outdoor settings: the garden at ground level, with a well at its center and plants climbing its perimeter walls, together with the upper-level loggia toward the outer wall, with its double seats around an aperture that presented a view of the horizon. In fact, the architecture of the loggia framed three distinct prospects and distances: down into the garden, outward through the window at the end of the passage, and even more widely over the garden wall toward the hills in the distance.The architectural devices that framed these distances are the colonnade, parapet sill, and punched opening in the end wall. These three appear prominently in the perspectives from 1911, as well as the plan and section from 1907. 120

Figure 6.4  Carthusian monastery, Galluzzo, (near the river Ema), outside of Florence, c. 1341–65. Plan and section of monk’s cell, Le Corbusier, 1907. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017.

Figure 6.5  Carthusian monastery, Galluzzo (near the river Ema), outside of Florence, c. 1341–65. Views from monk’s cell, Le Corbusier, 1911. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 6421.

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Two decades later, when explaining “Dwelling at a Human Scale,” he elaborated on what this perspective shows: [T]he beginning of [my studies of human scale], for me, goes back to my visit to the Carthusian monastery of Ema near Florence, in 1907. In the musical landscape of Tuscany I saw a modern city crowning a hill. The noblest silhouette in the landscape, an uninterrupted crown of monks’ cells; each cell has a view on the plain, and opens on a lower level on an entirely closed garden. I thought I had never seen such a happy interpretation of a dwelling.The back of each cell opens by a door and a wicket on a circular [sic] street. This street is covered by an arcade: the cloister. Through this way the monastery services operate – prayer, visits, food, funerals.17 This description could also be used to explain the arrangement of one of the Villaapartments of 1922, the double passage – harmonizing the part with the whole – the entry at the “back” of the unit, and the views into and beyond the semi-enclosed garden. One more quotation will fill out most of what Le Corbusier discovered at Ema. Just after the end of World War II, in a little-known interview titled “The Shape of Tomorrow’s Europe,” he began his account of Ema by confessing his love for “the beautiful things of the past.” He then explained: In early youth I traveled to Italy, the Balkans, Constantinople, Orient.The idea of ​​homes repeated and grouped in units struck me in the monastery of Ema in Tuscany. Look, I still have with me a notebook in which I sketched the abode of monks. . . . Everyone has what they need, that is to say little, if they are wise. One who is still battered by the instinct of possession can buy an apartment, a house, if you will. But real estate can and should belong to everyone: clean air, the sun, the view of nature, walking in the orchard, games and many other things. What do I need to own? Several books? Probably. But are there not thousands at the National Library?18 The serenity that comes from monastic self-sufficiency struck him as chiefly important. Religion does not enter into the picture he paints; again there is no mention of the church or chapter house.Yet, he was clear about the importance of sharing, of the common interest in natural phenomena, and the idea (or ethical premise) that “real estate” should belong to everyone. He had a culture in mind, one that would be ecological; hence the emphasis on sharing. Although it was the most discussed, the Charterhouse at Ema was not the only Carthusian monastery that preoccupied Le Corbusier, nor was it the sole basis for his understanding of monastic culture. Before arriving to Florence, he had visited the Certosa di Pavia, not far from Milan. As with Ema, he reported his admiration in a letter to his parents. Paradise entered this account, as if would with Ema; also the pleasures of the 123

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monastic way of life, described this time as “délicieuse.”19 Brief as it was, his account was more effusive than the description he would have read in the Baedeker guidebook he carried.There the Charterhouse was described as “the most famous house of the Order next to the former Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble.”20 Nothing was recorded about the lifestyle of the monks in Baedeker, only that the twenty-four lived in little houses. Le Corbusier had at least two other “guidebooks” on his 1907 trip: texts by Hippolyte Taine and John Ruskin. Maître Taine failed to mention either Charterhouse, concentrating mostly on paintings, aesthetic theories, and what he saw as the “character” of the people in the different regions.21 Ruskin, however, did recommend Ema, suggesting at the end of the first visit: If you will drive in the evening to the Chartreuse in Val d’Ema, you may see . . . some fading light and shade of monastic life, among which if you stay till the fireflies come out in the twilight . . . you will be better prepared for tomorrow’s walk . . . than if you go to a party to talk sentiment about Italy, and hear the last news from London and New York.22 Ruskin was not so happy with the Charterhouse at Pavia, however. He observed in Stones of Venice that despite its elaborate displays it had inferior art, the style of which was “singularly bad” and had “no monasterial feeling.” He was never so “overwhelmed with mediocrity.”23 Greater detail cannot be found in Ruskin’s account, but he shared with Le Corbusier a concern for “monastic life,” or “monasterial feeling.” Although it is uncertain that he carried it with him in 1907, there was at least one more source that pointed Le Corbusier toward the Italian charterhouses, a book much loved by his parents and brother: Rodolphe Töpffer’s guide through the Alps, which included a tour through the Grande Chartreuse near Grenoble, mentioned by Baedeker24 [Fig. 6.6]. Apart from the fact that he owned a copy of this book, Le Corbusier’s interest in Töpffer is clear when one consults his early publications, which include the illustrator’s sketches and caricatures. Pages from Töpffer’s Histoire de M. Pensil, for example, illustrate the concluding arguments of Une Maison-Un Palais. Töpffer drawings also appeared on the pages of L’Esprit Nouveau. The young Le Corbusier, Charles Edouard Jeanneret, apparently copied illustrations from Töpffer on the dinner table after meals, and once told a friend,William Ritter, that he “would be delighted to write a doctoral thesis” on Töpffer.25 The subtitle of the Voyages en Zigzag is significant for our consideration of monastic life: a la Grande Chartreuse, au Tour de Mont Blanc. As we learned from Baedeker,The Grande Chartreuse is the oldest and most important of the Carthusian houses. Töpffer’s description of the monastery appears in the fourth journey of the Voyages. An account of its “desert” location is provided,26 as well as a description of the culture of the institution: the reign of solitary and serene silence, together with a commitment to renunciation, austerity, uniformity, and daily discipline, all made vivid in the architecture of the place. The narrator takes the reader into one of the monk’s cells, which seemed to him “in truth, empty.” Each cell was two-story, clean, and convenient. 124

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Figure 6.6  Carthusian monastery (La Grande Chartreuse), Grenoble, c. 1084. Aerial view,Wenceslaus Hollar, 1649. Source: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1920. www.metmuseum.org.

A door from the cell opened onto a corridor that led toward the boundary wall, but also formed one side of a semi-enclosed garden, which the monk was expected to personally cultivate [Fig. 6.7]. Most importantly: “from the windows of the cell the monk could see only this garden and the peak of the mountains which fit tightly round the valley.”27 One can safely assume it was exactly this description – the sheltered, two-story, L-shaped enclosure, together with its ground-level garden and double view – that Le Corbusier had in mind when he visited the charterhouses of both Pavia and Ema.28 Several years after the apartment-villas project, in 1928, when drawing the “jardin-suspendu” of a cell in the similarly structured Wanner Apartments, Le Corbusier’s prospect through the window wall depicted distant mountains that could not in fact be seen – indicating both his neglect of the middle ground and his desire for distance. The life of the individual monk was, we have seen, only part of the problem Le Corbusier wanted to address. His worry about modern civilization focused on the divorce between the individual and the community. Carthusian culture was important to him because it indicated how this separation might be overcome.The garden within the cell and the outward view was therefore part, not all of the solution. One more monastery study – Le Corbusier’s investigation of the Certosa di Venezia – will allow us to complete our first sketch of this picture. 125

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Figure 6.7  Carthusian monastery (La Grande Chartreuse), Grenoble c. 1084. View of monk’s garden. Source: Rodolphe Töpffer, Nouveau Voyages en Zigzag: A la Grande Chartreuse, 1854, 34.

Le Corbusier’s undated drawing [Fig. 6.8] of the Carthusian precinct in Venice was derived from a 17th century engraving by Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, the title of which was Cartusia inclytae venetiarum Urbis [Fig. 6.9]. Le Corbusier’s written annotations at the bottom of the page are schematic: “triple size engraving showing a marvelous use of an island, with the same system (layout) as Ema, with gardens, graveyard, tenanted farm, meadows, etc.”29 Settings one would assume to be key to the institution – church, chapter house, refectory, cloister, and abbot’s house – were again neglected in this description in favor of outdoor places, especially of work, such as farming (vineyards, meadows, and orchards), animal husbandry, and gardening. New to the list, when compared to his descriptions of Ema, Pavia, and Chartreuse, is the reference to the cemetery. Nevertheless, he gave the hay-barn and the accommodations for tenant farmers as much graphic articulation as the church. Looking again at his source, he could also have mentioned the fish ponds, of which two are named in the legend, a long one, running the full length of the island, dividing most of the fields from the claustral buildings, and another that was specially tended by the abbot. Although the sketch was hurried, each of the cell-gardens was drawn and he took care to note the shadows that filled the loggias above each. These passageways did not face the adjoining cells’ side walls, opposite the garden – as at Ema, Pavia, and the Grande Chartreuse – but outward toward Venice or the sea. 126

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Figure 6.8  Carthusian monastery,Venice, c. 1422. Aerial view, Le Corbusier, 1915. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. B2(20)237.

Figure 6.9  Carthusian monastery,Venice, c. 1422. Source: Vincenzo Maria Coronelli, Cartusia Inclytae Venetiarum Urbis, in Marco Boschini, La Carta del Navegar pittoresco, 1660.

Seeing some things in the engraving meant not seeing others. When Le Corbusier redrew the Venetian example, he overlooked the specifically religious settings (chapel, chapter house, even refectory) and concentrated on the cells, the geometries that bound them together (occasionally extending across the island), the places of outdoor work, and the wider territory of the precinct, bounded not by a wall (as was common in European monasteries), but by the waters of the lagoon. This set of interests remained 127

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with him for decades and played an important role in his own projects.The solitary and social dimensions of monastic life were harmonized in the patterns and schedules of work – and if not physical work than physical culture, exercise, in one form or another, including team sports. Later we will see how work schedules, like those of religious practice, followed the pattern of monastic hours, which were, in turn elaborations of the cycles of nature, binding a culture to an ecology. Le Corbusier was never given the opportunity to design a Charterhouse monastery with cell-garden units. In his design for the Dominican monastery of La Tourette, the ground-level garden did not survive, but Ema’s upper-level window did. No matter whether the project was religious or secular, the balcony was something to which he would repeatedly return. He wrote to a trusted member of the atelier: I do not want to remove the balconies, which are from a monastic perspective the key that inspired all my domestic architecture from 1907 [when I visited] the charterhouse at Emma [sic] in Tuscany . . . where the practice of solitary meditation before nature struck me once and for all.30

A modern monastery Orientation toward nature would seem to be at once obvious and inevitable in a site such as the one Le Corbusier was given for the design of La Tourette outside the small village of Eveux31 [Fig. 6.10].Yet, the varied aspects of the milieu – the un-even terrain, pre-exiting buildings, various types of vegetation and different water sources; together with the historical and recent patterns of use, both domestic and agricultural – made the “nature” to which the view was oriented a context that was also artificial; which is to say, again, an ecology that was equally cultural. The Monastery of Sainte Marie de la Tourette was built for the Dominican Order; a mendicant order (beggars), that was also called the Order of Preachers or the Jacobins. Although the Order was ancient, founded by St. Dominic in 1216, the Dominicans suffered greatly during and after the years of the French Revolution, and regrowth in the 19th century was slow, interrupted once again at the beginning of the 20th century. Nevertheless, a group located themselves in Eveux in 1943, after purchasing the Chateau de la Tourette, which still stands about 200 meters north of Le Corbusier’s building [Fig. 6.11]. Before they moved into their new premises, the monks used the site for retreats and seminars – also for some agricultural work. The old Chateau was also the location of Le Corbusier’s first meeting with the community. The proper name of the entire location is important to retain, Domain La Tourette, for it preserves the mutuality or non-division between landscape and building within a bounded or circumscribed limit.32 Topographically, the Chateau crested one of the hills outside Eveux, a village that was not ancient, but had been occupied since the 18th century. The Chateau de la Tourette, however, rests on the foundations of a castle that dates from the 16th century. Of the many important families that governed the Domain, the most 128

Figure 6.10  Sainte Marie de la Tourette, Éveux (near Lyon), 1960, Le Corbusier. Preliminary sketches, 1953. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. K3(19)179.

Figure 6.11  Sainte Marie de la Tourette, Éveux (near Lyon), 1960, Le Corbusier. Location plan with water supply and drainage, 1955. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 1030.

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relevant for our purposes is the Claret family, whose importance resulted from the activities of Marc Antoine Louis Claret de Fleurieu (1729–1793). Commonly called “the botanist of Tourette,” he was not only a key figure in the history of Lyon’s Jardin Botanique, but friend and regular correspondent with figures such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Linnaeus. When one or another of the philosophers traveled to Lyon, they stayed with Claret at his Chateau. Any improvements he may have made to the buildings are unrecorded, but his work in the wider precinct was extensive. In 1766, he organized a botanical park on the slopes and valleys around the Chateau, in which were planted over 3,000 species of trees and plants, both native and foreign. As one would expect, the park was not well maintained in the decades that followed. Yet, the land was not neglected; subsequent owners grew crops, which explains the presence of rather elaborate barns and working courts at the rear of the Chateau, running parallel to the axis of three pools that that begins at the house and terminates in a large basin called the “half-moon pool,” drawn clearly on the site surveys undertaken by Le Corbusier’s office at the start of his project. Early plans for the project also show that one source of the water supplied to the monastery buildings was the half-moon pool. The other source was a cistern 500 meters away, the supply line from which passed beneath the entry to the monastery and then, down the hill, under the end of the block that approaches the chapel. Unlike the Cistercians, known for their dedication to work in the fields, the Dominicans were more at home in libraries than fields and barns. Yet, the environment to which the building was oriented was the site of both botanical and agricultural work, made vivid in some unusual specimens and the seasonal yield of crops, both noted by Le Corbusier in his survey sketches. His concern, we want to stress, was with the entire domain, not just the plot on which he built, for that domain provided his project with its basic orientation, both environmental and cultural.

A cultural horizon of reference Le Corbusier’s response to the site’s topography and history was no less “artificial” than what he found there. His basic premise was a horizontal line or plane – an elevated horizon of reference – from which the building’s settings would establish localized and specific relationships with all that was around and below. The procedure was outlined in a conversation he had with members of the monastic community just after the building was finished.33 He said that he had approached the site as he had all of his other projects: pencil and sketchbook in hand, documenting pre-existing conditions, such as solar orientation, views (their distances and targets), and the lay of the land. One of the sketches that survive from this first visit shows in perspective the Western prospect towards (1) the fields at the base of the slope, (2) the forest to the south, (3) the Chateau to the north (fronted by a tall and imposing Sequoyah that survived, we suspect, from Claret’s planting campaign), and finally, (4) at the greatest distance, the village and mountains beyond.34 While layered depth is apparent in this drawing, the severity of the slope cannot be discerned, nor the 130

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variety of the landscape. What he later said about the site makes the role of the artificial horizon clear: Here, in this environment which is so mobile, so fluid, so shifting, descending, flowing, I said: I am not going to establish the position from the ground because it flees. . . . We establish the position from the horizontal at the top of the building, so that it will be composed with the horizon. And we will measure everything from this horizontal at the top and only meet the ground at the moment we touch it.35 The drawings from the first phase of the project show how this was done: a grid of equally spaced points was laid out over a map of the terrain and the vertical drop from each point on the elevated plane was noted on plan.36 In section, these varying depths formed the spatial framework in which floor levels and foundations were established.37 The elevated plane or horizon that served as this procedure’s first premise was not only instrumental, but it was also representational. Every time Le Corbusier spoke about this project, he restated what he understood to be key aspects of the monastic life: serene silence, solitude, and sharing. The separateness of the individual view was secured by the side walls of the cell’s balcony. The elevated horizon – realized concretely in the garden roof – was were individuals alone or together could experience those joys as well, more fully it seems than in the chapel, oratory, library, or traditional cloister garden, which the design basically destroyed [Fig. 6.12]. Despite his familiarity with monasteries and the monastic way of life, Le Corbusier felt the need for further study at the outset of the La Tourette project. Just a week after his first visit to the site, he had a member of his team write to Père Couturier with a request for books that would give him a deeper understanding of monastic life – not monasteries, but monastic life.38 This “little historical study” was inspired by his visit to the Cistercian monastery Le Thoronet, on Couturier’s recommendation. He had made the visit months earlier in the winter, despite the fact that he hadn’t heard of the monastery and didn’t know the place. Once again, a survey sketch made during a site visit identified the key themes at Le Thoronet. At this moment, however, it seems the way of life was less important than the form and materials of the place. Given their decisive roles in the monastery’s overall configuration, it is not surprising that the site’s slope and the building’s stone were the only two aspects of the building that Le Corbusier noted on the one-page sketch. His drawings seem to have been dashed off quickly, notwithstanding their attention to essentials: first, the stepping section, with its three-bay chapel (drawn separately), library, chapter house, parlor, washroom and refectory falling towards river; and second, what he called “unique stone,” noting that the apertures opened only 10 per cent of the walling.39 All together, he drew three little sketches: verticals against the hills, an interior in three parts, and a stepping section (both sections cutting north–south, looking east). Also important is what he did not draw: no cloister appears in his sketch – at least no plan of one – only rooms in line with the slope of the terrain. The key issue was the 131

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Figure 6.12  Sainte Marie de la Tourette, Éveux (near Lyon), 1960, Le Corbusier. Source: Pieter Lozie, photographer, 2014.

coordination of the rooms with the landscape, their arrangement synchronized with the profile and substrate of the terrain. The church of Le Thoronet, one of three “daughters” of the mother convent, Citeaux, follows the traditional east–west orientation, but the cloister geometry is polygonal, not square, and its east and west ranges step down from the level of the church and south sides toward the river. Insofar as the church platform rests on the highest level of the terrain, it would seem the land was terraced to accommodate the extent of the cloister, refectory, infirmary, and rooms for the lay brothers. A longitudinal section, cutting north–south, through the nave and its side aisles, the southern and northern ranges of the cloister, and the level of the lavorium and refectory, shows the effect of the site’s slope on the distribution of settings very clearly.40 Yet, the cloister gives the impression of a unified space because of the unbroken repetition of its most prominent elements, arched apertures, as well as the single simple material used throughout – stone.41 Of course the sills of the windows in the east and west ranges step down toward the river too. The fall is particularly apparent in the steadily increasing height of the wall under the level base of the ceiling vault. The late-afternoon sun casts a highly regular rhythm of shadows on the floor of the walk, linking together the monk’s side entry to the church, the sacristy, armarium, chapter house, parlor, and stairs up to the dormitory – all of the institution’s key settings according to the same measure, integrated into the fall of the site.The reason Le Corbusier requested books on monastic culture was that the way 132

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of life that was accommodated and represented by “the stones of Le Thoronet” escaped him when he surveyed the uninhabited site. The physical remains were significant, but insufficient. From the very start of his design for La Tourette, the elevated horizon was to be the destination of a carefully composed architectural journey. His first sketch identified the journey’s two key elements: an exterior ramp and the promenade to the garden roof.42 As the project developed his principle collaborator, Iannis Xenakis, developed scheme after scheme that structured this passage, often with merely tangential connections to the body of the building and its several settings. Ultimately, there was no exterior ramp, it fell victim to budget constraints. But the garden roof survived, and its elements reveal both the meaning of the elevated horizon and this building’s manner of engagement with its “natural” environment [Fig. 6.13]. In rather perfunctory terms, Le Corbusier explained the garden roof as follows: “the roof of the convent itself, like that of the church, will be covered with a thin layer of earth.”43 This solution had been tried earlier. The two cases he mentioned were the house for his parents on Lac Leman and the apartment building in which he lived, on Rue Nungesser et Coli. But to this explanation he then added a more interesting observation: “[This thin layer of earth] will be left to the vicissitudes of the wind, birds, and other carriers of seeds, assuring both water tightness and isothermic protection.”44 The technical solution was not insignificant, but the comment about the wind, birds and seeds is particularly interesting. He expected the garden roof to concentrate or crystalize qualities and potentials of the building’s vicinity, the Domain, with all of the materials and movements of its ecology. Not only does this wider horizon include the

Figure 6.13  Sainte Marie de la Tourette, Éveux (near Lyon), 1960, Le Corbusier. Source: Richard Pare, photographer, 2012.

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remnants of Claret’s ambitious planting campaign – domestic and foreign species – but a dimension of the landscape particular to the monastery: its cemetery across the approach road. The compass of this entire expanse was not a function of land ownership but the play of natural forces. There was, of course, a limit to the garden roof, one that was strictly defined and vividly apparent: the upper edge of the parapet wall, 1.83 meters above the uncut grass, a line that gave physical presence to the horizon of reference that had initiated the project. When costly items in the design were being cut, Le Corbusier insisted on the preservation of two key elements: Bear in mind one thing: at 68 years old I do not have to prove that I can make inexpensive architecture. Those prices that have to be cut can be cut. . . . I do not [however] want to take out the roof terrace parapet nor do I want to take out the loggias [the individual cells’ balconies], for these have been central to all of my domestic architecture projects since I came across them in 1907 at the Charterhouse of Ema in Tuscany.45 The loggia balcony at La Tourette is, indeed, much like the window at Ema, just a little wider, taller and deeper. It also recalls the balcony at Mt. Athos and the framed view at Pompeii. Deeper still were the apartment balconies of the Unité at Marseilles, where they merged with the sun-breaker and served both environmental and compositional purposes. As for the “cloister garden” at La Tourette, it was above not at the level of the cells, open toward the far distance. If ever there was in the modern world a place of serenity for the collective it was up on the roof: sky above and wooded mountains in the distance, framed by the parapet’s top edge; soil and grass contained by its walls. With a touch of humor that must have been equally serious, Le Corbusier once quipped that if they behaved well monks would be allowed an occasional visit to the roof, but not for too long, lest they become accustomed to its pleasures. At one point I had the idea, let’s put the cloister up there [on the roof]. But if I put it up there it will be so beautiful that the monks will perhaps escape there and endanger their religious life. . . . The delights of the sky and the clouds are perhaps too easy. Go up there from time to time; [but] you should have permission to climb the steps to the roof when you have been good.46 Obviously, this was just as true for the community as it was for each individual.

Secularized monastic culture The primary focus of Le Corbusier’s “little historical study” of Le Thoronet was the monastic way of life, not only the monastery buildings. Once secularized, which is to say abstracted from its specifically religious meanings and clerical structures, the monastic pattern – building a monastic ecology – would become the aim of several projects in Le Corbusier’s body of work, perhaps most of those built at the middle scale, which is 134

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to say between the house and the city. A first example that is particularly clear is the atelier he occupied in the center of Paris.47 By no means one of his greatest works, not really a work at all, it is nevertheless a good first indication of the way he interpreted secular institutions in monastic terms. Le Corbusier’s neglect – even destruction – of the cloister’s typical form at La Tourette should not be taken to imply that he had anything like an aversion to that architectural type [Fig. 6.14]. Several sources attest the significance of the theme and type. Jean Alazard opened his book on Le Corbusier as follows: For many years students and masters have come from all over the world to the building in the Rue de Sévres where the great theorist of modern architecture has set up his studio. . . . This combination home and studio has the austerity of a monastery where Le Corbusier occupies the narrowest cell of the Prior.48 This describes both the place and the culture: an urban monastery led by a secular abbot. The description of the entry to the atelier provided by the great photographer

Figure 6.14  Atelier Le Corbusier, 35 rue de Sèvres, Paris. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. L4–13–41.

