The Ideal Metropolis?

In the painstaking pursuit of building ideal cities against the infrastructural chaos and hierarchical imbalances as a result of laissez-faire urbanization, the urban plans of Broadacre City (1932) by Frank Lloyd Wright and Ville Contemporaine (1922) and Ville Radieuse (1930) by Le Corbusier illustrate the different spatial methods and socioeconomic philosophies of each designer in achieving a new societal harmony between Man, nature and technology. Both desire to maximize and challenge the potential of modern industrial cities by rational geometric planning, by leveraging on the new possibilities of the Machine Age, especially the automobile and highways, and also by preserving the unity of the family. Yet Wright and Le Corbusier hold opposite attitudes towards the same goal of “individual liberty” (Fishman 164) in the new world. Wright intends for the architectural components that constitute Broadacre City to grow organically like a plant and to “be rooted in the ground” (White and White 194), subject to and shaped by climate and function. Le Corbusier, however, resembles a “scientist in his laboratory…constructing a rigorous theoretical structure [to formulate] the fundamental principles of urbanism” (Fishman 190) as he envisions Ville Contemporaine and Villa Radieuse to be like “well-run factories” (Fishman 191). Finally, Wright advocates decentralization to break the distinction between rural and urban so as to reconcile individualism and organic order in a ‘suburban city’ whereas Le Corbusier argues for centralization to integrate the pleasures of collective cooperation and personal satisfaction.

Both Wright and Le Corbusier express order through geometry that accommodates the necessary linearity for the automobile, but while the former aims at general mobilization as a primary mode of regional transportation in the countryside-city, the latter emphasizes speed as an imperative for a successful modern metropolis. With the celebration of individuality as the overarching theme at Broadacre City, Wright scatters small-scaled public institutions such as factories, stores, professional buildings, schools and cultural centers (Fishman 92) across a four-mile square plan of spacious farmland and amidst forestry to prevent clusters of power in a population of only five thousand. Comprising of grids, out of which “the family acre [is] the smallest grid” (Johnson 120), major arterial roads that combine the rural farms and public spaces define a cruciform as a tool of spatial geometry (Johnson 112). Like Broadacres, the “right angle reigns supreme” (Fishman 190) at Ville Contemporaine and Ville Radieuse where Le Corbusier segregates sectors of buildings by function. Symmetry in all three plans “symbolize victory of reason over chance, of planning over anarchic individualism, and of social order over discord” (Fishman 191) such that geometry becomes the devise that allows man to “put things in order” (Fishman 203).

For Wright to imagine a community where car ownership becomes a prerequisite to live may come across as perhaps paradoxical given that dependence on the automobile contradicts his ultimate objective of self-sustenance and self-reliance at Broadacres. In their plans, Wright, as well as Le Corbusier, both fail to address and consider the environmental and cost implications of gas prices and vehicular pollution. Nevertheless, the main regional arterial route on the left edge of the Broadacre cruciform becomes the “great architectural highway” (Johnson 122) that “unites the citizens with the many points of community exchange that provide the urban experience” (Fishman 128). While the absences of grade crossings, curbs, and ditches allow safety and comfort for travel, multiple-lane highways permit local trucks to commute between warehouse and market on lower levels and long-distance monorails to continuously run above. Similarly, Le Corbusier not only believes that the “transportation system preserves the very life of the city”, but more significantly, he sees “the city that achieves speed achieves success” (Fishman 191) – a manifestation of freedom. Like Wright, he implements multiple grade levels for circulation: in addition to access roads, bicycle paths, and pedestrian walkways, the city center at Ville Contemporaine features a grand multilevel interchange encompassing two great superhighways, subways below, automobile highways above supported by steel pillars, and even an airplane runway on the roof. The abolishment of traditional civic and religious monuments at the city center, replaced by the magnificent invention of the Machine Age, epitomizes the coming of a new modern era of not just the interchange of technology and mobility, but also of ideas, experiences, information and talents (Fishman 191).

