On The ‘Integral Canons’ of Frank Lloyd Wright in Ornamentation Amid the Modernist Expedient

ConCave Ph.D. Symposium 2022 Proceedings, April 7-8, 2022. Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia.
Ornamentation, a jargon that has been relentlessly criticized and embraced during the Modernist movement of the twentieth century has, in substance, maintained its polemical occupation throughout architectural history. Being reckoned as a crime of wasting labor on practical objects by Adolf Loos (1870-1933), ornaments were, nevertheless,adopted by a rank of Beaux-Arts trainees, and notably by Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), among others. Despite endless debates on this topic, little attention has been given to the ‘integral ornament’ initiated by Frank Lloyd Wright(1867-1959) in his Autobiography of 1943. Free architecture, he insisted, must be characterized by integral fibers that are developed from within, as against the prevalent yet abusive formula of oversimplification. Different from the ornamental orders of classicism, he subtly analogized ornaments to the organic pattern of rational structure, which refers to the ornament integral to buildings as a poetic garment. In his yearning for a ‘third dimension’ of architecture, Wright not only synthesized Viollet-le-Duc’s faithful expression of the structure and Gottfried Semper’s three factors of formal beauty but also expanded his ‘integral canons’ into a sequence of ‘integral form’, ‘integralorder’, ‘integral light’, ‘integral fireplace’ and ‘integral building’. Within this process of natural integration, Wright saw human life as an ornament integral to nature and architecture as an ornament integral to human life. However, this proposition was never always in place for Wright ever since his apprenticeship with Sullivan. It shifted throughout his career from the surface to the requisite refinement of the natural pattern of structure. Doubtless, his spiritual mentor Beethoven (1770-1827) and his codas contributed their indispensable parts. Although James Dennis andLu Wenneker suggested in 1965 that three major epochs ought to be considered in interpreting Wright’s alteration to ornamentation from the attached to the integral, more thorough consideration is still needed in redistributing andreconstructing the epochs in collaboration with the case analysis of his organic designs across time. The scope of this research is aimed to reconsider the ‘integral ornament’ through retrospection of the ornamental history pivoting between ornament attached and ornament integral from Vitruvius to Wright, followed by a layout mapping the culture that preceded the ‘integral ornament’ and how Wright attained his maturation in ornamental integration after years of practice, to help redefine an ornamental culture within the context of an organic order appropriate for the present day.