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Brassaϊ is also helpful.49 He published his record of a long conversation he had with Le Corbusier at his cabanon at Cap-Martin. Recalling his experience of the studio in Paris, however, Brassaϊ wrote: “I also climbed the stairs of the architect’s studio at 35 Rue de Sèvres, on the second floor of a former Jesuit center he had taken over in 1922.”50 It was indeed a former home of the Society of Jesus; the atelier occupied the second floor of an abandoned wing of the cloister attached to the church of St. Ignatius. The gods had left, but the cloister was still there.51 Although the neo-gothic Church had been recently reopened after years of neglect, the buildings that surrounded its cloister garden had been subdivided for rental purposes. Thanks to the 19th century urbanization of the district, the whole ensemble was entirely removed from the streets, sheltered in a block interior, hardly a prominent situation, rather neglected: “old-fashioned, outdated, and [with a] rumpled air” is the way one member of the atelier described it.52 Explaining himself further, he said: Passing through the large entryway of 35 Rue de Sèvres . . . you found yourself in a narrow, tall section beneath the building that overlooked the street, emerging into a small courtyard, with, at the right, an entrance to part of the convent and, at the left, the concierge’s room. . . . Opposite, a double glass door opened onto a long, very long corridor, brilliantly lit on the right by a series of plate glass windows looking out over the convent garden . . . you left the noises of the street, the stress of the city, to enter the world of silence and contemplation, to prepare us for what awaited above upstairs.53 Upstairs, beyond the room for the printing machines, the secretary’s office, and a small conference room, the drawing boards were lined up along the wall shared with the Church. The other wall was made up of eight tall windows that looked into the convent garden, home to ancient sycamores. While there was no direct view into the Church, music from its organ was frequently heard. One long-time associate said that in summer, with the tall windows wide open, they were alternately treated to the songs of birds in the cloister garden and Bach fugues played by the church organist (but there was only one organ). Depending on the orientation of the drawing boards (they changed over the years, on account of numbers of people and workload, sometimes perpendicular, sometimes parallel to the windows) members of the atelier who looked up from their drawings looked across the width of the room into the canopies of the cloister sycamores. The culture of the atelier was essentially monastic. Consider the work regimen. Le Corbusier expected his co-workers to follow a strict routine with an early start, steady dedication, and few distractions. Exactitude, he advised them, was both a necessity and a sign of respect for one another. For his part, he came to the atelier a few hours later – always at the same time, no one could recall him ever being early or late – having spent the morning painting or writing in his home studio. Despite the discipline, or perhaps because of it, the atelier had a familial character, but obviously 136

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without blood ties among members: they were there by choice. The Chef d’Atelier, like an Abbot was affectionately referred to as Père Corbu. Yet, he provided another image from the Middle Ages. After he had finished La Tourette, he confessed to the monks: I am passionate about my job. I think you have been given a beautiful convent. I often regret not having a day to spend on a home visit. . . . Alas, my job requires me to be an inveterate traveler, a wandering Peter the Hermit.54

A secular hermit The allusion to Peter the Hermit was not casual. Père Corbu indeed had a simple shack in southern France, a long way from Tours of course, where centuries before French hermits had set the pattern the modern architect followed. As we have seen with the places of retreat in the distant past, Le Corbusier’s “hermitage” was located in an unpromising spot: a neglected slope of underbrush and stone that faced the Mediterranean55 [Fig. 6.15]. His published description was typically matter-of-fact: “L-C owns a little place by the sea, 12ft. x 12. ft. and 7ft. 6 in. high; the whole thing set on a rock 70ft. above the water.”56 He also noted its provisions for controlling the heat and glare of the sun, for fresh air, ventilation, and protection against mosquitoes and other insects. But this rather dry account understates the architectural and cultural content of the cabanon (cabin). He also said that he designed it one afternoon in 1951 as a birthday present for his wife.57 The cabin did, indeed, have a bed for each of them; but she was less than happy with the accommodations. Its proximity to the restaurant L’Etoile de Mer, whose owner had given the permission to build, allowed her some comfort, though; no doubt him, too, for the daily meals and conversations gave a social dimension to the retreat. Further, the sea, twenty meters down the slope, gave him the opportunity to enjoy the pleasurable work of a daily swim.58 There was, thus a two-part regimen, alternately solitary and social: when alone, down the slope into the water, then back up the rocks to work at his desk; when with others, circled around a table on the restaurant’s extended platform, refreshed by the sea breeze, shaded by the arbor, sharing supper and stories. Despite the fact that Le Corbusier repeatedly stressed the dimensions and geometry of the cabin – its modulor sizes and regular forms – as the key to the harmony it expressed, its construction and apertures are equally important when considering his interpretation of a modern hermit’s ascetic lifestyle. The roofing consisted of corrugated metal, held in place by rocks. The pine offcuts (often thrown away when logs become lumber) that clad the cabin’s exterior give one the impression of a rustic hut, an épiderme brutal. Not exactly wrong, the impression of earth-bound rusticity is misleading because partial. The cladding, like the furniture, was pre-fabricated in Corsica by a collaborator, Charles Barberis, with whom he had worked since the time of the Unité at Marseilles. Initially, Le Corbusier had intended aluminum, not wooden cladding for the cabanon. At this time, Jean Prouvé was another of his collaborators. After 137

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Figure 6.15  Cabanon, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, 1955. Sketch of location, Le Corbusier, 1955. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. R2–2–130.

the timber elements had been fabricated in Barberis’ shop, they were transported to the site and simply nailed to a wooden frame that was attached to the pre-existing restaurant (what the Church wall was to the atelier, the side of the restaurant was to the cabin, a shared support). The building’s elements were thus light-weight, pre-made, portable, and hardly permanent – by no means site-specific or “natural.” Moreover, the 138

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image of rustic construction on the outside is contradicted by the plywood panels on the inside, no more “tied to the site” than the geometries and dimensions that set their limits. Similarly hybrid constructions can be found throughout his work, most obvious, perhaps, are the Villa Mandrot and the unbuilt Locher houses. The cabin was as much an artifact of Le Corbusier’s culture as of the nature of the location. The cabin’s apertures also confound expectations. In a site such as this one would have expected the openings to take advantage of the wonderful prospect with a sideto-side window, the sill of which would parallel (and seem to coincide with) the horizon, as in the horizontal window Le Corbusier installed in the house for his parents on Lac Leman. Instead, the cabin’s view to the sea, oblique from the seat at the central table, angles through a rather small square opening, just past the restaurant terrace, not to the distant horizon, but the bay and enclosing hillside, with Monaco in the distance. Containment was emphasized more than connection. The connections that did exist were carefully controlled. Instruments designed for this purpose included the vertical ventilation openings that cooled the interior when the windows were closed, and the mirror clad shutters, which widened the oblique views, although indirectly.59 Even less directly connected – more emphatically contained – was the little workroom Le Corbusier built twelve meters away from the cabin. This chambre de travail was his space alone [Fig. 6.16]. One doesn’t need to be religious to seek and enjoy

Figure 6.16  Le Corbusier at work, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, c. 1960. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. L4(10)19.

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(monkish) solitude: for Le Corbusier, it seems to have been a very great pleasure. He had a work table there, also shelves, on which, among other things, he placed objects he had found on the beach: worn pieces of bone, shells, and pebbles, which he called objets à reaction poétique. This little enclosure was the space in his Cap-Martin domain that most closely approximated a monk’s cell: “15 meters from my cabanon I have built myself a construction-site barrack, 4 m x 2 m. I live like a happy monk.”60 The cell’s configuration brought the distant prospect into more direct visibility than the cabin’s: the sill-height of one of its two windows formed the edge of the happy monk’s drawing table. The immediate vicinity was blocked by the low wall, but the simple opening nicely framed the distant view.

A hermit camp Thanks to close connection between the cabin and the l’Etoile de Mer, the artist-monk in his chambre de travail had access to social life, as we have said. The nearby shore gave greater amplitude to his experiences by adding a place for physical exercise – a different kind of work, physical, although not productive in the sense of farm labor. Other premises widened the precinct still farther. On the opposite side of the restaurant cabins for other campers were built, partly according to Le Corbusier’s designs, but greatly reduced in scope and elaboration when compared to the Roq et Rob scheme of the early 1950s. That project has been called “an informal unité d’habitation.” The name given to the built project is instructive, Unité de camping, for it emphasized the two key monastic themes: an association of minimal cells in view of an expansive prospect. The five units that were eventually built occupy a site north of the restaurant, on the other side of a path that descends from the road to the sea. A concrete base raised the units above the slope, but they were enclosed by timber frame walls under a mono-pitch metal roof. The concrete base seems overdone when compared to the sub-structure of the cabin and the workroom, for they were supported by ground beams, concrete for the first and timber for the second. The composite construction of the guest houses makes more sense when one considers the history of the project, for the initial idea (after the Roq et Rob project was abandoned) was to site them down the slope, well below the restaurant, on the rocks that edge the shore. This plan was abandoned after a particularly violent storm at sea caused high water to swamp the site. Seen as a whole, the entire domain or precinct, including the cabins, restaurant, rocky slope, sky, and sea, was a little ecology with specific cultural meanings. The most poignant albeit distant for Le Corbusier may have been the gravesite he built after Yvonne’s death, reached from a path that leads up toward Roquebrune. As for the buildings Le Corbusier designed, their dimensions and geometry expressed the harmony that resulted from modulor composition. Similarly, the cabanon type indicated a balance between repetitive elements and the particularities of the place: pre-made parts in hybrid assemblies with plan forms fitted into the irregularities of the terrain. The site as a whole combined qualities that were alternately discovered and constructed: a slope that was terraced, views that were framed, sunlight that was mediated, and 140

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ventilation that was localized. As built, the individual cells were self-contained, even introverted, but also bound together in shared orientation toward places of common interest, the sea and dining terrace. Similar responses to ambient conditions bound the units together without diminishing the separateness of the individual cells, particularly the chambre de travail. Although the five cabins that were built are not great works of architecture, their position and manner of assembly are important to the economy of the precinct – economy in both senses of the word, the restaurant owner’s annual income and the cultural order of the environment. Reading the built ensemble from west to east there were four parts, variously shared and single. First, there was the consolidated unit of the guest cabins, no less bound together than terrace housing in a city. Separating that building was the public pathway that descended from the road to the sea, with an enlarged landing at the side of the restaurant, which was of course the third key element. Its large open terrace, we’ve said, formed the social center of the precinct. Next came the cabin, sharing a side wall (and the utilities) of the restaurant. The connection and position linked Le Corbusier and Yvonne to the owner and the campers, but also kept them apart, thanks to a wooden screen between the cabin’s front and the restaurant’s terrace, as well as the canopy of a large carob tree. Lastly, twelve meters away, all on its own, linked more to the distant horizon than the more immediate opportunities, was the cell of the “happy monk.” He had neither the authority nor the involvement of an abbot, only the self-imposed poverty of an ancient ascetic.

Student-monks In the acceptance speech he gave on the occasion of receiving the AIA Gold Medal in 1961, Le Corbusier offered an account of himself that bears on our monastic theme and can be used to conclude our study. After the customary allusions to all of the mistreatments he had received in his career, he explained the way he wanted to be seen, or saw himself: I feel a bit like a puncher of metro tickets.Thinking what I see and seeing everything in architecture means leading a dog’s life! There are problems before us. Values change ​​ daily. The world explodes. And I, for one, am still living a little in the skin of a student.61 Two interpretations of this portrait seem sensible. The first is that even in his advanced years, having accomplished so much – so many buildings, books, and works of art – he felt that there was still more to learn, that more study was necessary, that he hadn’t yet graduated. No doubt there is good sense to this, but one must also remember that throughout his life he insisted on the rejection of all things “academic.” Moreover, the expression he chose is striking: “the skin” of the student, la peau d’un etudiant. Why this way of phrasing it? Might it be that even in the evening of his life he had not given up the student’s way of life, the self-imposed distance from family and home, the making 141

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due with less, and the acceptance of a regimen and rule, all for the sake of new beginnings, growing out of critique but leading to new associations, founded on common interests and shared goals? If so, it would be because he saw the life of the student and of a monk to have very similar profiles (which is of course true in the early history of European colleges and universities). This was certainly his position at the time of Toward an Architecture. In a caption below an illustration of his Cité universitaire student housing project of 1925 [Fig. 6.17], he wrote: The student belongs to an age of protest against old Oxford; old Oxford is a fantasy. . . . What the student wants is a monk’s cell, well lit and well heated, with a corner to gaze at the stars. He wants to be able to find ready-to-hand whatever he needs to play sports with his fellows. His cell should be as self-contained as possible.62 And what was true for one should be true for all, each should enjoy the same standard, which was for Le Corbusier a measure of common or shared expectation: [A]ll students are entitled to the same cell; it would be cruel if the cells of poor students were different from the cells of rich ones. So the problem is posed: university housing as caravanserai; each cell has its vestibule, its kitchen,

Figure 6.17  Student housing, Cité universitaire, 1925, Le Corbusier. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 22337.

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its bathroom, its living room, its sleeping loft, and its roof garden. Walls isolate each. Everyone assembles on the adjacent playing fields or in the common rooms of shared service facilities.63 In this project, as in the apartment-villas with which we began, also the monasteries and the Cap-Martin precinct, the aim was to separately acknowledge and then integrate settings for individuals and the group, reconciling the individual and the collective. Assuming sports attracted many of the student-monks, there were ample courts and playing fields. For the less athletic there were the gardens in between the courts, and closely cropped tree screens – as in French parks, or the gardens behind the Rue de Rivoli – between the houses and the streets, under which students and friends could walk or read, alone or with others. The project was timely, for the University of Paris and the city had agreed in 1921 that the many students who came to the capital for study but could not find suitable or affordable housing needed new premises.The location for the new housing was in the southern part of the city, the land that was to form the site of the Cité universitaire, of which Le Corbusier’s Swiss Pavilion (also structuring a version of monastic life) would be part. Great care was also taken with the individual cell in his 1925 project. Each was to be no less complete than a monk’s house at Ema, although smaller in size. The L-shaped student cells were barely two-story. Yet, a raised sleeping loft provided a near equivalent to the Ema cell section and an open terrace substituted the monk’s garden. Lastly, outdoor rooms oriented the student-monk to the wider horizon, just as the passage window had done at Ema. Here, as with so many of his projects, the axonometric view demonstrated the importance and role of the garden roof, for open-air study, maybe a little gardening, both under the sky.

Modern monastic habits Although Le Corbusier repeatedly stressed the importance of his encounter with the Charterhouse of Ema – his “whole life had been guided” by these visits – his design for an actual monastery, La Tourette, neglected some of that example’s key characteristics. With respect to both Carthusian and Dominican precedents, there were three striking omissions from La Tourette: it had no cloister, no dormitory, and no monk’s gardens. Of course key aspects of the tradition were renewed; specifically, its engagements with the wider vicinity. As we have stressed, Le Corbusier’s concern at La Tourette was with the entire domain, not just the plot on which he built, for that domain provided his project with its basic orientation, both environmental and cultural. Nevertheless, in place of a cloister-like, centralized open-air enclosure, the topography invades the center, displacing the focus to the wider domain, externalizing what traditionally had been introverted, orienting the community outside itself. A monastery without its traditional center. Was it still a monastery? If so, it would be a specifically modern alternative.What gave the project its internal order or coherence? What, finally, made it monastic? 143

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We have seen that when he defended the design, Le Corbusier placed great emphasis on the roof terrace. It was on his mind from the beginning of the project. Apparently, the site’s slope from the access road down to the valley wouldn’t work as a ground-level base for the project. Le Corbusier’s alternative was a raised horizon, the roof terrace, which not only established the “base line” of the design, but became its most desirable space. The raised terrace had three important characteristics: it was clearly defined by a high parapet, it was open to the sky, and was planted with grasses and flowers that concentrated the wider landscape. The characteristics combined to make it a privileged destination. Enjoying the space carried with it some risks, however. The monks who enjoyed its pleasures might neglect the tenets of their faith, preferring instead the delights of sun and sky. Traditionally, Dominican monasteries provided monks with large dormitory rooms. Le Corbusier’s design did not. Nor did he design an equivalent to the cells of his favorite model, the Certosa d’Ema. Just as the space of the traditional cloister was elevated to the roof, there was no equivalent to monk’s garden. Still, each cell at La Tourette had a framed view, like the one at the end of the upper-level loggias at Ema, opening to the intermediate and far distances. Solitude was accommodated, also serenity, but each of them coupled with outward orientation. Without specific elements of the traditional monastery building, and secularized, the monastic ecologies of modern architecture took different forms. Most useful to us has been Le Corbusier’s several projects at Cap-Martin. Obviously, it was not a monastery; there’s no church, chapter house, cloister, or dormitory. Nevertheless, we believe it essentially monastic, the origins of which were in part hermetic. That Le Corbusier called himself a monk has been shown (a “happy monk”). But nothing specifically religious was intended by this term. More important was the solitude and serenity that typified the monk’s life. Le Corbusier’s life at Cap-Martin shared another key aspect of monastic culture, its seasonality. In summer months, members of the atelier continued to work on architectural projects in Paris, regularly bringing drawings to Le Corbusier for review, comment, and correction. Clients and distinguished visitors were brought there too, including Jawaharlal Nehru and Pablo Picasso, dining with the little group at the l’Etoile d’Mer and spending the night alone in one of the cells of the Unité d’camping. His sketch perspective of that domain shows the plan of his workroom, the cabin he shared with Yvonne, the restaurant in which they enjoyed their meals with friends, and the wider Mediterranean landscape. Each of the apertures he designed in the workroom and cabin was an instrument of outward focus. The term we’ve stressed, domain, describes the wider horizon that concerned him. He listed the characters of the expanded precinct on the sketch.To that list, one should add the camping units, the beach, and the gravesite nearby. Not only were these characters noted on his drawing, but they were structured with respect to one another into a web of relationships. A city appears in the far distance, also mountains, and a historic chateau. The middle distance includes the sea and shore, at the foot of the hills. In the near distance the workroom faces the cabin with much-loved pets in-between. The layout is ordered and built economically, with the simplest possible means.Yet, every summer, on this leftover piece of 144

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land, daily life – meals, work, and relaxation – unfolded in harmony with the natural cycles of the Cote’ d’Azur.

Notes 1 Le Corbusier, Patient Search, 65. 2 Ibid. 3 The relevant pages of sketches in the so-called La Roche Album are very exacting in the calculation of these units, their sizes, total number, and proportion relative to all the accommodations in the city of three million. See: Le Corbusier, Album La Roche, 40–46. Four of these six pages were reproduced in volume 1 of Oeuvre complète. 4 We have seen this same L-shaped plan in the two domestic ecologies studied earlier: the Villa Stein-de Monzie and the Villa Savoye. We will see it again later in this text. 5 This is his first use of the term jardin suspendu in Oeuvre complète. It was probably Henri Sauvage who coined the term to describe the gardens of his apartment building on Rue de Trétaigne, 1904.The very first project Le Corbusier illustrated in his Complete Works, the Ateliers d’artistes of 1910, did, however, have an arrangement of L-shaped unit plans wrapping around shared spaces that anticipated the Immeuble-villas. Each open space enclosed by the rooms of the Ateliers d’artists, however, was labeled un jardinet. The Maison Citrohan of 1922, like the apartment-villas and exhibited with it, had a toit-jardin as the destination of vertical circulation, as did the Maisons La Roche of one year later. See: Le Corbusier et Pierre Jeanneret, “Atelier d’artistes,” 22; “Maison Citrohan,” 31; “Immeubles-villas,” 40; and “Deux hôtels particuliers à Auteuil,” 60. The most recent thorough study of this project is: Nivet, Le Corbusier et l’immeuble-villas. 6 Le Corbusier, Precisions, 100. 7 économie domestique; Le Corbusier, Towards an Architecture, 275. 8 Le Corbusier, 40ff. 9 This observation was reported by Father Marie-Alain Couturier, who had given Le Corbusier the commission for La Tourette; see “Le Père Couturier,” 4–5. 10 Le Corbusier, Marseilles Block, 45. 11 Le Corbusier, Letter to his parents, September 15, 1907; cited in Saddy, Le Corbusier le passé, 79. An old but still useful appreciaton of Le Corbusier’s admiration for the monastery is: Serenyi, “Le Corbusier, Fourier, and the Monastery of Ema.” 12 A recent and very insightful study of this theme, particularly aestheticism, in not only Le Corbusier, but modern and contemporary architecture more generally, can be found in Aureli, Less is Enough. 13 These drawings have been published many times – in the English translation of the Journey to the East, for example – but there has been much debate about whether they were executed in 1907 or during Le Corbusier’s second visit to Ema in 1911. The matter seems to have been decided in favor of 1907, after thorough study by Guilano Gresleri and Marida Talmona. See Talmona, L’Italia di Le Corbusier. 14 Le Corbusier, annotation to his plan and section of a cell in La Chartreuse d’Ema, in Talmona, 61. 15 One of his earliest representations of this posture and setting can be found in his description of another monastic setting, at Karies on Mount Athos: “with the overwhelming heat of the evening and our sudden transplantation into the sensuous night of such a place [on Athos], a more than Pompeii-like feeling resonates with a heavy languor, and the loneliness of my heart conjures in this glowing warmth, the black outfit and dismal figure of a marquis standing away from the group . . . leaning against the railing, back turned, lost in the contemplation of the sea.” Le Corbusier, Journey to the East, 180. Albeit lyrical, the reference to Pompeii is exact, for a sketch perspective of the House of the Silver Wedding shows an identically structured prospect, but “lost in contemplation” over the villa garden not the sea, nor distant hills. 16 Le Corbusier, Voyage d’Orient, Carnets, 7–14. This was not the only reference to Ema in the Journey. Earlier in the text he wrote: “Thus each house [in a provincial Hungarian village] has its own courtyard, and the intimacy in them is as perfect as in the gardens of the Carthusian Monastery of Ema where, you may recall, we had a fit of spleen.” Le Corbusier, 23. 17 Le Corbusier, 91.

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18 Le Corbusier, interview with Jean Gallotti, 128–130. 19 Le Corbusier, Letter to his parents, September 5, 1907; cited in Saddy, Le Corbusier le passé, 79. 20 Baedeker, Italy Alps to Naples, 37. Baedeker provided beautifully drawn plans of Pavia, of the monastery buildings as well as its urban location. No such plans were provided for the Certosa di Ema (or Certosa del Galluzzo, as it is known more commonly). Ema is a small tributary to the River Arno. The monastery was also called Chartreuse du Val d’Ema. Le Corbusier abbreviated the name, but retained the allusion to the river. 21 Taine, Voyage en Italie. 22 Ruskin, Mornings, 24. 23 Ruskin, Letter to his Father, Milan, July 16, 1845. See also Ruskin, Stones, vol. i. ch. i. § 35, ch. xx. § 14. His criticism in this passage addresses the question of ornament, not monastic life. 24 Töpffer, Nouveau Voyages. Le Corbusier’s personal copy of the book was the 1922 edition; it has a slightly different title but illustrations by Töpffer. We assume, based on other evidence, some adduced below, there was an older edition at home, used when he was a boy. 25 The quotation is given in von Moos, “Voyages en Zigzag,”, 25–26.The anecdote about after dinner drawings can be found in Weber, Le Corbusier a Life, 31–32. 26 Previously we elaborated the range of meanings attached to the term desert in monastic culture. This allusion should make it plain, once again, that heat and sand were unnecessary for this idea to be discerned in an expanse of terrain; see note 58.Wasteland is a nearly equivalent term, although used less frequently to describe the sites of monastic culture. 27 Töpffer, Nouveaux Voyages, 33. 28 Perhaps it was a slip of the tongue when Le Corbusier, in his acceptance speech on the occasion of his RIBA Gold Medal, mentioned the Grande Chartreuse as the monastery that had inspired him throughout his life – perhaps not. In that speech, in explanation of his design of the Unité at Marseilles, he said: “I was governed by the cosmic laws of space, by my respect and admiration for nature, by the needs of the family and the recognition of the home as the fundamental unity of society and the hearth as the centre of the home. My work there has its roots in the past, in the Grande Chartreuse, which for fifty years has appealed to me by its harmony and its perfect association of the individual and the collective.” Le Corbusier, “Gold Medal to Le Corbusier,” 215–218. 29 “Triple grande gravure / montrant un admirable / emploi d’un chésal / avec système /come à celle d’Ema, avec des jardins, cimetière, métairie, prés etc.,” in Saddy, Le Corbusier: le passé, 82. 30 Le Corbusier, Letter to Wogensky, March 13, 1956 (F.L.C. K3-t-63). 31 Colin Rowe asserted “the site was allegedly of Le Corbusier’s own choosing.” See: Rowe, “La Tourette,” Mathematics and Other Essays, 194. This chapter was first published as: Rowe, “Dominican Monaster of La Tourette.” While “superb” on his account, the site was also “chosen for its inherent difficulties,” allowing “architecture and landscape [to be] separate experiences, like rival protagonists of a debate who progressively contradict and clarify each other’s meaning.” We will argue otherwise: that the building and landscape were meant to be “experienced” as one, which is why we have stressed and will continue to argue that the “natural” landscape was in fact cultural. A recent account of the building can be found in: Potie, Le Corbusier: The Monument of Sainte Marie de La Tourette. 32 An analogy we discussed earlier should make this clear: what the casa was to the villa the chateau was to the domain. 33 Le Corbusier, “Interview with Community,” 5. It was in this passage that Le Corbusier said he had chosen the location for the building. 34 May 4, 1953 (F.L.C. K3–19–179). 35 Le Corbusier, 6. 36 F.L.C. 01010. This survey drawing also shows the water conduits within the “fluid” substrate. As the plan developed, the grid of positions was aligned with and proportioned to the geometry of the building’s key elements. See F.L.C. 01061. 37 F.L.C. 01053. 38 Wogenscky to Father Couturier, May 11, 1953; cited in Benton, Le Corbusier le Grand: “Je peux trouver des renseignements dans les livres d’histoire de l’architecture. Mais j’y trouverai surtout une documentation d’order architectural. Or, je pense que Le Corbusier desire surtout être documenté sur la vie monastique et sur la faςon dont le plan des monasteries découle du mode de vie des moines,” 603.

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39 His sensitivity to stone and its properties is not new with this visit. As far back as the 1920s, well before the so-called organic turn, he had indicated appreciation of the materials qualities and capacities. About the stone to be used in his Locher housing, he wrote: “d’un mur mitoyen entre deux maisons, en maçonnerie de moellons, de briques ou d’agglomérés, matériaux du pays, réalisé par le maçon du pays.” Le Corbusier, Oeuvre complète 1910–1929, 100. Another example is his praise for the local stone used in the Villa Mandrot: “Cette belle pierre de Provence, orange et toute pailletée de cristaux, sera mise en valeur par la qualité des joints. Ce plan s’emparera de tout le paysage du dedans au dehors.” Le Corbusier, Croisade, 63. And he “fought his battles” on canvases placed in front of the un-rendered Parisian stone of his Rue Nungesser et Coli apartment. 40 The slope can also be seen on the back side of the cloister, where its fall is broken by a series of retaining walls, the last of which encloses the monk’s garden. 41 The importance of the stone for a modern architect’s sense of such a place was vividly set out in Fernand Poullion, writing in the voice of his fictional master mason: “I have examined this material closely; no saw can get a bite on it, and under the chisel it shatters like bad glass. We shall make something out of it. Freshly shaped, the stone is a light, warm, yellow ochre; in time, it will become a golden grey. Light seems to lay on it in turn all the colours of the prism, so that the grey is compounded of and impregnated with sunlight.” Poullion, Stones of Le Thoronet, 21. Le Corbusier’s estimation was presented in his Preface to a book of short texts and photographs of Le Thoronet: “the way stone is dressed takes into account every fragment of the quarry’s yield; economy coupled with skill . . . utter plenitude. Nothing further could add to it. . . . In these days of ‘crude concrete’, let us greet, bless and salute, as we go on our way, so wonderful an encounter.” Hervé, Architecture of Truth, np. 42 See Figure 6.10, F.L.C. K3–19–179 43 Le Corbusier, “Convent of La Tourette,” Complete Works 1952–1957, 42. 44 Ibid. 45 Le Corbusier, letter to Wogenscky, March 13, 1956. In Creation is a Patient Search, the two photos Le Corbusier selected to illustrate La Tourette show first, the elevation of the balcony windows, and second, an aerial view of the garden roofs. 46 Le Corbusier, “Interview with Community,” 8–9. 47 He had called his office in Chaux-de-Fonds a bureau d’architecture, the more common name for an architect’s workplace. Atelier, by contrast, evokes the studios of painters and the workshops of craftsmen. On this point see: Bédarida, “Une journée, 26–51. 48 Alazard, Le Corbusier, 1. The first part of this is correct, not the second. Le Corbusier never lived at Rue de Sèvres. 49 Brassaϊ, Artists of My Life, 84–91. In this account, as in so many others, Le Corbusier cited the importance of his visit to La Chartreuse d’Ema; see page 86. 50 Brassaϊ, Artists of My Life, 85 51 Another clear evidence of the widely shared sense of the atelier as monastic in nature is the following account from a collaborator: “À l’ombre de Satint-Ignace, un nouvel order se fomait avec ses habitudes monacales faites de pauvreté, de désintéressement et de dur labeur, pour propager le credo corbuséen.” See Bédarida, “Une journée,” 31. 52 Aujame, “Interview.” 53 Ibid. 54 Le Corbusier’s letter of February 15, 1963, to Father Levesque. This comparison allows one to assume that the picture of Peter the Hermit on the cover of Quand les Cathedrales etaient blanches is something of a self-portrait. Peter the Hermit (c. 1050–1115) was a priest of Amiens and a key figure in the First Crusade. 55 A friend, Jean Badovici, brought him to Rockbrunne to stay in E 1027, a beautiful house he and Eileen Gray had designed collaboratively. The history of Le Corbusier’s involvement with the house is interesting but not specifically germane to the topics we are addressing here. Le Corbusier’s wife Yvonne Gallis was also familiar to the place, having grown up nearby in Monaco. 56 Le Corbusier, Patient Search, 157. 57 One of several reports can be found in Le Corbusier, Modulor 2, 239ff. The story and relevant documentation of Le Corbusier’s projects at Cap-Martin can be found in Chiambretto, CapMartin, 1987. See also: Menin and Samuel, Nature and Space, 91–95; plus, Žaknic, Final Testament of Corbu, 60–74.