Despite their mutual agreement that “the state should distribute land and own public utilities” (Johnson 149-51), Wright disregards the existing city fabric and looks forward to establishing a series of small towns in nature whereas Le Corbusier adopts the approach of urban renewal by “demolishing old buildings and [replacing] with high-rise towers” (Johnson 152) amid oases of greenery in the city center. As such, Wright decentralizes the city to bring industry within walking distance from the home while Le Corbusier disperses industry to the outskirts to make way for glass-and-steel skyscrapers around the central terminal at Ville Contemporaine, and later on, for the high-rise apartments at Ville Radieuse. Accompanying the impressive terminal in the central business district of Ville Contemporaine, twenty-four office-skyscrapers, each sixty stories high and all covering less than fifteen-percent of the ground (Fishman 192), serve 400,000 to 600,000 elite cadres such as industrialists, scientists, and artists (Hall 223). With at least eight-five percent of the remaining land dedicated to gardens, parks, sports and recreational facilities at the core of the plan, Le Corbusier uses nature to merge the intensely dense administrative center with the cultural and entertainment center into a coherent whole: amidst the skyscrapers, shops, cafes, restaurants and art galleries form “sweeping terraces at treetop level”, adjacent to theaters and concert halls (Fishman 198) for the elite. Le Corbusier creatively transforms the flat roofs of administrative buildings and revitalizes their idleness into spectacular “hanging gardens” in the day and “elegant nightclubs as salons of the new society” after dark (Fishman 198). Later on at Ville Radieuse, Le Corbusier shifts from the centralized model to employing a zoning principle of parallel bands according to function, like the design of a human body, so that “‘hierarchic’ Ville Contemporaine becomes ‘classless’ Ville Radieuse”: for example, the “isolated ‘head’ [or brain] of sixteen skyscrapers [sit] above the ‘heart’ of the cultural center, [which is] located between two halves or [the] ‘lungs’ of the residential zones” (Frampton 180). The anthropomorphic metaphor in the linear city model at Ville Radieuse restricts the independent expansion of any particular zone so as to avoid the “clearly differentiated spatial structure” (Hall 224) at Ville Contemporaine that reflects the social hierarchy in which housing depended on job roles, Beyond the Ville Contemporaine core lie residential areas of two types – the six-storey luxury apartments for urban elites and the “more modest accommodation for the workers built around courtyards on uniform gridiron of streets” (Hall 223). Yet like Ville Contemporaine, all the glass-and-steel structures in Ville Radieuse rise on pilotis above the site to maximize open public spaces beneath the tall shafts via a continuous park and the “essential joys of [the] sun, space, and [the] green” (Frampton 180) – not just on the ground-level but also on the roofs of the redent block. 

To Wright, the family represents “the central bond of the community” (Johnson 112), so, unlike Le Corbusier, he communicates the significance of the family unit into the Broadacres plan by arranging for suburban residences to occupy the central major grid – “the very heart and soul of his concept” (Johnson 112). The school carries the primary focus at the very center of the cruciform, which conveniently allows children to commute safely without having to cross traffic (Wright 254). Concentrating on individual wellbeing, Wright “isolates the city, [and] isolates the recreational or community or administrative buildings one from another, and then surrounds them in a relatively natural landscape” (Wright 120) in order to achieve the autonomy and privacy of the single-family house on its own acre of land. Here, a “series of villages approximately twenty miles apart” (Wright 122) replaces the dense commercial cores at Ville Contemporaine, while smaller villages scatter along or between roads and freeways with rectilinear areas of farmland spreading beyond. Even though both architect-planners favor agriculture, Wright integrates the farmland more generously and effectually into his countryside-city than does Le Corbusier by dispersing “single towers, isolated in green areas on the periphery [of Broadacres] for governmental and commercial business” (White and White 151). While Le Corbusier envisions the greenbelt to encircle his cities, Wright brings the rural into the urban, for “the city was to be within a natural forested garden” (Wright 149).

In the design and expression of living spaces, Le Corbusier strives for concretized uniformity and conformity through scientific reasoning and technology whereas Wright aspires to harmonize individuality and pluralism (White and White 151) in an organic manner that “responds to [the architectural] site and need” (White and White 152). For Le Corbusier in Ville Contemporaine and Ville Radieuse, a man in a city is analogous to a cell in an organism, so people must live in mass-produced reinforced concrete apartment units called cells that “contain the same standard furniture [as a representation of the] “‘house-machine’, which must be both practical and emotionally satisfying for a succession of tenants” (Hall 223). The two-storey apartment into two individual cells, each with a large terrace, provides privacy and silence within the convenience of a collective apartment block that offers a shared facilities like a gym in the top storey and a 300-yard running track on the roof, as well as a variety of communal services from twenty-four hour housekeeping and childcare to personal dining and waiting services. At Ville Radieuse, Le Corbusier shifts away from luxury housing and exclusivity of the elite by producing human-scale housing at the city center that could be “right in proportions for everyone, neither cramped nor wasteful [so that] no one would want anything larger or smaller” (Fishman 231). He introduces the Unites house for Ville Radieuse, grand high-rise apartment blocks that each accommodates a neighborhood of 2,700 residents, representing his mastery of “scale, complexity and sophisticated” since his Dom-ino model (Fishman 231). Unlike the cells at Ville Contemporaine that focused on individualism, however, the apartment units of Unite at Ville Radieuse supply homes and collective services to everyone regardless of job position and socioeconomic hierarchy, but housing allotment depends on family size and corresponding needs. In his second plan, Le Corbusier sees through the division between rich and poor and directly into the concept of Man. Unlike Wright, his method of addressing the needs of Man and the family as the key social unit lies in imparting the “cooperative sharing of leisure facilities [that] could give to each family a far more varied and beautiful environment than even the richest individual could afford in a single-family house” (Fishman 231) within the apartment block.