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58 Considering his many interpretations of monastic culture, it seems fair to propose that for Le Corbusier sports substituted manual labor – as in the apartment-villas, for example. 59 An excellent study of the instruments for modulating air passage (that reaches conclusions similar to ours) is Sorbin, “From L’Air exact to L’Aérateur.” 60 Le Corbusier, 15 April, 1954; cited in Žaknic, 69. 61 “Corbu,” 60–70. See also: Duval, “Le Corbusier parle,” 56–57. 62 Le Corbusier, 286; our italics. 63 Ibid.; translation slightly modified.

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7 INTO THE DESERT

Although equilibrium is generally thought to be the essential characteristic of ecological order, the processes and means by which it is approximated allow imbalance, disproportion, and violence. At least that is what Frank Lloyd Wright observed in the ecology of the Arizona desert. When he arrived there in 1929 with his little group of apprentices, the dry expanse presented itself as a “vast battleground of titanic natural forces.” Of course, the geological conflict whose traces he interpreted had come to an end centuries before the day of their arrival, but that the combat had been “titanic,” he seemed certain. Evidences included “uptilting planes,” “striated and stratified masses,” and “low-lying mounds of black, burnt rock.” All was not settled though. Implacable and ancient as the “great floor” of the desert then seemed, the “great red sun disk [that] rose over the sublime spectacle” rewound the clock of diurnal change, unsettling the apparent calm: morning chill would be succeeded by hours of increasingly unbearable heat, which would in turn be followed by the return of the cold and then once more still colder night air. Time’s passing was measured by this alternation, the sky was a clock, not only when Wright was there but long before those days and nights, and since then. Extending the temporal spectrum much farther, the soil was for Wright a chronicle of conflicts: striated and stratified masses attested to earlier ages of discord, “every line and the very substance of the great sweeping masses of rock and mesa speak of terrific violence. All are scarred by conquest, marred by the defeat of warring forces.” Quiet repose was, of course, also apparent, but that resulted from submission: “the desert is prostrate to the sun. All life here is sun-life: and dies a sun death.” His only hope of establishing some measure of equilibrium in an embattled ecology such as this would be to acknowledge the “remarkable scientific building economy” of the natural constructions, its repose and antagonisms.1 Even if economical (in the ecological sense of the word), the desert nature to which he referred was in point of fact not as natural as he claimed. We will explain that the region had been artificially reshaped for practical purposes, not only recently, but over the course of centuries.

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Desert living Wright, his family, and seven apprentices had made the “trek” to the Arizona desert from the Wisconsin ice and snow in January of 1929. Their purpose there was to develop his design for a luxury hotel to be called San Marcos in the Desert. The hotel was never built due to collapse of the Stock Market in October of that same year. Short as he was for money – his work had largely dried up for several reasons – he was happy to agree with his client, Alexander Chandler, that the team would camp on an otherwise unoccupied spot about a mile from the hotel site, ten miles due west of the eponymous town2 [Fig. 7.1]. Chandler didn’t charge for the use of the site and helped with the cost of the camp’s construction materials, although the lower professional fee that resulted from the premature end of the project left Wright in debt. Apparently, he had always wanted to camp in the region, although he never said why, despite the likely and indeed actual discomfort. Cathartic as it may have been to Wright, and formative for the little group of workers as a community, he believed that the stay there would

Figure 7.1  Ocatilla Desert Camp, Salt River Valley, Arizona, 1929, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 2702.004.

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have the financial advantage of allowing him to cut costs while working on an important job. The plan for the camp was set out rather quickly; in an afternoon Wright claimed, and construction started the next day, with all hands pitching in. Of all the inclemencies they endured, the daily temperature swings were the most obvious, but not the most pressing. “Aridity?” he asked about the site, “Well, terrible as it is to beings ninety per cent of water, it seems no bar at all to life on its own peculiar terms out here.” The key was to ascertain and then form a productive response to these “particular terms,” the economy mentioned above. How could this be done? In part, by developing techniques and instruments of adaptation, mostly in response to environmental extremes: excesses of heat and cold, and scarcity of food and water.The effort was entirely worthwhile, Wright thought, for despite the challenges the stunning beauty of the place exercised a magnetic pull that even the most insensitive could not resist: “there could be nothing more inspiring on earth than that spot in the pure desert of Arizona.” From the very start, then, contradictions defined the place and the project: the site was both attractive and hostile; inspiring admiration and requiring hard labor, even a fight, comparable, he thought, to the violence the desert had suffered for centuries. Although the small knoll or brow on which they built was dry as dust, nearby were large tracts of cultivated land, it was not “pure desert,” if by that one imagines a place unmarked by human intervention. One adjacent farm (or ranch), interestingly named Broad Acre, included an eight-square mile spread of alfalfa.3 Crops of that size – there were also fields of lettuce, cotton, and oranges – obviously required water, as did Wright’s camp. The former relied on wells, irrigation ditches and canals, the latter on bottled spring water brought by car once a week from the nearby town. Olgivanna, whom Wright had recently married, supplied this essential resource, as she did other needs, to which we will refer later. The typical depth of irrigation wells in that part of the desert was about 450 feet. Gasoline burning pumps could yield approximately 1,500 gallons of water per minute, ample enough for the wide fields of produce. More interestingly, water was also supplied by an extensive system of canals, dams, and water basins that had been built or renewed in the decades since the 1870s4 [Fig. 7.2]. Prior to this time, and as long ago as the 6th century, native populations had established an extensive and impressive system of canals that drained the nearby Salt River.The irrigation network established by the Hohokham (or Holkham) tribe between the 6th and 14th centuries has been described as the most extensive and successful system ever to be built in what was to become the United States. The work in the late 19th and early 20th centuries often involved renewing or extending the ancient canals. Once the weather started to warm up, Wright’s co-workers cooled themselves in these canals; most probably, a canal and levee about a mile and a half to the south of the site.5 The canals, levees, ditches, wells, and dams, together with the crops they nourished are all evidences of the “battle” with the site that had been fought well before Wright’s time there – not quite as ancient as the geological conflicts he imagined, nor waged by natural forces alone, but combative just the same. The ecology whose order so inspired him had thus been made by hard-won victories, re-makings that were fashioned by 151

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Figure 7.2  Prehistoric irrigation canals, Salt River Valley, Arizona, 1929. Source: Northern Arizona University, Cline Library Special Collections & Archives.

both human and non-human powers, agencies that were in fact and principle entirely reciprocal. Hence a more general observation: Wright’s organic architecture, there and elsewhere, essentially continued or concentrated this type of contest. If one wants to say his designs “worked with” the sites he had been given, elaborating their propensities and reproducing their patterns, the term should allow “working against” the pre-­existing conditions as well, so that they would conform more closely to desired conditions, no matter whether they were recalled or hoped for, in other words unprecedented. Likewise, if one wants to say the site of his desert camp was “natural,” that term should allow a highly structured nature, both adapted and artificial. Once the construction work on the site had been “practically finished” in midJanuary, the little colony stayed there until mid-May. They had planned to return in September but did not, due to the economic collapse and the project’s end. While there, however, each day followed a pattern of work and rest that was scheduled by the sun’s passage across the “big sky,” for all life there, Wright insisted, was “sun-life.” Everything “struggled in the sun to survive the sun.” He and his assistants rose when its first rays dispelled the cold night air. After shared breakfast they worked until midafternoon, when the rising temperatures sent them into the shade of their cabins or the water of the levee. As for nighttime, by 3:00 a.m. the temperature fell well below comfort levels. Wood-burning stoves kept them warm while they slept. Timber for fuel was sold by Native Americans or Mexicans. They may also have gathered it from the desert floor nearby – mostly mesquite. Less regularly, every now and then, there were two sorts of social gathering: musical performances in the main room of Wright’s cabin, where he had installed a grand piano, on which his son performed 152

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while the group rested on Navaho carpets, and nighttime “talks” given outdoors by the master to the apprentices seated on benches around the camp’s central fire.6 With a full-scale mock-up for the San Marcos project on one side of the fire and the acolytes on the other, Wright, one historian suggests, would “play the role of sage, mentor, even guru – if not priest.”7 Meals were shared in a single space, a large enclosure at the northern limit of the compound. On one side of the dining room was the kitchen, on the other a large open court. Wright’s site plan shows a fireplace along one of the dining room’s long walls, but there is no record of one being built. At Taliesin the group that was to become The Fellowship three years later also dined together; it was one of the institutions of communal life. Before that, in the desert, and anticipating the Wisconsin fraternity, Wright instituted a similarly collective or community-building practice. Although meals were shared and scheduled, separate groups had distinct sleeping quarters. Wright, his wife, their two children, and their nanny passed the nights in the camp’s largest “cabin.” It was not a single space but an arrangement of two bedrooms joined to the large room with the piano by an enclosed open-air court.The large, salonlike room was also supposed to be equipped with a hearth, but that too was never built. The community’s other married couple, the Westons, likewise slept in their own cabin. It was obviously smaller and had nothing like a salon. George Kastner, on whom Wright relied for a certain measure of leadership among the draftsmen, also had his own pair of rooms. The draftsmen, however, slept in a single “bunkroom,” rather like a dormitory.8 Wright referred to Ocatilla alternately as a camp, work-camp or compound. The word camp, like campus, indicates an open field – in Rome, the Campus Martius – but is also cognate with campaign, the military meaning of which was battle, and champ or champion, the winner of a fight. Wright, we’ve seen, alluded to military matters in his fictitious history of the site. Later historians have compared Ocatilla’s ring of cabins to wagons circled defensively against attacks. At most, the conflicts with native peoples were distant memories; the residents of the Gila River Indian Reservation, a couple of miles directly south of the site, threatened no one in 1929.9 The ring of cabins circumscribed the brow of a small hill that rose almost twentyfive feet above the desert floor.The wider horizon was defined by the Salt River Valley. From the camp’s raised elevation there was a clear view of the Salt River Mountains as well as the proposed site of the San Marcos Hotel. The compound was about 300 feet long and 100 feet long. On the north and west sides of the knoll, there were beds of dry washes, presumably filled with water some weeks of the year.Yet, the elevated circle remained as dry as dust, as we have said. Seen from a distance, it would have presented itself as a unified ensemble. But the topography also allowed a hierarchical distribution of the thirteen cabins.10 A visitor – there was a guest house – would have approached the camp from the south, along the low-perimeter wall that bound the cabins together. The entry point bisected a parallel to the camp’s long axis, about fifty feet east of the centerline. The break in the boundary wall opened directly toward Wright’s office, positioned rather like an abbot’s quarters in a monastic compound. Ninety degrees to the left (west), at 153

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the camp’s center and cresting the hill, was the scale mock-up of the San Marcos project. Adjacent to the mock-up was the camp’s open-air fire pit, together with the raised seating. All who sat there would have recalled the Tea Circle cresting the hill at Taliesin, on which these same individuals would have gathered around Wright. Season to season these two circles re-centered the community. Wright’s office and the fire at Ocatilla were key situations in the whole ensemble, the first its administrative, the second its social or communal center. The next cabin after Wright’s sheltered the large drawing studio; beyond that was the bunkroom, connected, we said, to an open court which linked up with the dining room.The far corner of that court defined the northern-most limit of the camp. The corresponding point to the south, the one most distant from the draftsmen’s court, was Wright’s salon-like living room. It, too, had an open space, rather like a back porch, labeled “terrace” on the site drawing, from which he could watch the setting sun, as it passed behind two rather striking mounds in the distance, the Lone and Pima Buttes. The levee and canal we mentioned would have passed through the middle ground of this prospect. Thus, the compound commanded a three-part horizon: the work-camp bounded by the lowperimeter wall, the immediate vicinity limited by the canal, and the ancient hills in the far distance, filling out the full breadth of the Valley.

Constructing a desert community The plan for the camp was drawn on a topographical map. It seems plain that Wright intended the geometry of the configuration to abstract the site’s most significant level changes. The camp’s center point, marked on the plan by an equilateral triangle, not only housed the open-air fire but crested the hill.The corner formed by the two workwings (Wright’s office plus the studio, and the barracks for the apprentices) roughly parallel the lines that divide the high ground from the east–west depression labeled “wash.”The dining room, kitchens, service quarters and Weston cabin spanned the distance between the east–west and north–south slopes, and closed that part of the camp in on itself.This spot is where the two washes joined in a common source, although the plan doesn’t show that point. And lastly, far removed from the work and dining quadrants, were the cabins and courts for Wright and his family, parallel and perpendicular to his office and the studio, also the entry wall, but forming another corner where the southern fall of the site begins. Seen as a whole, localized geometrical alignments defined groupings while measured distances expressed hierarchies.Apart from the guest house, the cabins formed two groups: Wright’s cabins, terraces and office, together with the studio, carport and power-plant were all parallel or perpendicular to one another, and aligned with the cardinal directions, while the bunkhouse, Weston cabin, and cooking/dining rooms were similarly orthogonal, but rotated at 30- or 60-degree angles off the north–south axis. The social organization and hierarchy of the community was thus expressed in the plan configuration. The pre-existing slopes were also acknowledged, but rectified with these same parallels, re-orientations, and distances. A single level or horizon was never attempted – the 154

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varying slopes prevented that – but the continuous perimeter wall, alternately backing, cornering, and fronting the cabins, bound together what had been spread out, differentiated, and ranked [Fig. 7.3]. Despite the fact that Wright said the low wall was built to keep animals out – rather like a stockade – its representational purpose seems equally important: a sign of the community’s social structure, simple though it was, bound together but ranked. The distinction or separation between in and outside the camp was far from categorical – therefore the wall wasn’t really a stockade – because (1) the slopes around the ring actually concealed the low wall’s height (rather like the ha ha of an English garden), allowing an unimpeded view into the distance between the cabins; and (2) the wall’s boards and battens were the same on its inner and outer faces, as if there were no real distinction between in and outside the enclosure. One tends to read Wright’s insistence on the use of “dotted lines” in the desert as a recommendation for a type of plan delineation; this case shows that the idea of discontinuous continuity could be represented in section too. The cabins and workers were not made into a group through policies of exclusion, but thanks to a kind of structuring that took advantage of the opportunities of the pre-existing terrain while rectifying it. The type of fabrication Wright used was what today would be called “light construction.” If one maintains the military or perhaps scouting analogy, Ocatilla would be an instance of “no trace camping.” Wright offered two images for the cabins: they could be seen as the sails of ships crossing the desert ocean, or as butterflies, a small flock of which had alighted on native underbrush.The striking thing about both comparisons is their ephemerality – the boats would sail and the butterflies fly away.11 Here is his reasoning: “We need fifteen cabins in all. Since they will be temporary, call them

Figure 7.3  Ocatilla Desert Camp, Salt River Valley, Arizona, 1929, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 2702.0048.

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ephemera.”12 His preoccupation with the time of the site and the project has been seen already in his statements about the local weather and geology, the first a clock the second a chronicle. His comments of the duration of the project’s physical fabric show a comparable concern, deterioration: “All to pass away in a year – or two? As a matter of fact it did in less time than that. The Indians carted it all away during the winter after we turned our backs on it.”13 That’s not exactly true. When the group headed north, a caretaker was meant to watch over the place during the summer months; they expected to return in September, but did not. One of the apprentices later reported that the cabins stood on the site for another ten years. There is no evidence that the Navaho had anything to do with dismantling what Wright had built; had native peoples played such a role it would have been the Pima.14 Still, his arguments for “transitory liveliness” show that he was no less concerned with endings than beginnings, decay as much as growth. The cycles of desert ecology – and indeed of desert culture – perforce included both.Wright’s written texts also show this very concern. His reference to Victor Hugo should make this plain. The replacement of the “Bible of stone” with the “Bible of paper” that Hugo described in his famous chapter “This Will Destroy That” was alluded to in Wright’s observation that journal photos of Ocatilla printed in Germany would perpetuate the idea of the camp more effectively that its actual construction.15 While the board and batten of the perimeter wall was built to “hold fast against dust dervishes,” the cord and canvas superstructure that covered each cabin was built for adjustment, not to withstand change, but accommodate and represent it. The canvas windows and doors like ship-sails when open may be shut against the dust or may open to deflect the desert breezes into the interiors. Screened openings for cross ventilation are everywhere at the floor levels to be used during the heat of the day; closed at night. The long sides of the canvas slopes lie toward the sun to aid in warming the interiors in winter. This long side is to have additional cover of canvas, air blowing in between the two sheets of canvas, if the camp is occupied in summer.16 The time of daily and seasonal change, the rigid schedule of the desert ecology, was thus acknowledged through design and construction. The architecture, particularly its “sails,” made the phases of that schedule readily apparent. Aligned with one another in parallels and perpendiculars, or sloped at either 30- or 60-degree angles, the sails accepted and rejected the wind and the sun; making their force vividly legible, during the day of course, but even more so at night, until the artificial lights were put out.

The culture of desert ecology The interweaving of this specific culture’s way of life into a local ecology’s web of life can be seen most clearly in the details of a single interior, Wright’s living room, which we have described as salon-like [Fig. 7.4]. That is, admittedly, an odd term for a 156

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Figure 7.4  Ocatilla Desert Camp, Salt River Valley, Arizona, 1929, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 2702.0058.

canvas-covered cabin with a wooden floor, standing among others in a sunbaked desert, near irrigation canals and eight-mile-wide alfalfa fields.Yet, its detailed articulation and furnishings suggest the term may well be appropriate to a reception room where the group would enjoy the pleasures of music and evening conversation, refining their taste under the guidance an inspiring host. We have already observed that one corner of the room was occupied by a grand piano, which Wright’s son played for his immediate family and gatherings of the others. Gatherings like this were to become common at Taliesin – one of the pianos there was installed on a raised platform at the end of the great drafting room – and the newly converted playhouse in the Hillside Home School nearby was regularly used for theatrical performances, as well as modern forms of dance or “movement exercises,” led by Olgivanna. It seems Wright used his first paycheck from Chandler for the purchase of the Ocatilla piano, a rather impressive if improbable comfort in the desert location. “Navaho” carpets are also prominent in the interior, covering not just the wooden floor, but also the bed (foreground left) and other horizontal surfaces, lining much of the room’s lower horizontal levels, more or less the way the board and batten walls line the camp’s perimeter.Vivid linear patterns are apparent, striped and diagonal, complementing the geometries of the timber and canvas superstructure (upper-level tectonics mirroring lower level textiles), but also serving as emblems of the ancient local cultures 157

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that once occupied the land, used by members of the Pima, Hohokam, or Navaho tribes, who had rested on blankets just like these. Another significant element in the room is the telephone on the table, foreground left. Neither past indigenous cultures are recalled, nor social life at Taliesin; instead, the phone is a literal connection to modern civilization.Wright is well known to have railed against power lines in the desert, and this became a large problem for him after Taliesin West had been constructed, not so far away from Ocatilla. We suspect he would have been no less displeased about telephone poles and cables near his camp site and cabin. There is no evidence that phone lines were ever brought to that site – although they may have been.17 Nevertheless, the phone is there in his room, prominently in this view. Both the piano and phone were brought to the site, as was the board and batten system of construction, which Wright had used for projects in Wisconsin and Montana, where it made more sense environmentally. None of these elements had “grown from the soil,” nor was “organic,” if that is taken to mean native to the place.The same would be true for the equipment installed into Taliesin West eight years later. All were introduced from another place, inserted into this context. The same could be said for the elaborate apparatus of farming we have described: the roads, fields, irrigation systems, and so on, although the modern often elaborated the ancient canals. As such, these insertions sharply contrasted with the emblems of Navaho culture, such as the rugs, which were easy to find in the camp’s vicinity, in the Chandler markets. The camp-life accommodated in this room was thus both foreign and indigenous to the desert ecology. Conflict, evident in the strong juxtapositions, was inseparable from cohesion. Beyond its qualities as a fascinating little world, for Wright the room and the camp represented a beginning, of the group that would soon be shaped into a community of apprentices, and in time Taliesin West. His metaphor was agricultural: “ ‘Ocatilla’ – the camp – is ephemera. To drop a seed or two, itself? Who knows?”18 The desert, obviously barren and unyielding, was the fertile ground for this beginning. Daily life in the camp followed a regimen dictated by the patterns and sequences of the natural environment. Neither Wright, his family, nor the apprentices made choices about when to work or sleep; recurring sequences were not only shared, but taken to be “natural.” Of course Wright himself regulated the tasks and times at the drawing boards, rather like an abbot we have said. Meals, too, were shared. And there was a uniform, if not regulated diet. No written records suggest privation, but it seems clear that everyone in the camp accepted a limited supply of types if not quantities of food.The sense of lifein-common was, no doubt, felt very acutely by the draftsmen in their shared bunkhouse. But as we have said, despite all the struggles, the desert trial had a significant outcome. The retreat to the desert – in An Autobiography Wright called it his “exile” – led to the formation of a less ephemeral monastic community, the Taliesin Fellowship.19

Movements: in dance and across continents Olgivanna was not only responsible for supplying the architects at Ocatilla with drinking water; she was also the person who gave the camp its name. Wright didn’t 158

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acknowledge this fact in his writings, but others who were there attested to her role in identifying the place he designed with the plant life they found. Furthermore, her background suggests that the community’s monastic lifestyle – and indeed that of the future Fellowship – also benefited from her suggestions. To understand that contribution, however, we must follow the path that led her to Wright, and with him to Arizona. The journey we will trace, a rather long one, began in the Republic of Georgia, passed through Eastern monasteries, then several sites in Europe, notably the Forest of Fontainebleau south of Paris, where she resided in a place called the “monk’s corridor,” and finally to Chicago and Spring Green, where the two formed The Taliesin Fellowship. Wright and Olgivanna had recently married; more accurately, each had re-married. Her first husband was a wealthy Latvian architect named Valdemar Hinzenberg.20 For most of their married years, few though they were (1917–1922), Olgivanna and Valdemar lived apart: she was mostly in France, he was in the United States.They had met in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), the Georgian capital. The year 1917 was hardly a good time to be residing in that part of the world, with the Red Army advancing and the Bolsheviks organizing their advance. For reasons we will note later, Olgivanna made her way to New York in 1924. Valdemar was in Chicago, which is where she went next. But in that city, she met a rather more well-known architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, who was not, however, enjoying a thriving practice, just the opposite.21 They met in an unlikely place, Chicago’s Eight Street Theater, where a Russian ballerina happened to be performing. It wasn’t long after this meeting that they fell in love and Olgivanna asked Valdemar for a divorce. She moved into Taliesin in 1925, where she was introduced as the new housekeeper to Miriam Noel, Wright’s wife.22 It seems plain no one believed the attempted ruse. From this time onward, Wright sought his own divorce, but was not granted legal separation from Miriam until 1927, a little over two years before the Ocatilla project. Reconnecting with her husband was not the only reason Olgivanna proceeded to Chicago, she also wanted to help establish an American base of operations for The Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man. That Institute had been founded by Georgii Gurdjieff, whom Olgivanna had also met in Georgia.23 Gurdjieff and his followers called themselves “Seekers after Truth.” After some time in Tbilisi’s Jesuit seminary – where as a youth he is said to have met Joseph Stalin (who was born in nearby Gori) – Gurdjieff went on an extended study tour or pilgrimage through Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tibet, and Turkey. His trek included frequent visits to monasteries. Gurdjieff ’s experiences of monastic life were formative for his later work. One example is the time he was guided by a monk said to be 250 years old to a room in which young girls were training to become priestess-dancers. He reported that he was stunned by the “purity of execution” with which they held very demanding but beautiful positions.24 The “movements” he later taught Olgivanna, and she in turn taught her “apprentices” (at Taliesin not Ocatilla) were very similar in kind. Also during these pilgrimage years Gurdijeff made a concerted study of Sufi ideas. Once again he focused 159

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on notions about dance and attendant breathing exercises and mental concentration. “These dervishes,” he later observed in broken English, “teach dancing same as put seed in the ground, but seed very hard, this green plant grow slow because need much time to grow.”25 By 1912, he had established himself as a teacher and choreographer of sacred dances in Moscow, attracting rather wide attention and some fame. He moved once again because of growing unrest in the capital, first to Essentuki in the northern Caucasus, and then to Tiflis, where the meeting with Olgivanna occurred. From this point onward, she was among his group of followers, a group whose lifestyle could be called monastic – anticipating the Taliesin Fellowship – as long as the term allows a community that was essentially secular. From the very start of her training under his supervision, Olgivanna impressed Gurdjieff with her abilities to execute the exercises and dance movements he prescribed. Before long she achieved a quasi-leadership role among his group. Still without a permanent home for his new school, Gurdjieff took the troupe to a number of cities, but always had difficulty finding suitable place to locate permanently. Eventually, they went westward, first to Constantinople, then to Germany (Berlin then Dresden), and finally in that country to Hellerau, were Émile Jacques-Dalcroze had established his school of “eurythmics.” Apparently the building in which they performed, the wonderful Festspielhaus designed by Heinrich Tessenow, attracted Gurdjieff ’s interest more than the Dalcroze method; but once again, a permanent stay couldn’t be arranged.The followers next found themselves in Paris, where they used the Dalcroze Institute in the Rue de Vaugirard. After some months there, Gurdjieff was able to obtain the use of a chateau in in the Forest of Fontainebleau: the Prieuré des Basses Loges. With funds from English supporters he was able to purchase the building and its extensive grounds. Olgivanna’s years there would be just as formative as Gurdjieff ’s in the monasteries – although her journey was less a pilgrimage than an apprenticeship – particularly for her ambitions in America, not only for the branch of Gurdjieff ’s Institute intended for Chicago, but her years with Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship. At the Fontainebleau Priory, she was not only a lead dancer and instructor in the movements, but was for some years the Institute’s general manager.26 This role also prepared her for her work with the Fellowship.

The “monk’s corridor” The Prieuré des Basses Loges is a comparatively small chateau about six miles west of the great Fontainebleau estate, north of the village of Avon, at the edge of a dense wood, within sight of the Seine River, among smaller houses, stables, and barns. The Prieuré had formerly belonged to Mme. de Maintenon.27 The first building on the site, however, was built much earlier, in the early 14th century, to house local poor and sick pilgrims. Several rebuilding campaigns followed, but its charitable and hospice functions persisted until the 17th century when Carmelite monks established a monastery there. With funds and support from the monarchy (Louis XIV, Anne of Austria, and Maria Therese), a Priory was built – hence the name that survives until today – together with a cloister, chapel, and monk’s cells, six in fact. It suffered no less than other monastic 160

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settlements during the years of the Revolution: the chapel and church were demolished and the Priory was converted into a country house (the Chateau) in 1800. After several changes of ownership, the property was given to the lawyer who defended Louis Dreyfus in his famous trial. It was from Dreyfus’ advocate that Gurdjieff obtained the Chateau, thanks to a rather large, if secret donation from Lady Rothermere, who supported the cause after enjoying Ouspensky’s lectures in London.28 During his years at the Priory Gurdjieff occupied a set of apartments his disciples called “The Ritz.”The celebrated author Katherine Mansfield, who was dying from tuberculosis, also stayed there, until Gurdjieff had her moved to a platform hung from the rafters in one of the barns, where he felt she would benefit from the pungent odors. She didn’t. Olgivanna occupied one of the much smaller rooms of the Chateau, among a line of rooms called “the monk’s corridor.” Similar corridors in the Taliesin Fellowship buildings would house Wright’s apprentices. Despite the sharp hierarchical distinction in sleeping quarters, meals at the Priory were taken together in either of two large dining rooms (called the English and Russian rooms) that overlooked an expansive rear terrace. Still farther was an impressive alley of ancient trees that had been cut into the wood; also fountains (on the front and rear sides of the main house), and smaller pavilions among the trees, some built under Gurdjieff ’s administration, such as the Turkish bathhouse, constructed by his followers, including Olgivanna.