As “a city of individuals” (White and White 314), Broadacre City, on the other hand, must be composed of architecture that demonstrates a new society, a symbol of “the future city [that] will be everywhere and nowhere”, which will be so unique “that we will probably fail to recognize its coming as the city at all” (Frampton 190). Each family at Broadacres owns their own acre of land to cultivate and adorn as they wish for work, leisure and pleasure. Under the encouragement of individual expression and design creativity in meeting functional needs, “no two homes, no two gardens, none of the farm units…, no two farmsteads or factory buildings need be alike” (White and White 314). For Wright, his Usonian House, unlike the Unites apartments, would be small and modest with customized furniture, such as the continuous wall seating, “designed for convenience, economy and comfort” in an open plan to maximize space and optimize circulation (Frampton 191). All built forms use pragmatic, cost-effective materials that produce “strong but light and appropriate houses [and] spacious, convenient workplaces” (White and White 314). Like the mass-produced cells of Le Corbusier, mass production and prefabrication “simplify construction and reduce building costs to a certainty” (Wright 253) for household utilities in the Usonian house. Similarly, residential roofs take on a more active purpose of becoming a trellis or garden. At Broadacres, architecture and plan celebrate harmony with site surroundings, nature, in addition to diversity and uniqueness of the life and spirit of the individual (family). The entire countryside-city with its architectural substance grow together organically like a garden of flowers, each flower blossoming into its distinct character. Unlike the formulaic apartment designs of Le Corbusier and the spatial hierarchy at Ville Contemporaine, “what differs is only individuality and extent [for] there is nothing poor or mean in Broadacres [because] the ground itself predetermines all [architectural] features; the climate modifies them, available means limit them, and function shapes them” (Wright 246).

Le Corbusier, who originally favors capitalism at Ville Contemporaine, later steers towards libertarian syndicalism at Ville Radieuse to build a human city without classes (Fishman 229) whereas Wright eliminates the evils of capitalism, such as unemployment, through a more egalitarian system at Broadacres that allows for interesting and diverse lives to be led in a self-sustaining economy. Relative to the spatial and architectural considerations, both architect-planners fail to deliver a comprehensive analysis of the economic conditions and implications for each of their plans, save a shallow account. At Ville Contemporaine, Le Corbusier believes that whether capitalistic or communistic, “any industrial society must be hierarchically organized, administered from above, with the best qualified people in the most responsible positions”, like leaders of business, finance, politics, science, artists and musicians (Fishman 193), because they have the power, vision, ambition and means to “bring prosperity, order, and beauty to society” (Fishman 195). Thus the city center at Ville Contemporaine comprises of business headquarters of headquarters that allow for the most efficient coordination required for economic advancement (Fishman 193). At Ville Radieuse, however, Le Corbusier substitutes the business center with a residential center that “no longer simply mirrors inequalities in the realm of production but…to make Ville Radieuse a city of organization and freedom” (Fishman 230) against the rigid class hierarchy of supremacy and segregation. Instead he opts for a “pyramid of natural hierarchies” (Fishman 229) in which experts coordinate to achieve clarity and order with authority and plan to establish a structural organization where leisure, self-fulfillment, cooperation and freedom coexist. For both cities, Le Corbusier argues against the long hours of industrial work but recognizes its necessity in order to sustain modern living standards in the city. His solution to the “dehumanizing effects of nine hours of work would be overcome by eight hours of productive leisure” (Fishman 201) for both elites and workers. Satellite towns serve the working class as comfortable and relaxing leisure cities that offer abundant opportunities for recreation, dance, crafts and cafes to “restore to the worker his creative independence” (Fishman 201).