The forest philosophers Apart from the name given to Olgivanna’s lodgings, there was no trace of the Carmelites at the Priory when Olgivanna and Gurdjieff lived there.Yet, more than a few visitors and observers described the community’s lifestyle as monastic. An indicative, if rather harsh account of A. R. Orage’s time, there observed: “the rigours Orage endured included the kind of psychological bullying undergone by a monk in certain monastic disciplines, or by the chela of an Indian guru.”29 Orage, the famous literary critic – T. S. Elliot called him England’s best – and editor of England’s The New Age, however, spoke rather positively about Gurdjieff ’s “discipline”; and close friends who visited him after he had spent a few months there described a much improved disposition and physique. Another contemporary likened the institution to “a school for the Pythagoreans”; the members of which, a “colony,” were subjected abstinences and physical exercises in preparation for intellectual work.30 Still another observer felt the daily schedule was like a monk’s regimen: “The inmates wake at about eight or nine o’clock of the morning. This may sound a fairly late hour for so monastic an institution, but one must remember that they probably went to sleep only about four or five o’clock.”31 If not directly modeled on the monasteries Gurdjieff had visited, the Fontainebleau Institute was organized and administered as if it were that type of society. Olgivanna, we’ve seen, had a key role in managing Gurdjieff ’s rule. The first point is that the disciples had voluntarily sequestered themselves in the forest, away from nearby villages, 161

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grand houses, and cities. From this elective estrangement, the renunciation of comforts and possessions followed. The next step in community membership was accepting conformity to a rather strict daily schedule and submission to “The Rule” established by the Institute’s leader: “in those days he [Gurdjieff] demanded and received absolute obedience from every one of his pupils. His word was law, and he reigned as a tyrant among devoted slaves.”32 His rather puzzling premise was that by becoming a slave could one learn how to not be one. All would rise at 8:00 a.m. (some accounts say 6:00), take meals together in the communal dining room (morning, mid-day, and evening), sometimes fast (although this seems to have been voluntary), willingly accept the work assignments that were allotted, and observe gender separation for sleeping arrangements (except for the few married couples that joined the group). Apart from the accommodations in “the Ritz,” the sleeping rooms were rather under-provisioned, damp, and cold, particularly in the monk’s corridor. Together with the regimen and schedule, there were specific forms of mental training. Disciples were expected to practice different techniques of memorization: 100 names of animals in Russian, for example, or 100 operas, Morse Code, or more simply, the repetition of long series of numbers. In some instances, mental went hand-in-hand with physical work, but each was thought (taught) to have its own intrinsic importance [Fig. 7.5]. Manual work was so important that several visitors reported that the phrase “work, work, work” was the Institute’s unofficial motto. It was also called Gurdjieff ’s “gospel.” Men and women worked sometimes indoors (kitchen, laundry, etc.), but mostly in the forest on tasks such as building construction, gardening, tending to animals, digging irrigation ditches, and felling timber. In the early days, Gurdjieff himself assigned the duties, later on this was Olgivanna’s responsibility (as it would be later at Taliesin). The work of forest clearing, gardening, and husbandry intended self-subsistence, but their leader’s rather extravagant tastes prevented that. All reports suggest that work in this little world was very hard; yet, once the goals of self-discipline and self-formation were accepted, labor came to be seen less as a curse than a medicine. The rhythms of song apparently made the work more pleasurable. Oddly perhaps, the aim of the hard labor was not principally to accomplish the allotted task. More important was the binding of disciples together through work in common, for many of the tasks they were given could not be accomplished by single individuals alone: work meant working with others. This must have been especially difficult – and when successful rewarding – without a shared language: half the group were Russians who didn’t know English, the others, mostly Europeans, knew no Russian. Another important outcome of daily toil was knowledge; again, not of the task but something more personal. Disciples were made to work for the sake of self-understanding. This they achieved by working in unfamiliar ways or taking on atypical roles, renouncing all that was familiar, abandoning old habits of behavior. Know thyself, philosophy’s most ancient and basic dictum, was acknowledged by the forest philosophers through mental and physical exercises that were at once extremely strenuous, unfamiliar, and largely arbitrary. 162

Figure 7.5  Olgivanna Hinzenberg, Study House, Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, Prieuré des Basses Loges, Fontainebleau, c. 1922. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 6102.0021.

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Housing rhythm The most demanding and impressive result of construction labor at Gurdjieff ’s Institute was the building called “The Study House.” The name should not be taken to indicate the location of bookish activities, not even of learning – if anything, un-learning. It was essentially an enclosed stage on which habits were broken and then re-formed. Movement exercises and dances were taught, practiced, and performed. Before any “study” could occur, however, the building had to be constructed, for no space in the Chateau was suitable for the scale and character of the exercises. The lawns and clearings in the woods could, of course, only be used in warm weather. Gurdjieff gave his team of builders a head start: he purchased a used aircraft hangar, the structural frame and roof of which were disassembled and brought to the site, where they were re-erected at the edge of the woods. Once the rudimentary structure was in place the relatively unskilled disciples began the work of enclosing the space. Apparently, the infill walling they fashioned was rather primitive – mud and leaves one historian wrote – but the surfaces on the inside were highly articulated. The dance floor, which rested on an earthen substrate, was covered with oriental rugs, the raised benches or divans around the perimeter were covered with either goat- or wolf-skins. Glazing enclosed the upper parts of the walls, but not clear glass: stenciled designs qualified and colored the light. The underside of the roof structure was dressed with decorative cloth bearing written passages from Gurdjieff and Eastern wisdom. There were also a number of emblems that marked key places at the ends and center of the space. At ground level, again at the hall’s center, was a shallow fountain in which a colored glass wheel rotated to produce rather spectacular effects. Some observers say perfume was also emitted there; others sensed it throughout the place. A piano was installed in one corner, and there was a tent-covered seat for Gurdjieff terminating the entry axis. Up to sixty pupils could be accommodated on the stage, several hundred visitors around the perimeter on the goat-skin divans, behind a low metal railing. While this conflation of elements and images may seem strange – military architecture, a piano, mud walls and floors, animal skins, perfume, and Sufi aphorisms – the identity of the place was perfectly clear to one of its most perceptive observers; Ouspensky characterized the room as the main hall of a dervish tekkeh.33 That term is best translated as convent or monastery. In other words, the central-Asian type of monastic setting that housed the rhythmic movements that so impressed Gurdjieff during his pilgrimage was reproduced on the grounds of the old Carmelite convent site on the banks of the Seine. Performances in the great hall started at 9:00 p.m. and lasted until after midnight, when Gurdjieff returned to “the Ritz” and Olgivanna to “the monk’s corridor.” The performances and exercises Gurdjieff taught and Olgivanna led were not always held in The Study House. Sometimes they were conducted on the lawns of the forest precinct: dancers dressed in white, bare feet on the grass. This occurred in warm weather, as we have said, particularly the months of July and August. The piano would be taken outside, under the shade of ancient trees. Generally, though, the movements 164

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were practiced and performed in the highly decorated interior the disciples had built for themselves. On all accounts, the key to the movements was rhythm. Measured movements assumed both discipline and repetition, which in turn assumed body control. Posture and position were strictly regulated, as well as breathing. For Ouspensky, the control of breathing was the real key, not only to the patterns of movement – correlation it was called in Gurdjieff circles – but also the meditative or spiritual purpose of the exercises. About the overall program of movements and exercises, Ouspensky wrote as follows: “G.’s own work during this time, that is, from 1922, was dedicated chiefly to the development of methods of studying rhythm and plastics . . . bringing into his ballet . . . the dances of various dervishes and Sufi and recalling by memory the music he had listened to in Asia many years before.”34 Other observers also drew parallels to the dervish dances; particularly, the spinning rotations with arms extended, head sometimes leaning, “whirling” in one direction then the next. Movements that were less common but striking resulted from the so-called stop exercises, in which the dancers had to immediately arrest the steps or turnings when they heard the command to stop. No matter how awkward or difficult, the positions had to be held until they were allowed to resume the movements. As for breathing, Ouspensky distinguished three kinds of respiration: normal breathing, “inflation,” and breathing assisted by the movements. He recalled a rather lengthy explanation Gurdjieff provided one evening in The Study House. His breathing exercises were like those taught in Eastern or Orthodox monasteries: You have read the book about ‘yogi breathing,’ you have heard or have also read about the special breathing connected with the ‘mental prayer’ in Orthodox monasteries. It is all one and the same thing. . . . But so that this should happen many conditions are necessary, fasting and prayer are necessary and little sleep and all kinds of difficulties and burdens for the body . . . you think there are no physical exercises in Orthodox monasteries? Well, you try to carry out one hundred prostrations according to all the rules. . . . This all has one aim: to bring breathing into the right muscles, to hand it over to the moving center.35 Control over breathing aided control over the body.This, in turn, allowed controlled movements, not only ones own, but among others, particularly when all moved in unison. Gurdjieff often referred to shared movements as those of a “school.” Sharing the discipline was required of the “school” if they were progress along “The Fourth Way.”36 The basic task of the exercises was to “correlate” the life of one body with that of the others according to the rhythm of the music and the instructions of the leader. An eyewitness praised the movements as bewildering in complexity, amazing in execution, rich in diversity, precise in execution, graceful in posture, and harmonious in rhythm.37 All of this is to say that monastic discipline in the Study Hall and Priory resulted in coordinated movements of great beauty. More importantly, rule and regimen resulted 165

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in the establishment of a little society that had formed itself and its members anew. Gurdjieff explained: “the kind of school I mean is not only for learning but becoming different.”38

A study house in the valley of the Lloyd Jones Olgivanna, together with others seeking an American base of operations for Gurdjieff ’s Institute, an American Prieuré one can say, found the Taliesin precinct in Spring Green very promising,39 particularly the large but disused buildings of the former Hillside Home School. Wright had acquired the school buildings and property of Hillside in 1919, after his two aunts, the school’s founders had died (Jane in 1917 and Ellen Lloyd Jones in 1919). The transfer of ownership occurred six years before Olgivanna first saw the site. Initially, the School occupied a shingle-style building designed by Wright and Lyman Silsbee in 1887. Later, in 1902,Wright, working on his own, provided with School with more ample accommodations that had become necessary due to its impressive growth in student numbers and requirements. Next to the old building he added what amounted to a little ensemble: a three-story assembly hall on the east end, a gymnasium-theater to the west, with classrooms and a carpentry shop in between. On the back (north) side there was a bridge over a drive that joined symmetrically arranged rooms for art and science. Unlike the frame and shingle construction of the first building, this ensemble was built out of local sandstone in vividly rough ashlar and timber, with a red tile roof – much like the construction of the house at Taliesin, on the other side of the Valley, with Midway Barn in between, and in sight of the Romeo and Juliet Tower. Over the years of its activity, the Hillside Home School had developed a strikingly innovative curriculum and pedagogical style. Obviously, classroom teaching occurred there and was highly structured, but there was also work in nearby barns, greenhouses, and gardens. A well-travelled educator and perceptive observer described the importance of work outdoors in her account of mealtime: “The school table depended upon these gardens for early lettuce, carrots, and radishes; and children vie with one another in competing for the first edible crops.”40 Although the combination of class- and fieldwork was atypical for schools in late 19th century America: Hillside was not an experiment, and because it was not it was unencumbered either by self-consciousness or by argument and agitation. I am sure it never occurred to Ellen or to Jane Lloyd-Jones that their notion of children and of their wholesome upbringing needed either explanation or defense. Hillside was merely a way of life, sound, reasonable co-operative, and enchanting. More particularly, it was a way of learning and living that was well suited to the landscape in which it was sited: Hillside was too busy doing its job to define itself in pedagogical terms. It was simply a school, a home, and a farm all in one, and the contribution and 166

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strength of each element lay in the fact that each was never separated from the other.41 By 1925, however, the School’s buildings were abandoned and in very bad shape, as we have noted: the roof leaked, windows were broken, and thieves had made off with furnishings. A plan for reusing the buildings was not developed for a number of years, however. Many difficulties prevented Wright and Olgivanna from making real progress: personal problems (their divorces and attendant custody battles, plus immigration worries for Olgivanna), another disastrous fire at Taliesin, very serious financial deficits for Wright, and unclear relationships between Olgivanna and the Gurdjieff group in both Chicago and New York. Some progress with the latter difficulties was made in 1927 when Wright and Olgivanna met with the Gurdjieff people in New York. It seems there was some specific discussion of using Taliesin as an American Prieuré.The idea was welcomed by significant figures outside the Wright and Gurdjieff groups: e. e. cummings, and John Dos Passos, for example, joined the group as the meeting was ending and apparently endorsed the association.42 Another positive sign was the invitation to work in Arizona that came to Wright a short while later, work that would lead to his meeting with Chandler and the Ocatilla adventure we have described. Historians of these developments describe the moment as follows: It was soon after he answered McArthur’s call [to work on the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix] and arrived the Arizona desert that Wright began plotting a strategy to reclaim Taliesin, one that hinted at the Fellowship he and Olgivanna would found four years later.43 In fact, the moment was doubly propitious. The promptings toward some type of educational/spiritual institution Wright received from Olgivanna and the Gurdjieff group in both New York and Chicago were complemented by possibilities that arose in those same years closer to home: the prospect of establishing an “experimental station” of the University of Wisconsin at Taliesin; specifically, in the buildings of the Hillside Home School. After an initial meeting with one of the university’s professors, Wright – together with Olgivanna, no doubt – drafted a proposal for “The Hillside Home School of the Allied Arts” [Fig. 7.6]. The title not only invoked the wellrespected school of his two aunts, but also the notion of teaching a number of the arts together. Although architecture was not mentioned in the school’s name, the Prospectus indicated that the several subjects to be taught would be introduced as divisions of that single parent discipline.44 Comparisons have been made between this school and the Guild of Handicraft established by Charles Robert Ashbee in the Cotswolds in England.45 Wright had known Ashbee since 1900, when the two met at the Hull House in Chicago. The ­Englishman had visited Taliesin as recently as 1911. Moreover, Ashbee was named on the first page of Wright’s text. Both schools included a number of fields under the heading of “allied arts”; but only on Wright’s list were music, drama, and dance. The 167

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Figure 7.6  Hillside Home School of the Allied Arts, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1928, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 2703.003.

fact that the Prospectus described the last of these, dance, as “correlation of mind and body” (Gurdjieff ’s basic premise) indicates that Olgivanna either had a hand in drafting the text or influenced Wright’s thinking about it. Here is the relevant passage: Dancing in this school would be actual cultivation of rhythm in the correlation of mind and body to make both together a perfect instrument. Dancing should be allied with the physical direction of the work done by the students in the buildings and the fields – as well as in itself a poetic form of expression.46 This sounds much like Institute life in the Fontainebleau Forest – rather surprising, no doubt for young people wanting to learn painting, metalworking, or architecture at this new school. Olgivanna may well have written this part of the Prospectus. Interestingly, these lines also contain one of the very few uses of the seemingly obvious word students, elsewhere throughout the term workers is used, indicating rather clearly Wright’s understanding of their role in his “farm school.” That Gurdjieff ’s ideas were to have a role in the new school is also clear from the listing of its leaders. Around the school’s resident director,47 an architect, but not Wright himself, were to be subordinate directors: another architect, a sculptor, a painter, a musician, and “a teacher or rhythm as practiced by D’Alcroze [sic] at Hellerau, or by Gurdjieff at Fontainebleau, France.”48 168

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Obviously, Olgivanna could have filled this role. Indeed, she was prepared to take on much more authority. On the matter of who might be the school’s director, Richard Lloyd Jones wrote to Wright: you have in Olgivanna a mighty fine woman . . . I think she is a woman with a lot of sanity and ability and balance and poise and [who] could develop business sense as fast as business responsibilities were imposed on her.49 Such a role would, of course, allow her to resume the work she had done for Gurdjieff in the Fontainebleau Forest. Were that the case the extra-artistic work described in the Prospectus, “work in gardens, fields, animal husbandry, laundry, cooking, cleaning [and] serving” would be allocated and rotated in Wright’s Hillside School just as it had been at the Institute.The lines of text that that conclude the Prospectus envisaged a community that would follow the same monastic lifestyle as the Priory, inflected by Gurdjieff ’s theories of unity of body and soul through work and rhythmic movements: We should love Man more and men less in order to hasten the time when a natural Art shall take the lead in all true education and natural character be the natural consequence. Isolation, concentration and sympathetic inspiration in the natural correlation of the whole man in such work in a school as we propose may induce this now-rare inner experience as more common experience.50

The geometry of a correlated community Wright’s 1928 Prospectus was accompanied by a set of drawings, the most helpful of which is the plan of the school. Pre-existing buildings were retained but modified to different degrees: the original Silsbee-Wright building was radically altered, but the 1902 expansion only slightly, although the uses would have been very different. The latter was still linked to a symmetrical arrangement of two large interiors on the north side, but instead of art and science rooms they were to contain painting and sculpture studios. More interesting are his (their) ideas for two large front rooms: what had been the assembly room on the east end was labeled “library in balcony,” “auditorium,” and “printing shop below,” and what was previously the gymnasium and gallery on the west end became a space for teaching “drama” and “rhythm.” Those designations lead to a simple and important question: what form of teaching, or what subject matter might mediate these two – Gurdjieff ’s movement exercises and Wright’s books and Japanese prints? The answer will not be surprising: the long central space between the two was labeled “architecture,” with lecture rooms below. There were two another two important parts of the project: cell-like rooms for the boys and workshops dedicated to specific arts (crafts): metal work, pottery, glassmaking, casting and enameling, and textiles. Beyond the shops, in outdoor courts, were work yards (courts) and areas for material storage. Still farther beyond, at the foot of the slope 169

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that culminated in the base of the water tower and reservoir were the gardens, orchards, and agricultural fields. East of these fields was a huge barn, the Lloyd Jones barn, with greenhouses nearby. Closer to the school were places for small scale planting: a second greenhouse and cold frames on either side of potting court. These were, in turn, connected to the kitchen; and it to the large dining room, equipped with a large fireplace on one wall (as in the Ocatilla plan). Another hearth was nearby at the center of the old Wright-Silsbee residence, in which the rooms for girls were laid out. The main block parallels the front drive (County Road), as well as a depression at the front Wright labeled ravine, through which a branch of the river flowed. The character of the entire precinct appears most clearly in Wright’s bird’s eye view. The wider landscape projected around the school was neither desert (as in the Ocatilla camp), nor forest (as in the Fontainebleau Priory) but was, nevertheless, a microclimate connected just as directly to the little society’s culture as those other locations were to theirs. In later years one of the Fellowship apprentices, John Howe, referred to the entire landscape as Wright’s “domain.”51 There is an obvious center to the Hillside compound, an open court or lawn equipped with a rectangular pool or fountain, enclosed on its east and west sides with rows of rooms – a “monk’s corridor” of cells – for boys, and to the north a colonnade that gives onto the workshops, and to the south piers that open to the walk that leads to the dining room. Despite the differences of the court’s four sides, they are connected by fieldstone path that has the character of a cloister walk. Had this design been built, with its cloister-like center, work sheds and fields for farming, the entire precinct would have had the order and appearance of a monastic compound installed into its specific landscape – the Unity Chapel (Wright and Silsbee again) was, of course, some distance away.

From school to fellowship The date of Wright’s Prospectus and design for the Hillside Home School of Allied Arts was 1928. One year later, he and his apprentices traveled to Arizona and built the camp at Ocatilla. Within three years after Ocatilla, he had developed his design for the Hillside site more fully – not for the School of Allied Arts, but an institution focused more narrowly, although not exclusively on architecture, the Taliesin Fellowship. Farm and building work were still part of the program, also drama, music, and “correlating” exercises, as if they had become the key divisions of the single parent discipline [Fig. 7.7]. The differences between the School and Fellowship plans can indicate Wright’s ambitions for the latter. Two changes were key: the first a matter of internal focus, the second of external orientation. We will begin with the second. Rather like the double (rotated) geometry of Ocatilla – and anticipating the layout of Taliesin West – the plan geometry of the Hillside Fellowship compound combined two sets of parallels and perpendicular’s. One set defined the ensemble’s front, facing the County Road and ravine, as with the Hillside School. The second pattern, at the rear, was defined by the lines of cells for boys and the workshops, shifted 30 degrees away from the front 170

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Figure 7.7  Taliesin Fellowship, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 3301.015.

buildings to face the wide expanse of the valley, toward Midway Hill in the middle distance and Taliesin farther still.Two figures on the plan brought these two geometries and orientations together: the rather oddly shaped gallery space, north of the large dining room, and the fireplace at the end of the large drafting room, which has taken the place of the cloister-like garden of the School scheme. 171

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Reminiscent in many ways of Wright’s closed-corner, vertically oriented urban schemes (Larkin Building, Unity Temple, etc.), the drafting room could hardly be more introverted. In both plan and section, it is basilica-like: a two-story nave in which the drawing boards were to be set out, sided by aisles of apprentice rooms, individual cells in two rows of eight. The axial approach was terminated by the great fireplace, having passed between the two symmetrically disposed rooms seen in the first Home School, here renamed exhibition gallery and model making shop. As before, a bridge linked the back to the front buildings, but again the uses have been changed: Wright imagined a living room in place of the old assembly room, and a playhouse instead of the original gymnasium. The latter was important to Wright. He had the Fellowship’s first group of apprentices work on its conversion before they turned to the drafting room, much to their surprise. The cloister walks survived the School plan’s transformation, although on the room’s two long sides only. Perhaps roofing the space troubled Wright: he referred to timber trusses as an “abstract forest,” suggesting he regretted the loss of the direct connection to the natural environment. Even though the room had an inward focus, the rotated back walls of the fireplace promised another orientation, beyond the enclosed spaces, into the wider, cultivated landscape. The drafting room, equipped with its doubly oriented fireplace marks the spot from which all the parallels and diagonals depart. Despite the drafting room’s importance, the first space one would see upon entry to the new Hillside compound – through a colonnade fronted by a rather deep and impressive lawn – is a space that makes its own claim on centrality. It is again an unroofed area, a lawn with trees, bounded on two sides (north and east) by roofed colonnades, and by lines of apprentice cells on the other two. An unfinished drawing of the water supply and drainage lines for the site (lines that connected the Fellowship buildings to both the Tower reservoir and the Midway barns) shows a great Elm tree in this open court, alongside the east wing of cells. While this line of cells faced the drafting room, the other line, rotated 30 degrees, faced the workshops and fields beyond. Positioned and dimensioned as it was, the open court presented itself as a double of the drafting room, similarly central, but oriented no less outward than inward. The fact that it was unlabeled on the drawing suggests the uses to which it would have been put were unplanned. That does not render them insignificant, in our view, only not-yet-decided.

The gospel of work Rather like apprentices at Gurdjieff ’s Institute in the forest, the “students” at the Taliesin Fellowship were presented with the gospel of work. The Prospectus makes its importance clear: students were called workers, and the many tasks – well beyond drafting – were spelled out in some detail.The advertisement also made it clear that the several tasks would be everyone’s responsibilities; assignments were to rotate, as at the Priory, and once the Fellowship was established, they in fact did. Although demanding and assigned, the non-architectural work in the Hillside landscape was not all that 172

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filled the hours of an apprentice’s day; there were also entertainments, as at Ocatilla and the Priory. Those in the Playhouse were carefully choreographed and staged, and they were scheduled, for members of the Fellowship and the general public, who paid for admission. There were other entertainments too, at least dances, that were initially unscheduled and voluntary but became more or less obligatory. These were the Gurdjieff exercises and movements led by Olgivanna and her daughter Iovanna. Getting the exercises established in the Fellowship routine was neither easy nor quick.Wright’s enthusiasm was occasional at best, and there was a lot of field and building work to be done – also some training in architecture in the Fellowship’s early years. But a little over a decade after the founding of the Fellowship, he allowed Iovanna to push the tables in the drafting studio to the sides of the room so that she could instruct the apprentices in the movements that would allow them to correlate their spiritual and bodily centers.52 Mother and daughter thought that the movements were essential to the cohesion of the individuals themselves as well as the little society that was in the process of forming itself. Had the School piano ever been moved outdoors,53 to the open lawn that adjoined the studio, dances there would have perfectly resembled the bare-foot exercises Olgivanna had led in the Fontainebleau forest.Taliesin had been previously graced by outdoor harmonies in comparable clearings: before Wright gave permission to use the drafting room for this purpose, Olgivanna had secretly taught the movements in unplanted meadows of the farm.

Alone among others in the valley Although Wright continually redrew and redefined his ideas for Hillside buildings, drawings from 1932 suggest that progress with the drafting room required simultaneous development of the apprentice cells – as if he couldn’t imagine a space for the group without considering the spaces for the individuals. It is no doubt also true that developed cell designs helped Wright advertise The Fellowship, promising applicants attractive accommodations. The rooms were certainly more ample than those in the Priory’s monk’s corridor; they would also have been an improvement over what the apprentices already with Wright had known at Ocatilla, despite some key similarities we will describe. The fieldstone cloister walk shown on the 1932 plan frames the large drafting room. This arrangement represented a change from the earlier 1928 plan: what had been two rows of rooms on either side of a corridor became a single row, separated from the drafting room by a corridor. In the 1932 plan, the walk became much wider, but in this design as in the earlier version, it linked the central space to other parts of the compound: the dining room to the one side and the workshops to the rear. We stress the connective function because Wright seems to have been intent on maintaining contacts with distant places, even though the drafting room had turned inward. This arrangement of interiors and interconnections within the whole ensemble was developed still further in another drawing that survives from this period: an unfinished sheet that combines plans, sections, and elevations of the drafting room 173

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with the rows of cells along its sides [Fig. 7.8]. The relationships between the cells, their corridor, and the drafting room were unchanged in this version except for the appearance the stone piers on which the supports for the “abstract forest” of trusses rested. These supports fall in line with the walls that divide the cells. On the face of it, that alignment seems odd because neither the cells nor their corridor can be seen

Figure 7.8  Taliesin Fellowship, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 3301.146.