At Broadacres, Wright “sets up a new ideal of success…[directed towards] a new freedom for living in America” (Wright 245): he introduces the single tax and social credit with perishable money, and calls for the autonomous ownership of land and property, so that no worker would ever be “unemployed or a slave to anyone” or have to “submit to exploitative wages or poor working conditions” (Fishman 130). Le Corbusier creates leisure cities to counterbalance hard labor but Wright seeks to strengthen the family as the basic economic unit by providing for it “its own world of stability, prosperity and love [as] its members are expected to spend the bulk of their time living and working together” (Fishman 130). The Usonian house belongs to its tenants but the Unite apartment cells function merely as machine-dwellings where the “individual’s privilege exist only as part of a collective order” (Fishman 199). Moreover, in contrast to the formulaic design of apartment units at Ville Contemporaine and Ville Radieuse, the Broadacre citizen “sets up his own factory-made house, part by part, according to his means” (Frampton 191) and adding on to it from his earnings in either part-time farming on his own land or factory work (Fishman 130). Factories can be privately or collectively owned but are to be small and conveniently situated to allow for only a short driving distance between home and workplace. In an egalitarian, democratic system, Wright ambiguously tolerates “a limited measure of inequality…from “one-car houses” to “five-car houses” [but maintains that] “quality is in all, for all, alike” (Fishman 131) without further exposition. Regardless, with the home as the primary unit, factories and other institutions become “support units” for the family (Fishman 131) so that the entire Broadacre community composed of many families may remain strong and united. With the same goal of attaining harmony between economic and psychological wellbeing, Le Corbusier segregates labor and leisure whereas Wright integrates the two, but their proposals remain theoretical at best due to the lack of application and depth required in the complexities of real-life urban economics.

While Le Corbusier, who despises rural dwelling where workers become “‘reattached to the soil’ and lose those rebellious qualities…associated with the urban proletariat” (Fishman 201), sharpens the gulf between labor and leisure in cities, Wright blurs the line between the two until both realms merge into one in the countryside-city of Broadacres. Le Corbusier perceives “the city as one great organization” (Fishman 204) under authority and hierarchy in the workplace, but he provides the apartment cell as an oasis for privacy, “abundance and love”, and designs outdoor spaces into a “Green City [that combines] art and play” (Fishman 204). The segregation of function, emotions and purpose between workplace, home and public places imitates the disposition of a grand machine, which conveys the creative but scientific rationality of the architect-planner. At Broadacres, though, Wright believes that the “natural economic order” minimizes disorder under the conditions of a planned environment and so permits a larger extent of individual freedom than Le Corbusier. For Le Corbusier by the time of Ville Radieuse, “only discipline could create the order he sought so ardently…in a world threatened by chaos and collapse” (Fishman 227), hence the absence of a single regulatory power at Ville Contemporaine contrasts against the “more authoritarian and more libertarian… authority” (Fishman 226) at Ville Radieuse. Men and women work full-time for wages in both cities: made possible by design, technology and mass production, the architectural program of the Unite house and apartment cells takes care of the banal household chores to optimize the time for employed citizens to enjoy the presence of each other. As such, the family “no longer has an economic function to perform [but] exists as an end in itself” (Fishman 232) for individual and collective pleasure.

Wright, however, interweaves the dynamic of social life within the economic fabric at Broadacres, generating a seamless whole between individualism and order, but always keeping the home as the single focus for community life. Deeming coordination as “a kind of self-betrayal” (White and White 196), he emphasizes on small scales of farms, homes, factories, schools, universities, laboratories, markets, and transactions, with only the county government to deal with basic administration. To avoid congestion and (over)crowding, the Roadside Market is the one and only “most attractive, educational and entertaining…modern unit” (Fishman 133) at the intersection of two highways in Broadacres City, which encompasses small stalls for fresh groceries, machine manufacture and handicraft as well as “cabarets, cafes and good restaurants” (Fishman 133) nearby. Absent at Ville Contemporaine and Ville Radieuse, face-to-face transactions at the Roadside Market makes “buying and selling…a form of entertainment, a game of mutual enjoyment, and a ritual of social solidarity” (Fishman 133). While Le Corbusier idolizes businesses and profit to sustain the successful metropolis, Wright values “education as salvation [and states that] the whole life of Broadacre City was dependent on education” (Fishman 136) in order to cultivate the individuality of people based on the “mastery of technology and [an] understanding of the wisdom of the past” (Fishman 137). Expecting the years between elementary school and high school to be mandatory, each academic institution is small in student population of at most forty with a flexible and customizable curriculum for students to learn according to their own skills and interests, whether handwork or brainwork (Fishman 137). Higher education takes place between apprentice and master in the Community Center, smaller research institutions, or the Design Center. Even the Community Center offers unconventionally stimulating and hands-on activities like “a golf course, a racetrack, a zoo, an aquarium, a planetarium [and] an art gallery” on top of theaters and restaurants (Fishman 135). The Design Center develops the next generation of artists who can maintain the organic character of Broadacres and “thus protect the balance between man and nature on which the whole society rests” (Fishman 138). To strengthen the Broadacre spirit, Wright even creates a religion drawn from the four natural elements of earth, water, fire and air (Fishman 141). Citizens gather around a central courtyard at Broadacre Cathedral in shared worship and celebration of the arts with the collective “in harmony with the ‘Organic Whole’” (Fishman 141) that is nature. The ‘universal religion’ here encapsulates the vision and philosophies of Wright for Broadacres and becomes aptly revered at Broadacre Cathedral. Compared to Le Corbusier, Wright delves into the details of various institutions beyond merely the dwelling and physical plans, covering a wider breadth of the aspects of society in his city, and consequently, giving a clearer picture of the day-to-day life at Broadacres.