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from the large room. Yet, a connection was intended nevertheless, for not only do the walls and piers align, but a second row of supports for the roofs over the cells also adopts the cell intervals, but every other bay (which is why Wright wrote A B A B . . . on the plan). No less interesting is the development of the sectional relationships between these spaces.The challenge of the section was to articulate the connection between the onestory height of the cells together with their corridors and the nearly three-story height of the drafting room. More generally, it was the problem of joining the single room to the many cells, oriented toward the fireplace. A fairly elaborate system of clearstory glazing crowns the upper part of the drafting room’s roof. Below this band of glazing the roofs that shelter the long sides of the drafting room extend to cover the corridors and cells on either side. The striking thing about this form of covering is that the slope of roof, and thus of the “abstract forest” trusses was apparent from inside each of the cells. This can be seen in the detailed designs of the rooms, shown in plan, section, and perspective. In other words, just as there were implications of the rhythm of individual cells within the large drafting room, there were visible connections to the single shared space in each of the apprentice rooms. No doubt conversations would have been audible too, likewise the movement of air and borrowing of light. Bound together in this way – reciprocal images of individual and shared spaces – the designs of the section and plan intend what can be called a geometry of fellowship. What seem to be sculptural works occupy the ceiling void above each cell. The walls also contained all the furnishings an individual apprentice would require: a (second) drawing board, pictures on the wall, a book shelf, and a bed. Interestingly, this is the same section that Wright designed for the Ocatilla cabins. In the desert the sloped surfaces were made out of canvas. In Wisconsin, with its formidable winters, the forest of trusses supported tile roofs. The apprentice’s other requirements, sinks and showers for example, were shared, as were the dining room, workshops, and outdoor places – again like Ocatilla. The window of each cell, between the desktop and the cantilevered eave, looked out onto the adjacent lawn, and from there toward the gardens and fields in the distance. Thus, Wright’s fellowship geometry achieved two important ends: binding the individuals together in blocks of cells and places of work, but also connecting that ensemble to the work-situations, terrain, and environmental order of the wider domain. The same interrelationships would structure the layout and configuration of Taliesin West, as it had the Institute in the Fontainebleau Forest and the Arizona Desert. While not one of the sites had the chapels, chapter houses, and churches of traditional monasteries, each accommodated and expressed monastic ways of living in specific natural settings – a desert, forest, or valley, with parched or fertile soil.

Cultural terrain Wright’s involvement in community building was not limited to the few years on which we have focused on thus far, 1929–1932. Although intermittent, it was recurrent, from the first decade of the 20th century until his last years. Taliesen West, for example, 175

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built in the Arizona desert in 1937, not too far from Ocatilla, was both a villa-like residence and a workplace for members of the Fellowship, that little society of apprentices we have characterized as monastic because it was highly disciplined, lived and worked according to a “The Rule” established by an abbot-like leader, secular, and equally attuned to the rhythms of the local ecology and Taliesin culture. But Wright’s mid-career projects are not the only evidences of work at the scale of a community, nor of binding a culture to an ecology at this scale of work. Earlier designs approximated the same intention. Significant for our purposes and particularly useful to end this chapter is his 1909 design for University Heights Community and Orchard54 [Fig. 7.9]. While this project preceded Ocatilla by twenty years, the two designs have important similarities. Furthermore, the spatial and social unity expressed by the Como Orchards plan will allow us to introduce a number of the themes we shall address in our concluding chapter, environmental and social themes that arise in work at the urban scale.55 A brief review of the pre-Wright history of the Como Orchards site will help us explain the constructed character of its natural environment. The terrain there was no less artificial than the desert location of the Ocatilla camp. Here, too, water infrastructure had significantly reshaped the terrain. But the community to be accommodated in Montana did not follow a regimen as disciplined as that of the apprentices in Arizona or Wisconsin. In this little society, the monastic style of living was approximated more partially. Accordingly, the order represented by the architecture is particularly significant, also more ambitious. By the time Wright became involved with the Como Orchards project, the valley at the foot of the Sapphire and Bitterroot Mountains was becoming covered with apple orchards. Apple trees had been planted there since 1886. A decade and a half later, they were the area’s major crop, especially the McIntosh Red.While the alpine valley microclimate was particularly good for this purpose, the supply of water for crop irrigation was a problem from the earliest period of the valley’s development, despite the nearby location of Lake Como. Nevertheless, the promise of impressive yields and financial gain attracted entrepreneurs and investors, including, rather surprisingly, university professors, who were to be housed in the accommodations Wright designed, as would be others whom he called “itinerants.” It wasn’t only, perhaps not largely, the promise of financial gain that attracted the professors to the camp and the valley. As with any other summer retreat, there were also enjoyable summertime activities: swimming, fishing, and mountain climbing. There was also the prospect of physical work with others – one historian suggests gardening – which may well have been sought after months of research and teaching. Perhaps an even more basic motivation was the desire to escape from the summer heat of the Chicago streets. An important chapter in the site’s history was the formation in 1907 of the Como Orchards Land Company by W. I. Moody and Frederick D. Nichols. Moody was also one of a number of wealthy Chicago investors who had supported the development of the Bitterroot Valley Irrigation Company. Due to the number of purchasers of land by university graduates and professors, the Como Orchards Land Company decided to 176

Figure 7.9  University Heights Community and Orchard, Darby, Montana, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source:The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 1002.008.

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develop for them a summer community. Among the purchasers of orchard tracts were academics from Chicago and other parts of the country, including Harry Pratt Judson, president of the University of Chicago, R. L. Lyman, a professor at Columbia College, and Barton Hirst, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the members and promoters of the Como Orchards Land Company from Chicago, Peter M. Endsley, procured the architectural services of Wright, his friend, for the design of fifty summer cabins and a clubhouse for the academics and their families. Is it correct to call the group that occupied these cabins and shared meals in the clubhouse a community? If so, of what kind? Would it be fair to describe it as quasimonastic?56 Like their students, these professors followed the calendar of the academic year, which was then as it is now seasonal. They could retreat from the city because they were free from teaching duties during the summer months. Their stay at Como Orchards coincided with the growing season; apples were picked in the fall. But it is highly unlikely that they and their spouses labored among the trees. Sites like the one Wright designed were not entirely new to the professors, for their lives were typically situated in campus precincts, which were, due to their origins, quasimonastic, although secular. Also quasi-monastic was the pattern of their daily lives: governed by sets of rules (the course curriculum and the academic code), scheduled according to the academic calendar, and structured in academic ranks. Obviously, this regimen was relaxed in the summer colony – the primary purposes of which were rest and recreation – but the year-long routine set the boundaries of their stay and oriented their summertime reading, writing, and planning for the fall. The proposed location for the University Heights community was on a high, wellsloping bench, a long, relatively narrow strip of gently sloping land bounded by distinctly steeper slopes, at the foot of the Bitterroot mountain range to the west. The elevation of the bench above the valley floor offered some protection from the early frosts. Furthermore, its gentle slope provided ideal drainage for fruit growing. The uniform and deep soils were the result of the native forest of pines and firs that had once occupied and enriched the land. Although the climate offered little rainfall, water from melting snow was abundant due to the intermittent waterways consisting of mountain streams, natural drainage gullies, and irrigation ditches. Nor was there any shortage of sunshine.57 As we have noted, providing sufficient water for the agriculture was a problem in this otherwise fertile ecology. The key early figure in the development of the area’s water infrastructure was Marcus Daly, an extremely wealthy copper king, who arrived in the Bitterroot Valley in 1887. Once settled and intent on developing his land, he enlarged and extended the already existing irrigation canals, reclaiming thousands of acres of bench land on the west side of the valley. Lastly, he developed plans to extend the irrigation system to the east side of the valley as well, however his death on November 12, 1900, halted these plans.58 The thousands of acres of newly irrigable land were purchased by newcomers.These newly settled lands became separate subdivisions, among which was University Heights, the site of Wright’s project. Each saw the construction of golf courses and large inns. 178

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Additionally, many planted acres of McIntosh Apple orchards. Intense advertising to attract even more people occurred, boasting that land selling from $200 to $300 per acre could earn net returns of $5,000 for each ten-acre plot.59 Given this regional history, we can now pose our basic question about Wright’s project: how did his University Heights or Como Orchards scheme insert a summer colony of university professors into the culture and ecology of the Bitterroot Valley – a colony as out of place in an orchard as was Wright’s salon-like cabin interior in the Arizona desert or the Taliesin Tea Circle on a Wisconsin farm? Two of Wright’s drawings provide particularly clear evidence of his thinking: a layout of buildings drawn over the topographical contours of his site and a bird’s eye view of the location from the lower, south–east corner.60 Overall, the plan was given a fan-like shape, which conformed to the shape of the bench between the two glacial ridges.This scale of orientation was perhaps the project’s greatest, both geographically and chronologically. Of course, the presence of the ridges and the mountains beyond them was mediated by the orchards, seen best, although very partially, on the bird’s eye view, toward the north–west. That the mountains were key reference points for the community can be seen in Wright’s perspective sketches of the cabins, which present their impressive profile as background for the designs. More localized orientation within what might be called the project’s middle distance was established in two ways, first, by virtue of the central clubhouse or lodge, with its impressive cascade on the front and quadrangular lawn behind – the lodge and lawn rather like a dining hall and college green at the center of a college campus. Further to the east on each side of the cascade was a wide semi-circular driveway with cabins staggered to follow the curve. The dirt road to the left led to the orchards. Much more prominent on the east side, though, is the cascade that defines the eastern end of the long central axis, which begins with a fountain and steps down through pools on four levels to a semi-circular, nymphaeum-like pond that was formed by damming the irrigation ditch. Damming a ditch, stream or canal in this way was a common tactic for storing seasonal water. The fountain and cascade were not. They were more common in landscape gardens in the Italian style. Still, the water held in the pond could be used to supply the adjacent orchards to the south, nor for only a few but many months of the year. As such, it gathered, centralized, and displayed the terrain’s key resource, on which the success of the whole enterprise largely depended. Economic performance was well-managed but also put on show. The campus-like lawn behind the clubhouse was subdivided into four tennis courts and a parking/arrival space behind the garage. On its other three sides, the central green was bounded by tightly spaced cabins, two rows on the south and north, two large cabins plus a cluster of four on the west. Contributing to the lawn’s topographical centrality and prominence was the fact that it was fairly level, when compared to the variously ascending and descending slopes bordering its sides. Complete enclosure was not intended, however, for the corners were left open, and these breaks allowed diagonal views into the different distances farther afield; specifically, the additional clusters of cabins down the hill to the north– and south–east, the snow-covered mountains far 179

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beyond the hill to the south–west, and the sideways slope and descent to the north– west. Of course, Wright could have closed the corners with pairs or clusters of cabins, in order to give the central space greater definition; but the result would have been rather insular. Instead, he revealed the wider horizon – bringing the far near – as if it were an integral part of the colony. Considering the role that the mountains played in the local ecology (providing water in abundance during the spring snow melts, and modulating temperatures), the snow-capped peaks had long been central to the agricultural community, although remote. It was not only the cabins and clubhouse that gave localized definition to the central green. A perimeter walk also served this purpose, while it provided access to the buildings. Rows of trees on two of its sides (between the lines of cabins and the courts) also shaped the space. The absence of allées on the east and west ends, alongside the parking space and in front of the upper cluster of cabins, had the function of reinforcing the axis that ran from west to east, or back to front, or, better still, the site’s high and low sides. In sum, the overall composition was both axial and symmetrical along the camp’s centerline, but non-axial and asymmetrical in the opposite direction (north–south). The asymmetry recognized the several characteristics of the terrain, its slopes, levels, and distances.Yet, the subject matter of the composition was not only the specific locality, for the distinctions and variations in the land also gave shape to the institution’s social life; in other words, the topographical distinctions between the level center and sloped margins corresponded to the colony’s shared and separate spaces [Fig. 7.10].

Figure 7.10  University Heights Community and Orchard, Darby, Montana, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 1002.007.

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The asymmetry or open character of the plan’s margins, inflected by the pre-existing slopes, was particularly apparent on the north side, where it began its descent toward an intermittent irrigation ditch.There Wright planned additional rows of cabins, without corresponding groups on the other side. One row of four was shifted westward so that the fronts aligned with the gaps between those facing the central lawn, gaps that allowed the porches views, southern sun, and breeze. Further west, where the slope was even steeper, he proposed a single staggered row (type 1 cabins, the smallest). This location was the most remote within the whole ensemble, also off axis and the grid. Still, its cabins remained parallel to all the other buildings, thus part of the whole. It would be incorrect to assume this isolated spot was in any way special or preferred, for it elaborated merely one of the possibilities offered by the terrain. One could reasonably imagine that any community of this kind would include individuals or couples who sought hermit-like isolation rather than more social proximity, just as there would be those for whom the cluster configuration (more central and less sloped) would be favored. Wright developed these lifestyle options as elaborations of the lay of the land. Yet, the governing principle of the design was not conformity to pre-existing terrain, the well-mannered approach sometimes called “fitting into the natural context.” Neither did the cabins fit in, nor was the site natural. Essential characteristics of its form came from elsewhere and were inserted into the location. In our study of Wright’s other projects, we have stressed that his projects extended or continued site work that had been undertaken by others in the decades before he got started (agricultural and infrastructural site work). In this context, too, his design took part in the remaking of an ecology that had already been restructured – the climate and land were good for orchards, but not good enough. Yet, the needs of apple growing didn’t guide Wright’s hand so much as his idea of this little society’s culture, as it could be established in that particular environment. Geometries, broken corners with distant views, and fountains plus stepped cascades made the colony’s integration into the local ecology both successful, from a practical and economic point of view and vividly legible. The design of the cabins (in each of their several types) shows particularly clearly the ways architecture established correspondences between topographical conditions and community life. Both the site plan and bird’s eye view indicate that there were types of cabins, in fact three, which varied mostly in size and therefore numbers of people that could be accommodated [Fig. 7.11].The smallest, type 1, had a fireplace, living room, and porch. The next larger one had these elements plus a bedroom and bath. These type 2 cabins were often set out in clusters, four facing a shared central space. The largest, type 3, often sited in pairs, had additional bedrooms and a kitchen. No matter what its size or type form, each cabin was built out of basically two parts, a base and roof. This was not a novel way of building in this region or any other. When Wright visited the site, he no doubt saw and may have held meetings or slept in a particular type of temporary accommodation used by apple pickers [Fig. 7.12]. Its two-part construction (called “tent-frame”) consisted of a board and batten base plus a frame and canvas cover. We alluded to this model in our earlier study of the Ocatilla cabins, his transformation of the type twenty years later. Wright’s cabins in Como 181

Figure 7.11  University Heights Community and Orchard, Darby, Montana, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 1002.nn.

Figure 7.12  Fruit pickers cabins, Bitterroot Valley, Montana, c. 1907. Source: Archives and Special Collections, Mansfield Library, University of Montana.

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Orchards, however, were not covered by canvas but cedar shingles, which rested on a timber frame that had widely projecting eves, partially cantilevered over the porches [Fig. 7.13]. The unbroken base line of this type of roof paralleled the horizontal boards of the base.Yet, the upper and lower elements had contrasting spatial implications: the perimeter wall sharply defined the limits of the enclosure, as if the construction were closed in on itself, while the projecting eves oriented the view rather more widely, across the slopes, through the trees, and toward the mountains. Like their roofs, the bases of Wright’s cabins differed significantly from those of the vernacular type. In many of his cabins one can see a strikingly, even oddly vertical base, with the boards and battens dropping to the level of the land, no matter what its slope. Why bases of this kind? An instructive pair of cabins is shown on the site’s north side, where the land descends toward an irrigation ditch. Apart from the stretched base of the northern most cabin (stretched to meet the lower side of the sloping ground), the striking thing about this pair is the co-planarity of their roofs, and sectional alignment of their eaves. Alignment such as this does not occur among these two only, but throughout the site, despite all the topographical variations. This is to say, the porches of all of the cabins have acknowledged the specifics of the contours through the variations in base height, making the terrain’s slopes legible, while the common plane of inhabitation capped by the eave represented a shared horizon of reference for all the members of the community. Identity was no less important than difference; each cabin, no matter how remote its location or independent its occupant, was brought into conformity with a

Figure 7.13  University Heights Community and Orchard, Darby, Montana, 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: Ausgeführte Bauten und Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright, Berlin: Ernst Wasmuth, 1910, Plate 57a.

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key dimension of the entire ensemble. This horizon disciplined the ensemble no less than the grid and axis of symmetry. The result of coupling the eave’s insistent horizontal with the base’s well-defined and firmly grounded base was the creation of a space (at the level of the cabin’s apertures and porches) that pictured the wider landscape through carefully framed views. This type of discipline, essentially architectural, is something the vernacular (tent-frame) precedent lacked entirely: the projection and compression of the cabin’s enclosure, together with the controlled prospect, controlled for everyone in the community. Our account of Wright’s way of inserting specific cultures into local ecologies can be summarized by briefly retelling the stories of three cabins, all of them hermit- or monk-like cells that defined shared spaces in some natural, often desert-like setting. At Como Orchards hermit-like cabins defined the central green and revealed the sloping terrain. His many cabin types were derived from the smallest one: a single room with a fireplace and porch under a roof. When examples of this one were combined with the others they jointly defined the colony’s shared spaces. But these spaces, also type forms, were brought to the site: the quadrangle was college-like, the axes and allées were also characteristic of other architectures. Yet, these forms were neither imposed onto the terrain any more than they were derived from it; instead they adjusted to its slopes and distances, mostly in service of economical performance, but sometimes for the sake of revealing the local and wider landscapes, and building community. At Ocatilla, two decades later, the cabin reappeared, brought there from elsewhere and adjusted to the different location. In this case, too, the space of the community was formed by key aspects of the cabin architecture.The desert camp’s perimeter wall, we’ve observed, extended the bases of the cabins and was constructed with the same materials and techniques. At the very same time, it defined the campfire-centered compound. As for the cabins themselves, they were few. The apprentices slept in the bunkhouse and everyone shared meals in the dining room. But Wright’s salon was a cabin, with the same two-part composition as the Como Orchards example. What the fireplace was to the Como Orchards cabin the piano under a canvas roof was to Wright’s at Ocatilla, a point of focus for the little group’s culture.The fire surrounded by the stockade wall served the same purpose, but at the scale of the entire precinct within the wider landscape. Lastly, we have noted that the Fellowship buildings in the Hillside School were furnished with both a piano and a fireplace – emblems of Taliesin culture. The rotation of the fireplace shifted the room’s geometry to that of the buildings beyond its cloister-like center; which is to say into the Taliesin domain. In fact, the great drafting room was more-cloister like than any of the examples we have studied. Its perimeter was formed by rows of cabin-like cells for the apprentices, “monk’s corridors” one could say. These cells, Wright’s third iteration of the hermit’s hut, had yet another way of roofing the type’s interior [Fig. 7.14]. The roof geometry of the Fellowship cells parallels what was built at Ocatilla, but the materials and structure Wright used in Wisconsin performed different roles, acting in concert with elements in the big shared space. The trusses that roof the drafting room, where the community worked together, crossed over the slopes that roofed the cells, cells in which the individual 184

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Figure 7.14  Taliesin Fellowship, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 3301.052.

apprentice slept as well as worked. The drawings that detail this connection are vague, but Wright’s aim is clear: to find a modern way of binding individuals into groups, at a scale – the monastic scale – between the house and city, by means of enclosing spaces open to natural light and air.

Notes 1 All of the passages we have cited are from the first edition of An Autobiography, 327–335. The “constructions” to which he referred included plant life. We have italicized economy because we find it instructive that Wright chose this term to name the fundamental connection (analogy) between the order he found and the one he built.

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2 On the 18th of December, 1928, Wright wrote to Chandler: “I appreciate your cooperation, we are fifteen office and selves [and would] need both houses and perhaps a well-lighted place to work in. Can [we] find such or would [it] be better [to] build right by [a] camp of wood and canvas on [a] suitable site somewhere and all live and work there? Will be moving your way by motor car in a few days.” FLW Archives, Avery Library. As we will note, Wright had seen “camp” cabins out of wood and canvas years before; specifically, when visiting the site for his Como Orchards project of 1909. In the abundant literature on Frank Lloyd Wright, this project is not treated very fully; the significant studies by Johnson and Levine cited below being the notable exceptions.This is somewhat odd when one considers that Reyner Banham wrote that this may have been “the best building project ever to come from the hand of Frank Lloyd Wright.” For this evaluation, see: Banham, Scenes in the America Deserta. There is, nevertheless, much misinformation about the history of this project. The most accurate and reliable account is set out in an atypical source: an unpublished archaeological report, kindly shared with us by its author; see: Green, “Evaluation of Camp Ocatillo.” 3 Weston, “From People You Know.” 4 The history of this water infrastructure construction is authoritatively set out in an unpublished report, see: Anderson, “Tempe Canal.” 5 The levee and canal enlarged what was originally a drainage ditch, which was cut in 1916 to evacuate water from a nearby underground river. 6 This type of gathering and architectural form resembled – no doubt recalled – the Tea Circle at Taliesin, although obviously the plan geometries of the two situations differed and the fire in Arizona replaced the ancient oak in Wisconsin. 7 Johnson, Wright Versus America, 28. 8 Dormitory is the word Wright used in An Autobiography, 336. 9 Analogies between wagons and cabins based on construction materials – canvas above and timber below – are more plausible, although without support in Wright’s texts. 10 He wrote that there were fifteen cabins, and readers of An Autobiography have repeated that number; in fact there were twelve plus the covered parking area. There were, however, fifteen people living there. 11 Neil Levine has observed and elaborated on Wright’s concern with ephemerality in this project. See: Levine, Architecture of Wright, 197–206. 12 Wright, 331. 13 Ibid., 311. 14 Green, 11–12. 15 Hugo, “This Will Destroy That” for Wright’s allusion, see Wright, 333. The journal to which he referred was Die Form, and indeed the images published there are beautiful and among the best representations of what was built. A good collection of photos can be found in the Klumb Archives at the University of Puerto Rico. Heinrich (Henry) Klumb, German by birth, may well have supplied the editors of Die Form with the photos they published. 16 Wright, 334. Again, a clear precedent for this way of building is the cabin construction Wright had seen when visiting the site for his Como Orchards project of nearly twenty years before. 17 Wright installed a power generator at the site, freeing it from dependence on power lines. A few of the photographs of the site’s perimeter wall show knobs and cables running along the inner side of the capping board. 18 Wright, 332. 19 Of course, nothing religious is intended with this term, for the little society of architects in Wisconsin was decidedly secular. Perhaps for that reason the term introduced in passing earlier, fraternity (or the older variant, confraternity), is more appropriate, especially because charitable associations of that type were sometimes connected to guilds and thus bound together as much by skills and types of work as profession of faith. The term monastic, however, indicates a voluntary association disciplined by some kind of “rule,” which, we will see, was key in the order and organization of Wright’s Fellowship. The fact that Wright had recently married, had his new daughter there, and was now (after a rather extended dry spell) being paid for his work, meant that Ocatilla life was a time of new beginnings in his personal and professional life.

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20 There are many accounts of her early years, some provided by Olgivanna herself, others by biographers. Among them we have found most useful a comprehensive and thoroughly researched study of Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship, which necessarily includes a history of his relationship with Olgivanna. See: Friedland and Zellman, The Fellowship. 21 Valdemar had been in Chicago since 1921. He was one of many who fled Russia in the months after the 1917 revolution. Their daughter Svetlana joined him in 1922. 22 It must have been a unique situation, for not only did Wright’s wife and new lover share the same house, but Richard Neutra and his wife Dione were staying there at the same time. 23 The date of its founding is given as 1919 in Ouspensky, In Search, 380.We have found Ouspensky to be one of the most insightful and reliable sources for information about Gurdjieff ’s ideas and history. 24 Friedland and Zellman, 51. 25 Ibid. 26 Her responsibilities included: “allocating rooms, purchasing, keeping inventory, marking up work lists, and observing interviews with prospective students.” Friedland and Zellman, 59. 27 Among the rather scattered sources of information about this building during the Gurdjieff years, a newspaper article by a one-time visitor is particularly helpful: Hoffman, “Taking the Life Cure in Gurdjieff ’s School.” This article plus other relevant information has been collected in an issue of the Gurdjieff International Review, vol. 1, no. 4 (Summer 1998). 28 This chapter of the Prieuré story is well set out in Taylor, Gurdjieff and Orage Brothers, 23ff. 29 This characterization is from a biography of Orage written by a friend and former associate, Philip Mairet; cited in Taylor, Gurdjieff and Orage Brothers, 27ff. 30 See the papers by Hoffmann and Sharp in The Gurdjieff International Review, 51–55 and 62–70. 31 Roberts, “The Forest Philosophers,” 14. 32 Ibid., 10. 33 Ouspensky, In Search, 388. The same characterization was offered by another eyewitness: Nott, Teachings, 46. He called it a “Dervish tekke” and said it “had the atmosphere of a monastery.” 34 Ouspensky, 386. 35 Ibid., 388–389. 36 The “four ways” Gurdjieff distinguished are as follows: the ways of the fakir, monk, yogi, and the fourth way, sometimes described as the way of the “sly man.” In one of his explanations Gurdjieff compared the “ways” to four rooms in a house. While each was a path to immortality, the fourth was clearly the best. Further, although the first three required a complete change of life, particularly the renunciation of worldly things, the fourth could be found and followed anywhere. 37 Hoffmann 38 Ouspensky, 94. 39 Possible historical, practical, and conceptual connections between Taliesin and the Prieuré are explored in Twombly,“Organic Living,” 126–139. Useful comparisons between the two “schools” have been set out in: Nott, Further Teachings, 138–156 especially. 40 Chase, Goodly Fellowship, 100, 95. 41 Ibid., 93–94; also Barney, Valley of God-Almighty Jones, 115. 42 Friedland and Zellman, 122. 43 Ibid., 124. 44 Wright, “Hillside Home School,” 39–49. 45 Another point of reference or model could well have been the Roycroft in East Aurora, New York, which Wright had visited in 1902, and then again with Olgivanna in 1930. Moreover, he seems to have gotten along rather well with its founder and leader, Elbert Hubbard, whom he had met thanks to his Buffalo clients but also received numerous times in his Oak Park home and studio. Comparisons between Wright’s school and Gropius’ Bauhaus are not convincing however. 46 Wright, 42. 47 The back and forth with H. T. Wijdeveld about his role as the school’s first director is an interesting and revealing part of the story, but not directly relevant to our concerns with the lifestyle and architecture of the school. For an account of this sorry chapter in Wright’s plans, see Friedland and Zellman, The Fellowship, 138ff.Wright knew of and respected Wijdeveld because of the book he published on his work in 1925: Wijdeveld, A Life-Work of Wright. Interestingly, an English translation of the Dutchman’s name could be “broadacre.”

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48 Wright, 46. 49 Cited in Friedland and Zellman, The Fellowship, 144–145. 50 Wright, 49. 51 We have seen in Chapter 2 that the estate was a rather large farmstead, although one that included atypical buildings, the school and chapel for example. 52 At this moment, a large model of the Guggenheim Museum was on the studio’s raised platform. It, too, had to be shoved out of the way. See Friedland and Zellman, 452. 53 Tafel reported in Apprentice to a Genius that his very first encounter with Wright when he became a member of the Fellowship involved the master asking him to help move a huge piano into the Home School. 54 This project is more commonly known as Como Orchards Summer Colony, seemingly based on the caption in the Wasmuth Edition of Wright’s work (Como Orchards Sommer-Colonie). The authoritative study of this project is: Johnson, “Projects in the Bitterroot Valley,” 12–25. See also the more recent LeCocq, Wright in Montana. 55 Como Orchards, we will explain, was neither a town nor a village, although Wright did develop urban scale plans for a nearby site (first a town called Bitterroot, then a village of the same name). Nor should University Heights be viewed as something like a planned suburb or a suburban planned community. The terms used by Wright and historians are generally accurate: colony or camp. 56 Summer camps had become very popular throughout the country in the decades before and after the beginning of the 20th century. Perhaps the most important of these was Chautauqua, the “mother” site of which was in New York State. Theodore Roosevelt once observed that the Chautauquas were “the most American thing in America.” Many sites (tent Chautauquas) were linked together through circuits traveled by performers and lectures, several in Montana when Como Orchards was established, one in nearby Hamilton for example. Most of the Chautauquas in the early 20th century offered Christian instruction. Other types of summer camps did not. 57 The merits of the Bitterroot Valley for growing fruit were many – not only the duration of the growing period. By the early 20th century the two largest individual orchards in the Pacific West were located in the valley. Approximately eight miles wide and running north–south for approximately one hundred miles, the valley was formed by two mountain ranges, Bitterroot to the west and Sapphire to the east. The mountains protected the fruit trees from harsh winter temperatures, already tempered by the location of the valley west of the Continental Divide. The mountains also contributed to low precipitation and moderate winds. On the productivity of the Bitterroot Valley, see: “Two Remarkable Bitter Root Valley Orchards,” The Western News Magazine Supplement. 58 The same year as Daly’s death another investor, Samuel Dinsmore, established an irrigation company known as the Dinsmore Irrigation Company. A canal he named after himself was to be taken out of the Bitterroot River’s west fork, on the west bank fourteen miles above Darby. By 1909, 56 miles of canal had been built, the dam to help store water in Lake Como saw significant construction, and the company sold 15,000 acres of land in anticipation of the project’s completion. The dam consisted of a 2,500-foot-long earthen embankment. By the time it had been completed, the company had invested a total of more than $6,000,000. 59 The Bitterroot Valley Irrigation Company even offered a development plan for undeveloped lands.This plan consisted of a buyer paying $300 per acre for land and having the company caring for an orchard on that land for five years, after which the company represented the land as being self-supporting. At that point, the buyer could either settle on the land or have the company continue to care for the orchard for an agreed upon price. After this development, the land was considered to be worth $500 per acre. 60 These two, plus another pair of pages devoted to the clubhouse and cabins were published in the famous Wasmuth Edition of Wright’s work. See: Wright, Studies and Executed Buildings.

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In modern architecture, cultural ecology developed at a number of scales, of which we have thus far described two, the domestic and monastic. In this final and concluding chapter, we will mainly address a third scale, the urban area, larger than few buildings but smaller than a whole town or city. One helpful way to view this increase in scope and dimension is incrementally. Included within the urban area, there were identifiably distinct single units as well as groups of them. Because discussion of the third requires consideration of the first two our account of urban ecologies can also serve as this book’s conclusion. What the villa domain was to the domestic, and the desert precinct was to the monastic, pre-existing cities were to the urban ecologies. At each scale, there were ecologies and cultures, the second having shaped the first. In addition to a new scale, however, the urban area presented modern architecture with a particularly challenging difficulty: building relationships between people who had no prior connections with one another, individuals that were neither members of an extended family nor followers of a “The Rule”, strangers who had very little in common. Isolation, alienation, and non-communication were much discussed themes in 20th century accounts of the modern city, and are no less topical today. If sharing is a key dimension of cultural ecology the two basic questions raised by this new scale are these: (1) what built form would accommodate and express commonality among these strangers, and (2) how that form would transform pre-existing cultures and ecologies? Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier offered intersecting answers to these questions, in both the manner in which they managed their professional and personal lives, as well as their designs for communities.We will examine two understudied projects in some detail,Wright’s competition entry for a residential district in Chicago from 1913, and Le Corbusier’s design for Îlot insalubre no. 6 in Paris, finished in 1936 and exhibited that same year in the Pavillon des Tempes Nouveaux. As we consider these two designs, other more commonly discussed urban projects will be adduced; in fact, we will begin with a number of related projects from both architects. In our review of the work of these two, we won’t treat them separately, as we did in earlier chapters, but together, as mutual if distinct contributions to modern architecture. The desire shown by both to coordinate a range of institutions with both environmental conditions and pre-existing urban patterns was expressed rather concisely by their comparable, although English and French, uses of a single word: unity and unité. 189

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A home in a prairie town One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s early attempts to accommodate and represent relationships between individuals who previously had little in common was his design for “A Home in a Prairie Town,” published in the Ladies Home Journal in 1901.1 As the title indicates, the design was for not only the single unit, the home, but also their assembly together to form a larger territory shared by others, a town. Wright’s “quadruple block plan,” which gathered into a single-group four separate units, was the project’s basic building block [Fig. 8.1, top].Wright wrote: “The block plan . . . shows an arrangement that secures breadth and prospect to the community as a whole, and absolute privacy both as regards each to the community, and each to each of the four.”2 The unit, the group, and the community were to be brought together without compromising the qualities of any one of them; instead, to their mutual benefit. Absolute privacy, the requirement for the home that Wright singled out as chiefly important, was achieved through a few simple architectural elements. Each house, sited some distance from the streets it faced, looked outward and away from the other three in its group. This position and prospect contrasted sharply with typical suburban patterns, where houses were sited in the center of their lots with green on four sides, often

Figure 8.1  Wright, A Home in a Prairie Town, Frank Lloyd Wright, 1901. Source: Ladies’ Home Journal, February 1901, 17.

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in full view of one another. The privacy he sought would have been compromised by such placement. The distribution of types of planting, shown most clearly in his perspective, contributed to the individual-collective structure. Each house also had its own entry walk. The walks paralleled flower gardens. The area at the back of the four houses was planted rather densely with trees, a grove inserted into the plan that sharply contrasted with the tree-less, prairie-like lawn at the front. Yet, while separated in these ways, the houses were also linked together, most significantly by a low-perimeter wall. This element should not be seen as something additional or extrinsic to the houses, like the typical suburban garden fence at a lot’s edge, for Wright’s wall not only bound the four houses together, but it became part of their physical make-up, giving solidity and weight to their bases, as well as alignment to their window sills and porch knee walls.3 Thus, parts of each house that had been articulated separately were held together by an element that all of the houses shared, even parts that were as prominent as the projecting porches [Fig. 8.1, lower]. The perspective view of the quadruple block’s corner house first published in the Ladies’ Home Journal was resurrected by Wright twelve years later in his entry for the City Residential Land Development competition, as was the perspective of the street façade. But he had already reused it before, for his reworking of the Roberts Block Development plan of 1903 (Wright began working on a residential block plan for Charles E. Roberts in 1896), and for the Wasmuth publication of 1910.4 These revisions were steps in the incremental development of his urban community designs. In both the Wasmuth publication and the re-worked Roberts Block plan he transformed the earlier four-house plan into quadruple sub-blocks, not only through the combination of two sets of four houses, but a mixture of streets, sidewalks, and flower beds, the latter running the full width of the new block. These changes show most clearly in the Roberts Block design [Fig. 8.2]. The urban character of the layout was thus increased because each house’s entry walk now had access to a public passageway. While the new sub-block arrangement didn’t significantly change the form of the individual house, the four were drawn closer to one another and the lot sizes were reduced. Was privacy thereby decreased? Probably not.The dense tree plantings that had screened the houses in the earlier version were still there, but trees and plantings were now also clustered toward the center, especially along each house’s back sides, indicating that each “hof” or “yard” was also linked to a green space that was shared.

The Ardmore Experiment The relationships between the isolation and binding of individual units into groups also dominated Wright’s thinking in a later project, The Ardmore Experiment of 1938 [Fig. 8.3]. This was an experiment in building communities as much as houses. Here the four houses were again linked together by a common wall, but not one that ran around their perimeter; instead, one that crossed at the center of the four, a perfectly equilateral cross. If privacy had been put at risk in the 1903 Roberts and the 1913 Wasmuth quadruple sub-blocks, the quadruple layout of the 1938 project assured its 191

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Figure 8.2  Charles E. Roberts block plan, Oak Park, Illinois, 1903, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 0309.003.

Figure 8.3  The Ardmore Experiment, Ardmore, Pennsylvania, 1938, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 3906.004.

realization: no one of the four houses was visible from any vantage within another.The central walls also had a structural function. Unlike the houses in the original quadruple block plan, which were independently self-supporting (apart from their dependence on the perimeter wall) and could conceivably stand alone, the Ardmore houses shared a single masonry wall at their very core and were therefore structurally interdependent. 192

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Compensation for the contraction or near loss of back yards in the earlier block plans was provided by terraces on the Ardmore houses, including a roof terrace, which explains the name later given to the design: Sun-top Homes. Of the two terraces above the ground plane, one extended the master bedroom. The other, on the third floor, labeled “sun terrace” on Wright’s plan, was both larger and cantilevered. One imagines children playing there, also sun bathing; but the section drawing shows laundry. The extension of the sun terrace covered the house’s remarkably ample two-story living room. That interior is seen best in an understudied perspective drawing of the “Cloverleaf ” version of the quadruple house design that views the space from the garden [Fig. 8.4]. In this drawing, Wright was careful to show not only the interconnections between a number of interior volumes (equipped with built in shelves, seats,

Figure 8.4  “Cloverleaf,” Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1942, Frank Lloyd Wright. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 4203.008.

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tables, cabinets, and a fireplace) but also links to nearby green spaces, the garden in the foreground and a grove in the distance. Of course such a two-story interior had many precedents in his work. The direct reference for this one – within the series of quadruple arrangements for urban locations – was the large room in the Home in a Prairie Town project. But that room was located in the center of the house, connected to the exterior indirectly, through upper level, clearstory glazing only. In Ardmore, by contrast, the large volume was placed at the edge of the plan, rising two stories behind an impressive window wall, and L-shaped in section.

Sectional L-shapes A surprisingly similar double-story, L-shaped section formed the unit of grouping in the block of residences Le Corbusier built in Marseilles in 1952, the Unité d’habitation. Precedents for this were developed in the 1930s. In these cases, as in Ardmore, the single unit could not have been built on its own, for interdependency was a basic principle of spatial organization and construction, seen most clearly in a cross-section through two units on three levels [Fig. 8.5]. Circulation through the entire block was provided

Figure 8.5  Unité d’habitation, Marseille, 1946, Le Corbusier. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 26827.

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by centralized passageways (Le Corbusier labeled the type la rue interieur), formed by stacking paired, double-story, L-shaped units. Each of the stacked pairs (comprising three levels, with the rue interior passing through the mid-level) could themselves be stacked vertically to form a multi-story grouping. The stacks could also be repeated horizontally to form blocks of varying lengths. In all cases, the individual unit stretched from one side of the building to the other, allowing for both cross-ventilation and natural light into the depth of the section. More importantly, no matter which direction it faced, the unit’s double-story room extended beyond its ostensible boundary (the thermal barrier) into a covered loggia. We have seen loggias of this kind in Le Corbusier’s work before. Xenakis described it as the precedent for the La Tourette cell, although that room was single-story. But this one also served as a sun-breaker (brise soliel) within the thickness of the façade, much deeper than an add-on sun screen, carved out of the overall volume. As such it made what might have seemed an exterior space into a constituent part of the interior – a garden at the scale of the unit, rather like the spaces carved into the apartment-villas block and the Villa Stein d’Monzie [Fig. 8.6]. Several benefits to the individual unit resulted from the positioning, dimensioning, and furnishing of this loggia. The first and perhaps most important gain is that it was an exterior that was accessible only from the unit, which is to say absolutely private (as at Ardmore). Yet, while it belonged exclusively to the individual apartment, the space of the loggia was also open to the natural environment, which was, of course, enjoyed

Figure 8.6  Unité d’habitation, Marseille, 1946, Le Corbusier. Rene Burri, photographer, 1959. Source: © Rene Burri/Magnum Photos

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and shared by others. In addition to benefiting from natural light, air, and sun, the space provided occupants views into the surrounding vicinity, without being seen by people who occupied adjoining units. The groups of units in the block also shared the space and environment of the building’s roof. There they benefitted not only from light, air, and sun, but also from what Le Corbusier described as hèlio et hydrothérapie, thanks to the “beaches” he provided (sun-facing sloped concrete planes) and the pools [Fig. 8.7]. Interiors on the roof also accommodated the equipment and spaces needed for culture physique. Of course, the overriding influence on all of these provisions and activities was the daily circuit of the sun, a figure whose appearance presided over all that’s shown in this sketch, as it did in so many other diagrams (ecological sketches) of this kind. Magnificent views were also possible on the roof, but they were no less controlled than elsewhere in the building. A high parapet wall, rather like the one that limited the roof of La Tourette, screened off the nearby vicinity and oriented views into the distance, where mountains defined the horizon. All of these opportunities – the spaces for exercise inside and out, the “beaches,” pools, and prospects – were fully accessible to the residents of the block. But where there was allowance was also restraint. The activities that occurred on the roof were limited by the dimensions of the block itself. Individual and small group exercise were possible, but not team sports for example. For that sort of thing, one needed much larger spaces, like those laid out on the ground plane, at the level of the pilotis and the

Figure 8.7  Revitalisation section, 1945, Le Corbusier. Source: Le urbanisme trois établissements humains, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1959, p. 30. © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017.

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raised roadways. Le Corbusier stressed sports in an annotation at the base of his diagram: le sport au pied des maisons. Obviously his design of this level provided for more activities than sports. It was there that interconnections with the wider vicinity were developed, where interdependencies between the residential groupings and the existing city were both acknowledged and structured. When the use and extent of the ground plane is considered in connection with both the roof-scape for the building’s residents and the loggia for the family unit, it becomes clear how the building’s entire cross-section was designed to coordinate each of the three scales that make up an urban community. A Monopoly-like game board developed by Le Corbusier shortly after The Radiant City, illustrates particularly well two of these scales – the resident’s roof-scape and the community’s landscape5 [Fig. 8.8]. Up on the roof Le Corbusier depicted activities limited to the residents of the redent blocks.6 Dance can be seen, also weight-lifting, boxing, sun bathing, gymnastics, and individual exercise. On the ground plane, however, open as it was to anyone in the vicinity, Le Corbusier drew spaces for activities that required larger areas, such as swimming, ice skating and tennis, as well as team sports.

Figure 8.8  Radiant City game, 1939, Le Corbusier. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 29986B.

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The involvement of players from outside the residential blocks would no doubt have made the games more competitive and enjoyable. Access to the provisions enjoyed on this ground plane was, despite the openness, highly structured. Different speeds and kinds of movement were separately acknowledged. The soccer fields, for example, were reached by pedestrian paths. These routes meandered in plan form, edging groves of trees and changes in topography. Yet they were also connected to walks that passed under and beyond the limits of the raised redent blocks, as well as the raised through-streets.The through-streets, in turn, not only connected this community to others in the city but also, more locally, to the parking facilities, by means of secondary roads, which were also raised. Through these several means those who lived in the residential blocks, which is to say single families and groups of them, were brought into contact with individuals who lived elsewhere and could well have been strange to this part of the city.

Urban communities The three scales and projects from Le Corbusier we have reviewed thus far – the L-shaped section developed in the Unité’s dwelling unit and loggia, the grouping of units in his diagram of the typical block section, and the rooftop and ground plan shared spaces shown in the Radiant City game board – can be found in Le Corbusier’s competition entry for the Îlot insalubre no. 6 of 1936 [Fig. 8.9].7 It was entirely necessary for a project of this kind, urban as it was, to be interwoven into pre-existing conditions, unhealthy (insalubre) though they were, for only that wider context could have supplied residents of the redent blocks with the full richness of urban culture. Such content could not have been generated by the new project alone, no matter how sophisticated the unit or elaborate the sectional grouping and the roof. The competition’s specific site in Paris’ 11th arrondissement was one of seventeen areas that had in 1921 been identified as “insalubrious” and “destined for demolition,” particularly because of their density and frequency of tuberculous cases.8 Given all that is typically said and assumed about Corbusian urbanism – his distain and desire for the destruction of pre-existing conditions – it is important to stress that this project didn’t propose demolition, but offered a response to the clearing the city authorities had intended.9 The health of an urban area, no matter whether it was new, old or both, was explained by Le Corbusier with a biological analogy. He began his justification with a simple premise: human happiness depends on the balance or equilibrium of two reciprocal conditions, a man in the city – a man at home.10 This restates his premise for monastic ecologies: coupling the individual and collective. How was this equilibrium to be achieved in the center of Paris? By starting with the irreducible element of both home and city building: “the biological unit: the cell.” His chapter of The Radiant City titled “To Live! (To Breathe)” argued that both scales require “nature be brought into the cities themselves.”11 Why? Because home and city are “governed” by the 24-hour cycle of the sun. Accordingly, its rhythm was to rule the different scales of any modern project, as it had governed the design of cities and houses in the past. There is no 198

Figure 8.9  Îlot Insalubre no. 6, Paris, 1936, Le Corbusier. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 22816.

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special difficulty in coordinating new patterns with existing configurations once the principle of natural equilibrium is acknowledged: “we have drawn,” he observed, “plans of ‘recessed’ or à redent apartment houses to be built on the line of any given pattern. I repeat, any given pattern. By which I mean that any other pattern would also be acceptable.”12 The Îlot submission was designed as a demonstration of this thesis. Large and small, new and old, foreign and familiar were able to discover commonalities when encompassing natural conditions set the rules for their integration. Not all, but a number of key elements in the existing city were to be preserved in Le Corbusier’s project. Why some not all? Because keeping all that was there would have retained the disease the project was meant to remove. Main arteries of circulation through the Quartier and the rest of the city were preserved (Avenue Daumesnil and Boulevard Diderot at the bottom of his plan, and Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine and Rue Ledru-Rollin passing through its center), as were significant public spaces (notably Place Voltaire, shown on the upper right of his plan). He didn’t draw, but edged his redent block alongside the old Hospital St. Antoine, allowing it to remain. The neoGrec parish church in the area, Ste. Marguerite, admittedly undistinguished, despite its 17th century cemetery, did not survive the reworking, however. Within and into the irregular configuration of pre-existing routes and public spaces that pre-dated and were preserved in the project he established three patterns, one of streets, another of public green spaces, and a third of buildings that imposed a new scale and orientation. First, there were the major routes that connected this location to the rest of the city. The one on the north that was to be cut through existing fabric was a new throughstreet (the Grande Traverse de Paris Est-Quest).The one on the south was the pre-existing Boulevard Diderot. Passing through the center of the site was an ancient route, Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine. Aligned with the northern traverse were a number of public institutions: cinemas, theaters, and libraries. This alignment suggests these institutions were meant for residents of the entire city, including those who would live in this area. On the southern edge, he proposed a number of unspecified public buildings, rather more local to the project’s immediate vicinity. Connecting the two peripheral through-streets was a very large green park that was interrupted only by the Rue du Faubourg St. Antoine. Meandering paths passed throughout the landscape, following the contours of the land and edging clusters of trees. Not only did the paths join parts of the park together, but they also provided links to the existing residential communities on the east and west borders. In the larger open spaces, he sited sports fields ringed by running tracks, also tennis courts, and swimming pools – all of those provisions for physical culture that could not be accommodated on the rooftops of the residential blocks. Of course, these amenities were not only open to people who lived in the new blocks, but others in neighboring communities. The third pattern overlaid onto the site was an orthogonal framework of buildings of two types: large-scale redent housing blocks and smaller scale school buildings. In addition to being orthogonal, the large-scale blocks aligned with the cardinal directions. Solar orientation also determined the depth of the blocks: those running east–west were single-loaded, with corridors on the north and living spaces facing south, and 200

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those running north–south were double-loaded, with double-height rooms receiving morning or evening sun. The change in plan type indicates one way he intended the “biological units” in the buildings to “live and breathe.” But there were modifications to the type in the length of the blocks too. Rather like a tailor sizing a pattern to a specific person’s body, the redent blocks were cut to fit the geometries and distances of the existing urban fabric – cut longer or shorter to meet but not interrupt primary routes. Less important roads passed beneath the blocks, in gaps created by widening the intervals between the pilotis. The outcome was less a patchwork than a fabric measured to both his idea of the modern city and the existing conditions. The green spaces defined by the blocks (in the manner of Hénard) provided sites for the lower scale school buildings (day care facilities, nurseries, and elementary schools). This scale made them consistent with the pre-existing buildings outside the project’s limits. Because they were either L- or U-shaped, the school buildings themselves defined exterior spaces, basically open-air rooms oriented toward the neighboring communities. In most cases these lower scale buildings were directly linked to the adjoining neighborhoods by paths that led to pre-existing streets. These links, like the connections established by the scale of buildings, and the major routes to the north and south, were designed to weave the new project into the existing fabric. The striking differences – even divergence – between the new and old configurations were not, thereby, annulled, but the interdependency that was necessary to sustain the project’s urban content was carefully and creatively structured. Wright also composed urban fabric, less as a tailor than a weaver, an important example of which is his City Residential Land Development competition entry of 1913 [Fig. 8.10]. The competition program asked for the design of a quarter-section of land. What had been developed in the Ladies’ Home Journal design, and modified in the Roberts Block Plan was transformed once again to form part of the expanding grid of Chicago. But in this case, there weren’t extensions from the space of his design into pre-existing urban conditions, as there were in Le Corbusier’s design, but proposals for those conditions within the territory of his project, as necessary parts of “residential” design. Wright’s site was not in the center of an ancient city but at the edge of a new one. In the competition, the land was assumed to be abandoned farmland, once fertile prairie. He envisaged a city nonetheless – at least part of one – with more cultural content, it seems, than was envisaged by those who devised the competition program.13 On the north side, where the trolley ran alongside cars on a through-street, Wright provided for large apartment buildings at the two corners, also stores with apartments above them, and an open-air market at the center, flanked by a “universal temple of worship” on one side and a theater on the other. On the south side, he placed a run of “workman’s house groups,” with two-family house groups behind them. Density decreased from the first to the second groups, with the weave of quadruple blocks behind.There were variations in these blocks – distances from the street and size of the individual units – but the principle of group formation remained the same. Connecting the north and south sides was a very large park, surprisingly redent-like in its geometry, but accommodating communal facilities, not residential premises. On 201

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Figure 8.10  City Residential Land Development: Studies in Planning, Chicago, 1913. Source: City Residential Land Development: Studies in Planning, Chicago, 1916, 98.

the park’s northern, more urban end Wright located “lagoons” for seasonal aquatic sports, probably competitive, as well as park facilities for young people, a bandstand and “refectory,” and athletic fields. We suppose he thought proximity to the denser parts of the plan would have appealed to young people. Toward the southern, more residential end of the park, there was a section for children and adults containing a zoological park, next to which, on axis, was a second lagoon for seasonal skating and swimming, with the public school beyond. The residential accommodations were organized into groups, as we have already observed. A total of 1,500 individuals were intended to live there, the majority of which were arranged in semi-block groups of quadruple houses. As in the Roberts 202

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Figure 8.11  City Residential Land Development: Studies in Planning, Chicago, 1913. Source: City Residential Land Development: Studies in Planning, Chicago, 1916, 100.

Block Plan version of this design, the groups were joined together by pedestrian paths that linked into lanes and through-streets [Fig. 8.11].The hierarchically structured web of routes, together with the impressively wide range of public institutions, at both the project’s boundaries and center, in an exceptionally large green space indicate clearly Wright’s commitment to urban living and the prospects for the modern city. His criticism of existing cities, forceful though it was, should not be taken as evidence of singleminded dedication to suburban or rural landscapes. In the section titled “Primitive Instincts” in the Disappearing City of 1932, published the same year as the exhibition on modern architecture opened at the Museum of Modern Art, Wright recounted a fictionalized history of the rise of cities from caves to fortifications. For him, the instincts of early mankind were divided into those of the “cave dwellers” and those of the “wandering tribes.” “So we may assume,” he wrote, “the cave dweller multiplied more swiftly than his brother . . . His walls grew heavier as he grew more powerful. When he ceased to find a cave he made one. The fortification became his. Cities were originally fortifications.”14 But “his swifter, more mobile brother devised a more adaptable and elusive dwelling place, the folding tent.”15 Wright made significant revision of his story of the division of early mankind in When Democracy Builds, 1944, which was repeated in The Living City, 1958. In When Democracy Builds he changed “cave dwellers” to “cave-dwelling agrarians,” implying the first city dwellers were members of a society sustained by agriculture.16 But the cities of the “cave-dwelling agrarians” and the settlements of the more mobile “wandering tribes” – also revised by Wright in When Democracy Builds as the “wandering tribes of warriors” – were neither exclusive nor autonomous. According to Wright’s understanding “two human natures have married and brought forth other natures . . . both natures working together, has produced what the body of mankind calls civilization. Civilizations become conscious, insist upon, and strive to perfect culture.”17 203

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For Wright in 1932, the traditional city hadn’t so much disappeared from the earth, so much as disappeared beneath the smog of industrial smokestacks. Modern industrialization, he argued, was both rendering the traditional city obsolete and leading the way to a new kind of city. These miracles of technical machine invention with which culture has had nothing to do and that in spite of misuse and abuse are forces with which culture and life itself have now to reckon, working toward a new freedom, are the internal combustion engine working as various forms of mobilization.18 In the section of the Disappearing City titled “The Uneconomic Basis of the City,” Wright identified the three “economic artificialities” responsible for the intensification of human concentration in cities: rent, interest, and the concentration of profits, that is “concentrating in fewer and fewer hands these various unearned increments, by the invisible centripetal action of capitalistic centralization.”19 To maintain these three artificialities and “to keep peace and some show of equity between the lower passions busily engaged in getting money by these extraordinarily complicated forms of money-getting, legitimized by government, government ran away with government and itself became extraordinary.” The status quo of the three economic artificialities maintained by government and dependent upon an expedient religion wherein men were to be saved by faith rather than by their own works, taken all together constitute the traditional but exaggerated and unsafe substitute for a sound economic basis of human society in the United States.They subsist as the substructure of the outmoded city; the inorganic basis of the inorganic city now battering and feeding upon all intrinsic sources of intrinsic production.20 Wright’s prescription for the future city was based upon a minimum of one acre to the family with farming as its foundation. “No longer will the farmer envy the urban dweller his mechanical improvements while the latter in turn covets his “green pastures.”21

Viewing the horizon Both Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright presented overviews of their competition entries, each a view from the south [Fig. 8.12 and Fig. 8.13], Le Corbusier described his as an “aerial” view, attesting to his fascination with shots taken from airplanes, and Wright called his a “bird’s eye-view,” implying a somewhat lower vantage. Despite these differences, both views proposed connections between the areas they designed and even more distant territories.They did so in different ways, largely determined, we think, by the cities in which they were working. 204

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Figure 8.12  City Residential Land Development: Studies in Planning, Chicago, 1913. Source: City Residential Land Development: Studies in Planning, Chicago, 1916, 97.

Figure 8.13  Îlot Insalubre no. 6, Paris, 1936, Le Corbusier. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. 22829.

In the far distance of Le Corbusier’s prospect, one can see the skyline of northern Paris. The profile rises and falls from east to west, interrupted only by the outline of a few significant monuments, possibly Tour St. Jacques (so loved by early 20th century painters and poets) toward the middle, and Sacra Coeur rising above Montmartre.22 Wright’s project is ringed by a regular pattern of streets than run to the margins of the 205

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page, implying very clearly there will be no end to these routes as they extend into the prairie, at least there is no end in sight. In each case, the project’s wider frame of reference is brought into view, as if it had some direct although distant bearing on the specific area under consideration. For Wright, the frame of reference was the open prairie, in its quarter-section divisions; for Le Corbusier, it was the spread of recognizable landmarks.The distances thus portrayed were not, however, only spatial: for Wright, the margins of his project pointed toward the city yet to come; for Le Corbusier, it was the one that had been. As such, each reference point could be seen as outside the scope of the project in a historical sense – outside this particular solution to present problems. But the fact that these lines were drawn, that they framed the designs, suggests that the prospects for urban living they propose were somehow thought to adhere to what was no longer and not yet urban reality; which is to say project making for Wright and Le Corbusier depended as much on recollection and anticipation as it did on knowing existing conditions. Neither of these architects was able to develop their project without considering more distant horizons. Ecology’s basic thesis of “acting locally and thinking widely” requires acceptance the difference between responsibility for a specific design and awareness of its wider frame of reference. These two projects indicate as clearly as any in the modern period that the wider horizons of design at this third scale are at once historical and environmental, or in the terms we have frequently used throughout this book, cultural and ecological.

Scales beyond the community Despite the increased distance addressed in the two perspectives we have just reviewed, those drawings do not encompass the limits of the territory Le Corbusier and Wright took into consideration when developing these and other projects. Other drawings show very clearly that territories still farther beyond the ostensible scope of their designs provided orientation to their work – much farther beyond. Two of these drawings can be used to bring our study to an end: one is a plate that Le Corbusier included in The Home of Man, a sketch described as Hexagonal France, and the other is Wright’s initial sketch for the orthogonal America that came to be called Broadacre City [Fig. 8.14 and Fig. 8.15]. The first and perhaps this most important shared characteristic of these drawings is the fact that they are sketches, not designs. As such, they remain open to interpretation. This was not by accident, nor a result of haste. More than incomplete, one could say they are intentionally ambiguous and depend rather heavily on the supplementary annotations added to the page. At this scale, the scale of the countryside, more exact rendering would not have been possible, nor would it have make sense, particularly when the task of architectural design was understood as building equilibrium between a given culture and specific ecology as each was unfolding in time. The appropriateness of sketching content such as this can be clearly seen when the opposite scale is considered, a construction detail for example, such as the one with which we opened 206

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Figure 8.14  Hexagonal France, Le Corbusier, 1942. Source: © F.L.C./ADAGP, Paris/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2017. F.L.C. B3(3)216.

this book, the window detail of Wright’s House on the Mesa, which was dimensioned exactly and outlined precisely. Our point is this: different scales of concern require different types of description, also different ways of thinking. The three scales we have addressed – the unit, group, and community, or domestic, monastic, and urban – stand between the detail and territorial sketch. Labels were necessary on drawings of both 207

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Figure 8.15  Broadacre City, Frank Lloyd Wright, c. 1934. Source: The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York). 3402.001.

kinds because the topics they address are beyond typical experience and the realm of meaningful interaction. On Le Corbusier’s representation of Hexagonal France the annotations approximate concepts. The same is true for the diagrams at the bottom of the page. As such, they address the country as whole, at the very least large portions of it. Territory as encompassing as this was not something for which Le Corbusier took responsibility. Our earlier distinction between awareness and responsibility has even more force at this scale. Still, there is a strong desire to comprehend a scale beyond the community and the city, even though it is neither visible nor experienced directly. 208

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The solar circuit shown in the diagram at the bottom of the page operates more or less mechanically. Nevertheless, its law, laws of the natural world, together with the principles of unity and equilibrium, also seen to rule phenomena in the environment, were to guide the organization of the national territory. Thus the unity the sketch describes includes sites of agriculture, complementary rural industries, and rural centers. Linear industrial cities are there too. Wright’s Broadacre sketch is similarly far reaching and inclusive, although his geometry is not hexagonal but orthogonal, congruent with the geometry of the Jeffersonian grid that extends across the country. He, too, envisaged the order of wider territory and elaborated a few of its basic principles. The first premise is simple: one acre per family. But as with the City Residential project, territorial order is not only a matter of individual land ownership. The annotations on the sketch indicate a range of types and activities that is no less varied than what could be found in any urban area, although here the public institutions and programs are more widely distributed: factories, recreation facilities, theaters, clubs, and mercantile gas stations. What is more, there are also, and importantly, small-sized farms and tillable land. All of this together is just the opposite of a residential enclave. And the city Wright envisaged, or this section of one, was meant to open outwards and extend widely. Railroads were to be connected to main arteries of regional traffic. Likewise, roadside markets were to supply residents of both this and more distant areas. There was no intent to segregate activities; instead, Wright’s aim was to unify them in measured balance or equilibrium. Equilibrium can be defined as a state of balance of opposing forces or influences. When seen not as a condition but task, it could be described as the work of rebuilding, after some disturbance, connections that had deteriorated or been taken apart. Through the course of our study we have reviewed a number of examples of this kind of work. The aspect of Taliesin that made it a domestic ecology, we’ve argued, was the interdependence of its “rustic” and “urban” elements. At a larger scale, the villa-­ apartment was a comparable attempt at re-balancing, with the Carthusian arrangement, a monastic ecology, as its model. At the scale of the group, we also observed the double L-section and garden roof in Le Corbusier’s projects and the quadruple houses and blocks invented by Wright. The urban ecology, we’ve said, involved more challenging tasks, especially in the modern period, in which complex and changing conditions – both social and environmental – placed limits on design because after a certain scale the complexity exceeded the understanding design requires. Although fascinating, dense, and complex, these last sketches were neither architectural designs nor city plans. Nevertheless, they projected ways that orthogonal and hexagonal territories could achieve more balanced equilibrium. The basic premise for architectural work at any scale is that the lack of exchange and involvement are always unhealthy. The same could be said for uniformity or homogeneity – what in agriculture is called mono-culture. The alternative found in the works we’ve studied is complementarity. The conditions brought about by societal and technological modernization and confronted by modern architecture have not disappeared 209

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in our time, but have intensified, making the task of imagining how some measure of balance might be achieved even more pressing.

Notes 1 Wright, “Home in a Prairie Town,” 17. 2 Ibid. 3 We saw a similarly functioning walls at Ocatilla and Como Orchards. 4 See: Wright, Studies and Executed Buildings. 5 In 1950, Le Corbusier imagined that this 1939 study of a “christmas toy” could be developed for distribution in Europe, North America, and the South. He believed it would a big seller, and should be called Radiant City. 6 It is not certain who actually drew this image, but it certainly expresses Le Corbusier’s urban ideas. Different translations of the term redent have been offered by historians and critics. Le Corbusier’s usage variously implies “recessed” or “indented.” 7 His documentation of this project can be seen in Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, “Ilot insalubre,” 48–55. He also issued a short pamphlet on the project: Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, Îlot insalubre no 6. A useful but brief recent commentary was published in Cohen, Atlas of Modern Landscapes, 290–291; see also page 254. Also useful is: Lovero, et al, Il progetto di Le Corbusier per l’ilot no. 6 a Parigi. 8 Le Corbusier and Jeanneret, “Ilot insalubre,” 48. 9 Many years after Le Corbusier’s design the Centre Pompidou was built on another Îlot site, once pre-existing buildings were demolished. The site of his project, however, was never cleared. 10 Le Corbusier, Radiant City, 143. 11 Ibid., 104; our italics. 12 Ibid., 109. 13 No reasons were given in the publication of the competition results as to why Wright’s proposal was judged to be “non-competitive,” but perhaps his ample provision of public institutions and amenities was part of the problem. The Report of the Jury states: “A few plans were rejected at the outset because they did not comply with the essential conditions of the competition.” See: Yeomans, City Residential Land Development, 6. 14 Wright, Disappearing City, 6. 15 Ibid., 5. 16 Wright, When Democracy Builds, 4. See also in Wright, Industrial Revolution Runs Away, 5. 17 Wright, 7. 18 Ibid., 15. 19 Ibid., 9. 20 Ibid., 10. 21 Ibid., 45. 22 These identifications are only guesses. The rectangular outline could also be one of the arches, St. Denis or St. Martin, or perhaps some other monument. In skylines of this kind, he didn’t seem deeply concerned with topographical accuracy. The façade drawing of the Îlot project was bordered by the outline of the Pantheon located in an impossible position. Monuments and the cultural memory they sustained were more important than position in these kinds of drawings.

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Spirn, Anne Whiston. “Frank Lloyd Wright: Architect of Landscape.” In Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape, 1922–1932, edited by David De Long, 135–169. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996. Steward, Julian H. “Alfred Kroeber 1876–1960: A Biographical Memoir.” In Biographical Memoirs.Vol. 36, 191–253. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1962. ———. Theory of Cultural Change: The Methodology of Multi-linear Evolution. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois, 1955. Tafel, Edgar. Apprentice to Genius:Years With Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979. Taine, Hippolyte. Voyage en Italie.Vol. 2: d’Assie et Florence. Paris: Hachette et Cie, 1874. Talmona, Marida ed. L’Italia di Le Corbusier. Milan: Electa, 2012. Tanzer, Kim and Rafael Longoria. The Green Braid:Towards an Architecture of Ecology and Equity. ­London: Routledge, 2007. Taylor, Paul Beekman. Gurdjieff and Orage Brothers in Elysium.York Beach, Maine: Weiser, 2001. Tennyson, Alfred Lord. “Flower in a Crannied Wall.” In The Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson, 240. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1894. Thomas,William L. Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1956. Töpffer, Rodolphe. Nouveau Voyages en Zigzag: A la Grande Chartreuse. Paris:Victor Lecou, 1854. Tucker, Cynthia Grant. Prophetic Sisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880–1930. Boston: Beacon Press, 1990. Twombly, Robert C. Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and His Architecture. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979. ———. “Organic Living: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship and Georgi Gurdjieff ’s Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man.” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 58, no. 2 (Winter 1974–1975): 126–139. Varro, Marcus Terentius. On Agriculture. Loeb Classical Library. Translated by William Davis Hooper. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934. Vernant, Jean-Pierre. “Hestia-Hermes: The Religious Expression of Space and Movement in Ancient Greece.” In Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 127–175. London: Routledge, 1983. ———. “Work and Nature in Ancient Greece.” In Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 248–270. London: Routledge, 1983. Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. The Black Hunter: Forms of Thought and Forms of Society in the Greek World [La chasseur noir, 1981]. Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1986. Viollet Le Duc, E. E. Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle. Paris: B. Bance and A. Morel et Cie, 1854–1868. Vitruvius. The Ten Books on Architecture [De architectura libri decem].Translated by Morris Hicky Morgan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914. Voegelin, Eric. “Origins of Scientism.” In The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, edited by Ellis Sandoz, 168–196.Vol. 10. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri, 2000. von Moos, Stanislaus.“Voyages en Zigzag.” In Le Corbusier Before Le Corbusier: Applied Arts, Architecture, Painting, Photography, 1907–1922, edited by Stanislaus von Moos and Arthur Rüegg, 23–44. New Haven:Yale University Press, 2002. Wallace-Hadrill, Andrew. “The Villa as Cultural Symbol.” In The Roman Villa: Villa Urbana, edited by Alfred Frazer, 43–53. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1998. Weber, Nicholas Fox. Le Corbusier: A Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008. Weston, Williams H. “From People You Know.” Spring Green Home News April 18, 1929. Wijdeveld, Hendrik T. A Life-Work of the American Architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Kroch and Son, 1948. Wojtowicz, Robert. “A Model House and a House’s Model: Reexamining Frank Lloyd Wright’s House on the Mesa Project.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 64, no. 4 (December 2005): 522–551. Wright, Frank Lloyd. “An Autobiography.” In Collected Writings [New York: Longmans Green, 1932], edited by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer.Vol. 2, 1930–1932, 102–382. New York: Rizzoli, 1992.

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218

INDEX

abri 4, 90, 92, 97, 98 Ackerman, James 29 – 30, 32 – 3, 35n27, 36n38, 68n74, 211 adaptation 9 – 10, 49, 151 agricultural, agriculture 4, 21 – 2, 24 – 6, 29, 35n18, n20, n33, 36n38, 47, 49, 58, 60, 66, 128, 130, 158, 170, 180, 181, 212 – 17; art 24; complementary with rural industry 209; ecology 31; integration with urban culture 55, 56, 203; monastic 101 – 2, 128; monoculture 209; practice 21 – 2, 24, 26, 33 analogia 29 anthropology 3 – 4, 8, 13, 18n30 – 1, 19 apprentice 56, 149 – 50, 153 – 4, 156, 176; rooms at Taliesin 172 – 3, 175, 184; Taliesin 45, 47, 49, 51, 65, 67n22, 158 – 9, 161, 170, 172 – 3, 175, 176, 188n53, 217 apprenticeship 20, 22, 160 Aristotle 10, 18n33, 22 – 1, 23, 34n9, 35n13, 114n10, n12, 211 Ashbee, Charles Robert 51, 67n33, 167, 211 – 12 atelier 77, 128, 135 – 8, 144, 145n5, 147n47, n51, 214 atrium 27 – 8, 51, 99n11, n30 axe heliothermique 91 Barberis, Charles 137 – 8 barchessa 31 barn 31, 35n12, 64, 66, 67n22, n29, 69n43, n44, 87, 100n64, 130, 211, 215; bank barn 54 – 6, 62, 68n42; buildings in a monastic precinct 126, 130; buildings in an oikos 21; buildings in a villa 16; at Prieuré des Basses Loges 160 – 1; at Taliesin 45 – 51, 54 – 6, 65, 166, 170, 172 Barr, Alfred 37 – 8 Bateson, Gregory 13, 19n44, 212 Behrens, Peter 38, 99n7, 212 Benedictines see St. Benedict Berry, Wendell 3, 67n28, 212 biological 4 – 5, 10, 14, 18n32, 198, 201 biological analogy 77, 198 biology 6, 11 – 12, 20, 23

Blake, Peter 15, 19n50, 212 Bock, Richard 47 Bookchin, Murray 13, 19n44, 212 breathing 160, 165 Breuer, Marcel 7, 14, 17n18 brise-soleil 7; see also sun, sun-breaker cabanon 136 – 8,  140 cabin 106, 137 – 41, 144, 152 – 8, 175, 178 – 84, 186n2, n9, n16, 188 Canterbury Cathedral Priory 103 – 4 Carson, Rachel 3 – 6, 8, 17n7, 212 Carthusian 101, 109 – 10, 112, 117, 119, 121 – 7, 143, 145n16, 209 Cassian, John 102, 113n2, 212 Cato 25 – 6, 35n18, 212 cell 3, 99n32, 102, 106, 108, 112 – 13, 115 – 28, 131, 134 – 5, 140 – 4, 145n14, 160, 169 – 70, 172 – 5, 184, 195, 198 Certosa di Firenze, Certosa del Galuzzo, Chartreuse d’Ema, Chartreuse du Val d’Ema, d’Ema, Ema 119, 120, 126, 144, 145n14, 146n20, 147n49 Certosa di Pavia, Charterhouse at Pavia, Pavia 123 – 5, 126n20 Certosa di Venezia 125 Chandler, Alexander 150, 157 – 8, 167, 186n2 Chartreuse 112; Le Grand Chartreuse, Chartreuse 110, 114n16, 124 – 6, 146n28, 217 Chartreuse liquor 101 CIAM, International Congresses of Modern Architecture 91 Cistercian 101, 103, 112 – 13, 130 – 1, 211 city 19n51, n53, 30, 35n11, n13, 37, 57 – 60, 65, 81, 112, 135 – 7, 143 – 4, 145n3, 159, 178, 216; analogy with monastery 123, 136; city to come 203 – 4, 206; city within city 116; context for monastic culture 105; contrasted with country life 26 – 7; design within 200 – 1; landscape and city 16, 34n9, 58; scale 117, 185, 189, 197 – 8, 208 – 9; also natural 21 city-state 21

219

INDEX

Claret de Fleurieu, Marc Antoine Louis 130, 134 cloister 105, 107, 112, 123, 126, 132, 143 – 4, 147n40, 160; cloister-like 170 – 1, 184; garden 131, 134 – 6; life 101 – 2; walk 120, 170, 172 – 3 coenobitic monks 107 – 8 collective 1 – 2, 35n11, 114n9, 134, 146n28, 153; in equilibrium with individual 113, 115 – 16, 118 – 19, 143, 198; work 102 Collumella 25 community 14, 16 – 17, 19n54, 61, 68n53, 114n17, 118, 120, 128, 143, 146n33, 147n46, 150, 153 – 5, 169, 175 – 6, 188n55, 206 – 8, 214, 218; equilibrium with individual 125, 134; hierarchy 154; monastic 105 – 6, 108 – 9, 130, 158; oikos, domestic ecology 21, 23 – 4; philia 24; urban 190 – 1, 197 – 8; way of living 158 – 62, 181; see Wright, Frank Lloyd, University Heights Community and Orchard 178 – 84 community-building 8, 10, 153 complementarity 110, 209 constructive revolution 86 cultural 12, 19n47, 20, 35n25, 67n32, 137, 143, 201, 210n22, n23, 217; anthropology 8; change 8, 10, 17n24, 18n28, n29, n32; conditions related to nature 34n11; context 69, 83 – 4, 87; (see also ecology, cultural); ethos 18n30; meaning of landscape 16, 146n31; patterns 8 – 9; polarities 27, 50 – 1, 98n1; responses to natural conditions 14; role of architectural elements 7; studies 13; terrain 175; values 5, 13 culture 15 – 17, 58 – 9, 82, 139, 178 – 9, 204, 212, 214, 217; adaptation to environment 9; Carthusian 119; city 21; in climate-based design 6; cosmopolitan 72; desert 156 – 8, 170; domestic 65 – 6, 82; evolution of 8, 10; indigenous 157 – 8; inherited 5, 189, 206; interpretation of 9; monastic 101 – 3, 107 – 10, 114n9, 123 – 5, 132, 136, 146n26, 148n58; and nature 13, 18n31, n32, 34n11, 35n16; pastoral 21; physical, culture physique 81, 116, 128, 196, 198, 200; as praxis 17n25, 18n30; rural, rustic 48, 62 – 3; secular monastery 134 – 6, 144, 176, 181, 184; superorganic 9, 19n43; urban 47 – 8, 60, 198; villa 25 – 6, 116; way of life 17; web of human relationships 23 – 6 Cummings, e.e. 167 Cuvier, Baron von 11 – 12 Darwin 9, 12, 19n37, 212 de Monzie, Gabrielle 73 Denver, Colorado 40 – 1 desert 40 – 1, 60, 66, 106 – 7, 114n4, 124, 146n26, 149 – 58, 167, 170, 175 – 6, 179, 184, 186n2, 189

Desert Fathers 102, 107, 108, 112 design 1 – 10, 16, 19n48, 39 – 42, 54 – 6, 67n23, 69, 80 – 2, 91 – 2, 94 – 5, 119, 131, 133 – 4, 146n28, 147n55, 150, 164, 203 – 4, 209, 210n9, 212 – 13, 215 – 17; according to monastic Rule 107; causal approach to 7; with climate 5 – 6, n14, n15, n16, n19, n23, 21; with climate and views 139 – 40, 204; community 189 – 91, 193, 197, 200 – 1, 203 – 4; considering landscape, terrain 13, 56, 66, 85, 128, 143 – 4, 159 – 60; at different scales 21 – 2, 115 – 16, 206; geometry 73, 77 – 8, 140; house type 26 – 7, 30, 51 – 2, 80 – 2, 98n2, 193; housing 116; individual-collective 113, 173, 175 – 6; little farms 59; with nature 4, 17n9, 21, 78, 198; with and against nature 152, 156, 181; productive 7; related to life style 70 – 1; school 166, 170; sculpture 47; site 73, 85, 178 – 9; studio 65 – 6; sustainable, environmental 6 designer 5, 7 – 9, 15 disciplines 3, 8, 38, 102, 109 – 10, 124, 136, 161 – 2, 165, 167, 176, 184, 186n19 disequilibrium 1, 8, 189 disproportion 149 domain 3, 21, 47, 54, 87, 98, 128, 130, 143 – 4, 146n32, 170, 175, 184, 189; agricultural 65 – 6; ecological 24, 52, 66, 133, 140 domestic ecology see ecology, domestic domestic economy 20, 117 Dominican 87, 101, 128, 130, 143 – 4, 146n31, 216 domus 24, 34n3, 35n16, 95 Doremus, Thomas 16, 19n50, 212 Dos Passos, John 167 ecology 17n4, n5, 19n40, 180 – 1, 209, 211, 212, 216 – 17; agricultural 31, 68n42; cultural, and culture 1 – 3, 8 – 17, 17n24, 18n30, 47, 64, 128, 130, 140, 176, 179, 189, 206; desert 107 – 8, 149, 151, 156, 158; domestic 16, 21, 23 – 5, 66, 82, 209; fertile 178 – 9; human 9, 17n27; humanities 13, 19n44; modern science, biology 11 – 12, 20 – 1; monastic 16, 110, 114n9, 133 – 4, 209; oecologie 10; urban 16, 209; web of life 17 economy 11 – 12, 19n37, 20, 24, 106, 110, 117, 141, 147n41, 149, 151, 185n1 elevated horizon 130 – 1, 133 environmental 1, 2, 3, 6 – 11, 13, 15, 18n32, 19n45, n48, 20, 66, 88, 98n1, 100n51, 130, 134, 143, 151, 158, 175 – 6, 189, 206, 209, 211, 216; environmental crisis 1, 2; environmentalism 3, 15 – 16, 19n48; environmental movement 3, 6; environmental performance 66

220

INDEX

equilibrium 96, 98, 102, 113, 115, 149, 198, 200, 206, 209 Etlin, Richard A. 16, 19n50, 212 eurythmics 160 expression 6 – 8, 13 – 14, 17n21, 38, 107, 141, 168, 217 façade libre 94 familia 24 farm 13, 16, 44 – 8, 54, 56 – 61, 63 – 6, 67n10, n22, 67, 87, 100n64, 102, 151, 166, 170, 173, 179, 209, 213 – 14; ancient Greek 21 – 2; dairy 4; diversified 56 – 7; domestic ecology 21 – 2; gospel 60; life 65; little 59 – 60; Renaissance 30; Roman 26 – 7; school 168; self-sufficient 52; tenanted 126; yard 45 – 51, 54, 56, 66 farmer 24, 48, 49, 59 – 62, 64 – 5, 126, 204 farming 21 – 2, 24, 30, 34n5, 52, 55 – 7, 62, 64 – 5, 100n64, 102, 126, 158, 170 farmland 56, 87, 201 farmstead 35n12, 52, 188n51, 213 Finke, Peter 13, 19n44, 213 Fishman, Robert 16, 19n50, 213 five points 86, 95 The Fourth Way 165, 187n36 framework 4, 13, 17n21, 21, 24, 35n12, 35n33, 68n42, 100n51, 131, 200, 215 Franciscan 109 garden 5, 29, 41 – 50, 59 – 60, 67n31, n37, 68n48, 71 – 82, 99n11, n12, n30, 143, 145n5, n15, n16, 169 – 71, 175, 190 – 1, 193 – 5, 213; allotment 116; cell-garden 112, 120, 123, 125 – 6, 128; cloister garden 131, 134, 136; convent garden 136; covered garden 74, 75, 76, 79 – 81; English 155; estate 21; façade 69; hanging garden 86, 93, 120; Italian 179; monastic 103, 105; monk’s garden (see monk); Renaissance villa 29 – 30, 35n26; Roman villa 24; roof garden, garden roof, toit-jardin 66, 76, 80 – 2, 84, 91 – 2, 94 – 5, 97, 145n5, 131, 133 – 4, 143, 147n45, 209; roof terrace 76, 79 – 86, 92, 134, 144, 193; sun terrace (see sun); suspended garden, jardin suspendu 80 – 1, 82, 97 – 8, 117, 120, 122, 145n5; terrace garden, terrasse-jardin 29, 30 – 1, 43, 52, 59, 71, 73 – 6, 79 – 80, 94, 99n11, 117, 139, 141, 143 – 4, 154, 161, 193; vegetable garden 52, 56, 65, 73, 79 – 80, 97, 99n11, 166; water garden 52, 67n37 gardener’s lodge 89, 91, 97 geometry of fellowship 175 Ghyka, Matila 76, 78 Giannetto, Raffaella 30, 35n26, n28, 68n48, 213 Giedion, Sigfried 95, 100n63, 213 golden section 76 – 8, 99n21 Gropius, Walter 15, 37 – 8, 187n45, 215

Guattari, Felix 1 – 2, 17n1, 213 Gurdjieff, Giorgii 159 – 62, 164 – 9, 172 – 3, 187n23, n27, n28, n29, n30, n36, 211, 213, 216, 217 habit 11 – 13, 19n54, 23, 34n11, 108 – 10, 112, 114n5, n9, n11, n12, n13, 143, 162, 164 habitat 11 – 13, 19n54, 23, 109, 216 habitus 109 – 10, 114n9 Haeckel, Ernst 10 – 12, 18n30, 19n36, 19n39, 19n40, 213 harmony 78, 115, 119, 137 hèlio et hydrothérapie 196 heliothermique 91 Hénard, Eugène 201 Hermes 23, 35n15, 217 Hesiod 21, 34n8, 213 Hestia 23, 35n15, 217 Hinzenberg,Vlademar  159 Hitchock, Henry-Russell 38 – 9, 42, 49, 66, 67n5, n7, n15, n27, 70 – 1, 74, 78, 83, 98n2, 99n5, 99n36, 100n54, 213 – 14 home 20, 39, 41, 44, 45, 49 – 51, 54, 56, 67n31, n34, 98, 101, 108, 114n8, 120, 130, 135 – 7, 141, 146n24, n28, 160, 187n45, 190 – 1, 198, 211, 215, 217; economics 23 – 4; for factory worker children 87; furnishing 71; Hillside Home School (see Wright, Frank Lloyd); Hillside Home School for the Allied Arts (see Wright, Frank Lloyd); Home in a Prairie Town (see Wright, Frank Lloyd); Home of Man (see Le Corbusier); ownership 60; Suntop Homes (see Wright, Frank Lloyd); type repeated 123; see also domus Homer, Homeric 23, 35m13 Hôtel particulier 78 – 9, 81, 96; see also Le Corbusier, Hôtel Particulier à Boulogne-sur-Seine household 11 – 12, 19n37, 20 – 1, 23 – 4, 34n2, n11, 35n16, 95, 213 Hugo,Victor 156, 186n15, 213 individual 18n29, 23, 109, 114n9, n17, 125, 131, 154, 162, 172 – 3, 181, 188n57, 189 – 91, 209; dwelling unit, cell 13, 16, 70, 115 – 18, 141, 143, 173, 175, 184, 191, 195 – 6, 201 – 2; expression 1, 13; individual-collective 1 – 2, 112 – 13, 114 – 16, 118 – 19, 125, 134, 143, 146n28, 185, 191, 198; see also design, individual-collective industrialization 15, 204 inhabitation 71, 80, 183 Iowa County, Wisconsin 61 – 2, 68n61, n62, n64, 211, 215 Jacques-Dalcroze, Emil 160 Jensen, Jen 52

221

INDEX

Johnson, Philip 37 – 9, 41 – 2, 66, 67n5, n16, 70 – 1, 74, 78, 99n5, n36, 100n54, 186n2, n7, 213, 216 Jones, Jenkin Lloyd 60, 64, 68n63, 68n73, 213 – 14 Jones, Richard Lloyd 60, 169 King, Hiram 55 Kroeber, Alfred 9, 18n29, n30, 19n43, 214, 217 landscape 3 – 5, 8, 17n11, n27, 19n51, 34n7, 54, 64, 78, 80, 87 – 8, 123, 128, 134, 146n31, 166, 170, 184, 210n7, 212, 216 – 17; American 16; community’s 197; contractor 73; cultural meaning 16; delight 54; framed as view 92, 184; gardens 179; landscape architects 5, 52; Mediterranean 144; monastic 108 – 9; near and far 69, 88; paths 200; productive, cultivated 56, 172; roof 116; rural 203; surrounding 41 – 2, 45 – 6, 66, 97, 131 – 2; vertical 82; views 52, 67n37, 82, 84 – 5, 90, 92 La rue interieur 195 Le Corbusier 2, 7, 14 – 16, 17n20, 19n50, n51, 37 – 8, 41 – 2, 69 – 72, 74, 76 – 8, 79 – 82, 85 – 7, 91 – 5, 97 – 8, 98n2, 99n9, n11, n22, n24, n31, n33, n38, n40, 100n42 – 3, n45 – 6, n47, n49, n51, n60, n61, 110, 114n6, n8, n16, n17, 115 – 20, 123 – 8, 130 – 7, 139 – 44, 145n1, n3, n5 – 17, 146n18 – 20, n24 – 5, n28 – 31, n33, n35, n38, 147n39, n41, n43, n45 – 6, n48 – 9, n54 – 7, 149n58, n60 – 2, 189, 194 – 8, 200 – 1, 204 – 6, 208 – 9, 210n5 – 10, 211 – 17; 35 Rue de Sèvres 135 – 6, 147n48; Atelier d’artistes 145n5, 214; cabanon 136 – 8, 140; Cap-Martin 114, 136, 138, 140, 143 – 4, 147n57, 212; Cité universitaire housing 142 – 3; five points of a new architecture 86, 95; Hexagonal France 206, 208; The Home of Man 114n8, 206, 215; Hôtel Particulier à Boulogne-sur-Seine, Maison Cook 78, 81 – 2, 88n7, 212, 215; Îlot insalubre no. 6, 189, 198, 210n7, n8, 214; Immeuble-villas, apartment-villas 72, 81 – 2, 92, 115, 117 – 18, 120, 123 – 5, 143, 145n5, 148n58, 195, 209, 215; Journey to the East 120, 145n13, n15, 214; Les heures claires, The Clear Hours 100n44, 100n45, n51, n53, n64, 145n4, 216; Locher Houses 139, 147n39; Maison Citrohan 81, 145n5, 215; maison dom-ino 95, 100n61; Maisons La Roche-Jeanneret 77; Monastery of Sainte Marie de la Tourette 114n16, 119, 128, 130, 133 – 4, 137, 143 – 4, 145n9, 146n31, 147n43, n45, 195 – 6, 214, 216; parents house on Lac Leman 133, 139; Pavilion of Decorative Arts 72; Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau 81, 98n1; Pavillon des Tempes Nouveaux 189; Pessac-Bordeaux

Housing 95, 116; Plan of a Contemporary City for Three-Million Inhabitants 81, 115; Precisions 77, 93, 99n38, 117, 145n6, 214; The Radiant City 197 – 8, 210n10, 214; Radiant City game 198, 210n5; Roq et Rob 140; Rue Nungesser et Coli 133, 147n39; Swiss Pavilion 143; Towards an Architecture 17n20, 99n11, 117, 145n7; Unité d’camping 144; Unité d’habitation, Unité at Marseilles 119, 134, 137, 140, 146n28, 194, 198, 214;Villa at Vaucresson 70, 77;Villa Mandrot 139, 147n39; Villa Meyer 80 – 1;Villa Savoye 33, 37, 39, 41, 81 – 8, 92 – 8;Villa Schwob 77;Villa Stein-de Monzie 69 – 70, 73 – 84, 96 – 8, 98n2, 99n11, n30, 145n4, 195, 216; Wanner Apartments 125; Weissenhof Siedlung houses 81 Leopold, Aldo 3 Le Thoronet 131 – 4, 147n41, 216 Linnaeus, Carl 12, 19n41, 20, 130, 215 loggia 24, 30, 35, 45, 50, 90, 120, 126, 144; balcony 134, 195, 197 – 8; entry 65, 82; garden 117; sun-loggia 43 machine à habiter 70, 95, 214 maison dom-ino 95, 100n61, 215 mapping 5 – 6 Marsh, George Perkins 4 Matisse, Henri 72 – 3, 216 McHarg, Ian 4 – 8, 17n9, n12, n27, 215 Michelozzi, Michelozzo 51 Miller, Richard 15, 19, 215 modern 2, 4, 6 – 7, 10 – 11, 14 – 16, 19n51, 20 – 1, 30, 32 – 3, 34n3, n7, 37, 40, 57, 60, 67n7, 68n49, 69 – 73, 83, 92, 95 – 6, 98n2, 99n21, 103, 109 – 10, 113, 115, 117 – 18, 120, 123, 125, 128, 134, 137, 143, 147n41, 157 – 8, 185, 189, 198, 204, 210n7, 212, 216; International Congresses of Modern Architecture (CIAM) 91; modern architecture 2, 6, 8, 14 – 15, 17, 17n3, 21, 29, 38, 68n49, 71, 83, 100n48, 135, 144, 145n12, 189, 203, 209, 213, 215, 216, 218; Modern Architecture – International Exhibition 37, 51, 67n1, n10, n13, 69, 72, 82, 99n3, 215; Modern Architecture: Romanticism and Reintegration 38, 67n7, 98n2, 213; modern city 201, 203; modernism 72; modernist 2, 66, 99n12, 213; modernity 33; modernization 15, 110, 209; modern movement 2, 71; modern period 10, 15, 110, 114n6, 206, 209; modern tradition 15; modern villa 74, 99n30, 118; Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) 16, 19n53, 38, 41, 44 – 6, 51, 60, 66, 67n1, n3, n4, n13, n14, n17, 69, 82, 98n1, 99n3, n35, 203, 212, 215, 216; pre-modern 10, 14, 16, 20, 23, 33, 65, 101, 212, 215 modulor 99, 137, 140, 147n57, 212, 214, 216

222

INDEX

monastery 16, 87, 101, 105 – 6, 115, 117 – 22, 134 – 5, 143 – 4, 145n11, n16, 146n20, n28, 187n33, 216; Carthusian 110, 112 – 13, 123 – 5, 128 (see also Certosa di Firenze; Certosa di Venezia); Carmelite 160; Cistercian 103, 131; Dominican 128 (see also Le Corbusier, Monastery of Sainte Marie de la Tourette); Pachomian 109; tekkeh 164 monastic ecology see ecology, monastic monk 101 – 3, 105 – 10, 112, 113n3, 118, 123 – 5, 128, 132, 134, 137, 140, 142 – 4, 159 – 61, 184, 187n36; artist-monk 140 (see also garden, cell-garden); happy monk 141, 144; monk’s cell 120, 124, 140, 142, 160; monk’s corridor 159 – 62, 164, 170, 173, 184; monk’s garden 126, 143 – 4, 147n40; student-monk 141,  143 Mt. Athos 134, 145n15 Muir, John 3, 63, 68n67, 215 Mumford, Lewis 40 – 1, 66 Museum of Modern Art see modern natural, nature 1 – 6, 8, 32 – 3, 34n6, n13, 34n16, 39, 51, 63 – 4, 66, 81, 88, 115, 145, 181, 184 – 5, 198, 212 – 17; all-ness, unity 47; assumed separate from culture 3, 8, 18n30, n31, 34n11; bountiful 2; character 169; condition of existence 8, 11, 14, 34n11, 94, 146n28, 107, 123, 175 – 6, 200; constructed 103, 109, 128, 152, 181; cycles, patterns 128, 158; desert 149 (see also design, with nature); drainage 62, 178; economy 12, 20; equilibrium 200; forces 6, 134, 149, 151; foundation for art 5, 169; habit as second nature 109, 114n9, n11; history 11; household 11 – 12, 19n37; human society 10, 20, 23, 203; identity or essence of location or institution 139, 147n51; law 209; materials 22, 49, 66, 67n27; mathematics and geometry 77 – 8; metaphysical 19n38; moral resource 67n24; pact with nature 34n5, 78, 108; paradisiac 13; physis 22, 34n11; political animal 35n13; resources 1; savage 13; scales of association 12; sciences 11 – 13, 18n32, 19n38; selection 18n30; spatial archetypes 90 – 1, 97, 114n7, 172; systems 2; tendencies 24; ventilation 41, 195 – 6; working against 22; working with 22; world 5, 11 – 12, 14, 21, 24, 78, 100n51, 101, 106, 110, 118 Neutra, Richard 14, 187n22 New York 16, 37, 44, 59 – 60, 124, 159, 167, 187n45, 188n56 Niemeyer, Oscar 7, 14 Oak Park, Illinois 45, 187n45 objets à reaction poétique 140 oikos 20 – 5, 34n1, n8, 102, 117

Olgay brothers, Olgyays 8, 14, 17n18, 19n46, n49, 215, 216 Olgyay, Aladar 14 Olgyay,Victor 5 – 8, 10, 17n15, n16 orchard 85, 99n11, 101 – 2, 105, 123, 126, 170, 188n59; Como Orchards 176, 178 – 81 (see also University Heights and Orchard); oikos 21 – 2; Roman villa 24; Taliesin 52, 56 – 7, 65;Villa Savoye 87, 89, 91, 92, 94, 97 – 8;Villa Stein-de Monzie 73, 79 – 80 orientation 88, 90 – 2, 94, 107, 128, 132, 136, 141, 154, 170 – 2, 179, 206; cardinal 74; environmental and cultural 130, 143; front-back 92; ordinal 91; solar 14, 27, 41, 82, 85, 88, 91, 100n43, n51, 130, 200; urban 69 Orr, David 2, 5, 17n2, 216 Oud, J.J.P. 37 – 8, 41 – 2 Ouspensky, Peter 161, 164 – 5, 187n22, n33, n34, n38, 216 Palladio, Andrea 30 – 2, 35n29, n31, n33, n34, 36n35, 73, 76, 85, 86, 216; Four Books on Architecture 30 – 2, 35n29, 216; Villa Malcontenta 76;Villa Rotunda,Villa Almerico Capra 30 – 2, 35n31, n33, 85, 86 park 72, 116, 130, 143, 200 – 2 pars rustica 26 – 7, 29 – 30, 36n38, 37, 51, 60, 99n11 pars urbana 26 – 7, 30, 51, 60, 99n11 Père Couturier 131, 145n9, 146n38, 211 – 12 performance 17n15, 19n49, 109 – 10, 114n13, 215; instrumental and legible 66, 106, 179, 184; performance-based architecture 6 – 7; theatrical 152, 157, 164 peristyle 27 – 8,  51 peristylon 27 Perret, Auguste 38 physis 22, 34n11; see also natural, nature Picasso, Pablo 72, 144 pilotis 90, 93, 95, 97, 196, 201 Pliny 25, 35n30, 216 Poissy, France 33, 85 – 7, 91, 97, 100n43, 215 polis 21, 34n2 Pompeii 27, 51, 134, 145n15 positivism 4 precinct 71, 105, 130, 140 – 1, 143 – 4, 164, 166, 184, 189; campus 178; Carthusian 126 – 7; landscape 52, 56, 67n37, 170; monastic 101 – 3, 110; urban 16 priory: Canterbury Cathedral Priory 103; Prieuré des Basses Loges, Fontainebleau 160 – 1, 165, 169 – 70, 172 – 3 privacy 73, 88, 91, 190 – 1 proportio, proportion 29, 73 – 4, 76 – 8, 145n3, 146n36, 212 Prouvé, Jean 137

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INDEX

quarter-section 201, 206 redent 115, 197 – 8, 200 – 1, 210n6 regulating lines, tracés régulateurs 74, 76 – 8, 99n24, 213, 214 Reidy, Afonso 7 rhythm 101, 107, 110, 162, 165, 168 – 9, 175 – 6, 198; bodily 18n32, 164 – 5; façade 74, 78, 93; seasonal 24; shadow 132 Ritter, William  124 Roberto brothers, Marcelo, Milton, and Maurizio 7, 14 Rockefeller Center 44, 60, 66 Roman house 24, 35n17, 51, 99n11 roof 39, 41, 43, 44 – 6, 48, 54, 69 – 71, 73, 78, 80 – 2, 90, 92 – 5, 105, 107, 116 – 17, 120, 133 – 4, 140, 144, 164, 166 – 7, 172, 175, 181, 184, 197 – 8; roof garden, garden roof, toit-jardin (see garden); roofless 40, 44, 66, 80, 90, 97; roof-scape 197; roof terrace 76, 79 – 86, 92, 134, 144, 193, 196; rooftop 92, 198, 200 Rowe, Colin 32, 35n33, 73 – 4, 76 – 7, 85 – 6, 99n14, n23, n37, n39, 146n31, 216 rule 27, 78, 98n1, 102, 108 – 10, 142, 162, 165, 178, 186n19, 198, 200, 209 The Rule 106 – 10, 113n1, 176, 189, 211 Ruskin, John 124, 146n22, n23, 216 rustica 37, 51, sub-rustica 99n30; see also pars rustica Rybczynski, Witold 31, 35n32, 216 scale 2, 4 – 6, 8, 10 – 12, 43 – 4, 46, 56, 58 – 60, 85, 123, 164, 179, 195, 197 – 8, 200 – 1; city, urban 35n13, 117, 176, 188n55, 189; beyond community 206 – 9; community 21, 176; cultural ecology 16, 115, 189; full 72, 153 – 4; model 37, 41, 44, 69 – 70, 82 – 3; monastic 102, 184 – 5; musical 76; regional 5; territorial 11; villa 29 scale of association 12, 16, 19n54, 21, 45 Scamozzi, Ottavio 32, 36n35, 216 Scamozzi,Vincenzo 31 – 2 secular 114n4, 117, 128, 135, 160, 176, 178, 186n19; secular hermit 137; secularization 110, 118; secularized monastic culture 134 setting 2, 24 – 6, 40, 42 – 5, 60, 69, 94, 114n9, 130, 145n15, 154, 175, 184; agricultural 26; ecological 47, 66; environmental 14, 44; distribution, integration 132 – 3, 143; interior 23, 71, 112; monastic 105 – 6, 110, 112, 120, 126 – 7, 164; rural 24 – 5, 81; topographical 13 silo 54 – 6, 59, 68n43 Silsbee, Lyman 166, 169 – 70 Slutzky, Robert 95, 100n62, 216 Spring Green, Wisconsin 52, 61 – 2, 64, 67n10, 159, 166, 217

St. Anthony the Great 106 – 8 St. Benedict, Benedictines 101 – 3, 107 – 8 St. Bruno 110, 112 Stein 71 – 2, 99n6, 216 Stein, Gertrude 71, 212 Stein House 69 – 71 Steward, Julian 8 – 10, 13 – 14, 17n24, n25, n26, 18n28, n29, n30, n31, n32, n34, 19n43, 217 student 12, 17n11, 18n30, 135, 141 – 3, 166, 168, 172, 178, 187 student-monks see monk suburban, suburbano 29 – 30, 73, 99n30, 188n55; suburban patterns 190, 191, 203 sun 7, 14, 69, 85, 88, 91, 100n51, 106 – 7, 116 – 17, 123, 132, 134, 137, 144, 149, 152, 154, 156, 181, 193, 195 – 6, 198, 201; sunbaked 107, 157; sun bathing 193, 197; sun-breaker 7 – 8, 14, 195; sun-life 149, 152; sunlight 78, 88 – 9, 91, 140, 147n41; sun-loggia 43; sunscreens 14, 43, 66; sunshine 178; sun terrace 193; Sun-top Homes see Wright, Frank Lloyd superorganic 9, 18n29, n30 suspended garden see garden sustainability, sustainable design 1, 6, 13, 15, 17n2, 22, 35n12, 216 symmetria 29 Taine, Hippolyte 124, 146n21, 217 technology 6, 17n11, n14, 33, 216; technological fixes 1; technological modernization 209; technological solutions 6 Tennyson, Alfred Lord 47, 67n23, 217 tent-frame construction 181 terrain 43, 61, 101, 108, 128, 146n26, 179; barren 106; cultural 175 – 6; irregular 140; pre-existing 65, 131 – 2, 155, 180 – 1; revealed 183 – 4; shaped 54, 176; surrounding 24; uncultivated 101 Thompson, D’Arcy Wentworth 77 Töpffer, Rodolphe 124, 146n24, n27, 217 town 22, 26 – 8, 34n8, 51, 62, 68n61, 87, 98n1, 101 – 2, 150 – 1, 188n55, 189, 90; Home in a Prairie Town 190, 194, 210n1, 218; Town of Wyoming 61, 62; town-planning 115 Tugendhat House, Brno 33, 37, 39, 41 – 2 unit 13, 14, 24, 35n16, 59 – 60, 77, 112, 144, 189, 194; biological units 201; cell-garden units 128; dwelling unit 16, 81, 96, 116 – 18, 123, 140 – 1, 145n3, n5, 190 – 1, 194 – 8, 201, 207; Typical Little Farm Units see Wright, Frank Lloyd Unitarian, Unitarianism 60, 62, 64, 68n72, n73, 215 unité 189; Unité d’camping see Le Corbusier

224

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unity 4, 7, 12; Unity, Western Unitarian newspaper 64, 66, 74, 78, 99n7, 102, 146n28, 169, 176, 189; principles of unity 209, 214; Unity Chapel (see Wright, Frank Lloyd); Unity Temple (see Wright, Frank Lloyd) urban 3, 8, 10, 13, 15 – 16, 19n50, 24 – 6, 28 – 9, 30, 47, 51, 65 – 6, 82, 116 – 18, 146n20, 172, 189, 191, 194, 198, 201 – 4, 206 – 7, 209, 210n6, 213; urban area 3, 8, 10, 189, 198, 209; urban ecology (see ecology, urban); urban community 191, 197 – 8; urban culture, urbane culture 48, 58, 60, 198; urban fabric 201; urban house 28, 51, 99n11; urban monastery 135; urban pattern 189; urban rusticity 65; urban scale 176, 188n55; urbana 29, 37, 51 (see also pars urbana); urbanism 2, 100n42, 117, 198, 214; urbanity 29, 65; urbanization 4, 15 – 16, 136 Van der Rohe, Mies 15, 37 – 8, 41 – 2, 212, 215 Varro 25 – 7, 35n19, n20, 78, 217 villa 16, 25 – 33, 34n3, 35n25, n27, n29, n30, n31, n33, 36n36, n38, 36, 51, 65 – 6, 67n32, 68n74, 70 – 1, 73 – 4, 79, 81 – 2, 84, 91, 98n2, 102, 100n44, n45 – 6, 117 – 18, 146n32, 189, 211, 213 – 14, 217; ideal villa 73, 211, 216; Immeuble-villas, apartment-villas (see Le Corbusier); Renaissance villa 14, 29 – 30, 65; Roman villa 14, 24 – 5, 27, 29 – 30, 51, 68n74, 99n11; suburban villa 30; villa culture 25 – 6, 116;Villa dei Misteri,Villa of the Mysteries 27 – 8; villa estate 25;Villa Foscari,Villa Malcontenta 73 – 4, 76; villa garden 145n15; Villa Malcontenta (see Palladio, Andrea);Villa Mandrot (see Le Corbusier);Villa Medici, Fiesole 29, 51;Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano 32;Villa Meyer (see Le Corbusier); Villa Rotunda,Villa Almerico Capra (see Palladio, Andrea);Villa Savoye (see Le Corbusier);Villa Schwob (see Le Corbusier); Villa Stein-de Monzie (see Le Corbusier) vineyard 22, 27, 52, 56 – 7, 97, 101, 105, 126 Vitruvius 25, 27 – 8, 34n4, 35n23, 51, 99n11, 217 Wasmuth 40, 188n54, n60, 191 water 1, 43, 50, 63, 66, 78, 127, 133, 137, 140, 170, 176, 188n58; drinking 120, 158 (see also garden, water garden); infrastructure 105 – 7, 129, 146n36, 151, 172, 176, 178 – 80, 186n4; management 103; pollution 4; scarcity 151 – 3; supply 105 – 6, 128, 130, 151 waterways 101, 178 waterworks 105 Wisconsin 39, 47, 55, 60 – 1, 63 – 5, 68n43, n61, 150, 153, 158, 167, 175 – 6, 179, 184, 186n6, n19, 211

Wisconsin River 61 – 2, 215, 217 Wojtowicz, Robert 44, 67n11, n20, 217 work 2, 4 – 8, 14 – 16, 19n43, n49, 34n2, n6, n8, n10, 37 – 9, 40, 49, 55 – 6, 67n10, 69 – 70, 74, 78, 83, 98n1, 114n6, 134 – 7, 139 – 41, 144 – 5, 146n28, 147n43, 154, 158 – 62, 164 – 9, 186n2, n19, 188n54, n60, 189, 194 – 5, 204, 206, 209, 211, 212, 213, 215 – 17; agricultural, farm work 26, 58, 63 – 4, 66, 101, 105, 126 – 8, 130, 166, 168, 169, 173; art 4, 18n29, n30, 76, 94, 175 – 6; artistic composition 4 – 5, 18n30, 69, 76, 94, 69, 141; cooperative 22, 102, 106, 112, 162; exercise 115 – 16, 128, 137, 140; against existing conditions 22; gospel 172; human 11; intellectual 161; manual 20 – 2, 26, 61, 162; manual and spiritual 101 – 3, 162, 169; with nature 6, 22, 87, 118, 152; pleasurable 162; productive 5, 112; regimen 136, 152, 162, 187n26, n47; religious 22; site 103, 181 work-camp 153 – 4 working room, workroom 44 – 8, 50 – 1, 56, 65, 67n31, n37, 101, 139, 140, 144; architect’s workplace 147n47, 170, 169, 170, 172 – 3, 176 workshop 39, 169 – 70, 172 – 3,  175 Wright, Frank Lloyd 2, 14 – 16, 19n50 – 1, 37 – 45, 47 – 52, 54 – 7, 59 – 66, 67n9, n11, n17, n21, n23, n26, n31, n33 – 4, 68n41, n47, n49, n51, n53 – 4, n57, n63, n68, n74, 69, 83, 98n1, 99n7, 110, 114n4, n7, 149 – 61, 166 – 70, 172 – 3, 175 – 6, 178 – 81, 183 – 5, 185n1, 186n2, n7 – 9, n11 – 12, n15 – 19, 187n20, n22, n44 – 7, 188n48, n50, n53 – 5, n60, 189 – 91, 193, 201 – 7, 209, 210n1, n4, n13 – 14, n16 – 17, 211 – 13, 215, 217 – 18; An Autobiography 50, 57, 62, 65, 67n26, 158, 185n1, 186n8, n10, 217; Biltmore Hotel 167; Broadacre City 16, 44, 60, 66, 67n21, 187n47, 206, 209, 218; City Residential Land Development 191, 201, 209, 210n13, 218; Dana-Thomas House 47; Disappearing City 59, 68n51, 203 – 4, 210n14, 218; Hillside Home School 54, 63, 157, 166 – 7, 169 – 70, 172, 187n44, 188n53; Hillside Home School of the Applied Arts 167, 170, 172 – 3, 184, 218; home and studio 135; Home and Studio, Oak Park, Illinois 45, 187; home and studio-workshop 39; Home in a Prairie Town 190, 194, 210n1, 218; House on the Mesa 39, 41 – 2, 44 – 5, 65 – 6, 67n11, 69, 207, 217 – 18; Jones House 39; Larkin Building 172, 67n13; The Living City 114n7, 203, 218; Millard House 39; Ocatilla 114n4, 153 – 9, 167, 170, 173, 175 – 6, 181, 184, 186n2, n19, 210n3, 213; quadruple block plan 190 – 2, 201; quadruple house 193, 202, 209; Roberts Block Development 191, 201; Roberts House 39; Robie House 39;

225

INDEX

San Marcos in the Desert 150, 153 – 4; Sun-top Homes, Ardmore Experiment 191 – 5; Taliesin 39, 44 – 52, 54 – 7, 59, 60, 62, 64, 65, 67n10, n22, n25, n27, n29, n30, n33 – 5, 68n45, n46, n61, 154, 157 – 9, 162, 166 – 7, 171, 173, 184, 186n6, 187n39, 209, 211 – 13, 215; Taliesin culture 176, 184; Taliesin Fellowship 65, 153, 159 – 61, 170, 172, 175, 187n20, 213, 217; Taliesin Tea circle 47 – 8, 50, 52, 65, 154, 179, 186n6; Taliesin West 158, 170; Typical Little Farms Unit, Unified Farm 59 – 60; Unity Chapel 62, 170; Unity Temple 172;

University Heights Community and Orchard, Como Orchards 176, 178 – 9, 181, 184, 186n2, n17, 188n54, n55, n56, n58, 210n3; When Democracy Builds 203, 210n16, 218 Wright, Olgivanna Hinzenberg 151, 157 – 62, 164, 166 – 9, 173, 187n20, n45 Wright, William Russell Cary 63 Xenakis, Iannis 133, 195 Xenophon 14, 21, 23, 34n5, 218 Zapf, Hubert 13, 19n44, 218

226