Both Wright and Le Corbusier see the architect-planner as “the natural leader of society” (Fishman 211) above bureaucracy, desiring to reorganize the city in order to achieve an ideal harmony and beauty in all aspects of urban life for a given population. However, their plans approach the same goal through very distinct ideologies in attempt to reconcile juxtaposing elements: Wright yearns for freedom through individuality and pluralism but contradicts himself by implying the dependence on the Usonian house, the land, the automobile, education, and even the architect-planner of Broadacres. Likewise, Le Corbusier finds happiness in the work of mass production and the pleasure of community, and seeks to combine both by distinguishing labor and leisure, so that labor can sustain leisure while leisure can promote labor. Yet the issues of social hierarchy and economic inequality present at Ville Contemporaine remain to threaten his evolved classless vision for Ville Radieuse. Questions and loopholes persist. In the pursuit of freedom and happiness in the urban society, perhaps one should return to the definition of freedom, or perhaps there is no one universal solution to the planning of the (ideal) city? Nonetheless, both Wright and Le Corbusier have accomplished an incredible feat in distilling all the philosophical and socioeconomic complexities to establish their theoretical models, whether the method is decentralization followed by reintegration in a countryside-city for the former, or centralization at the city center for the latter.

Wright: Guggenheim and Little House

The Guggenheim Museum (1959) on 88th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City and the living room of the Little House (1913) in Wayzata, Minnesota, both designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, function separately as contrasting programs in opposing landscapes: a public art institution across Central Park East in the wealthy Upper East Side of a cosmopolitan metropolis in the former versus a private residential villa in suburbia overlooking Lake Minnetonka^[1]. In spite of their functional differences, both celebrate nature through the skilled and unique handling of abstraction, structure, materials, and geometry which work altogether to fulfill meaningful experiences and methods of circulation within the interior space. The all-encompassing effect of the glass dome at the Guggenheim alludes to the Pantheon: just as the Little House is the modern domestic ‘Doric’ temple for the family, so too, the Guggenheim is the new temple of art for ‘all-art’ instead of ‘all-gods’.

Both the living room and the facade of the Guggenheim may share the common imagery of a ship, not in the spirit that Le Corbusier appraises the machine architecture: the former in motion while the latter in station. The abstract exterior of the Guggenheim appears as two parts integrated into one: a giant spiraling sculpture atop the deck of a ship with nautical circular windows evident on the sides and the roof. From across the road, the white, concrete, parapet walls that run like fences in front may suggest a possibility of a (shallow) pool feature, such that the 'ship' sits upon the waters. Although the 'ship' stands still, the spiral adds a sense of visual motion as opposed to true motion. Moreover, while the exterior shows an inert spiral, the interior reveals that people actually circulate through each ramp of the spiral, illustrating a parallel to nature as oftentimes inanimate and silent but invisibly brimmed with life, movement and growth. The notion of a ship that has voyaged far and wide alludes to internationalism and epitomizes modern industrialization; a ship stationed at its harbor implies a port of arrival and rest, a place and destination for local and foreigners alike to collectively take refuge away from the hustle and bustle of the city and hark closer to nature. This imagery would align with the motif of nature that Wright adored: an oasis facing the serenity and vastness of the largest park in the concrete jungle. Similarly in Wayzata, the low-ceilinged rectilinear box-like structure of the living room overlooking Lake Minnetonka through a series of glass windows vaguely reminds one of the lower decks of a ship overlooking the waters. If the Guggenheim is stationed at the dock, then the Little House is a gently sailing, elegant cruise, aligning with the function of the private living room as associated to relaxation, leisure and entertainment.

In both works, Wright allows materials to speak for themselves to serve both structural and decorative purposes. Staying true to the properties of the materials, he also pushes their inherent limits as an experimentation of creativity, such as the curvaceous, organic quality of reinforced concrete at the Guggenheim. As opposed to a purely aesthetic and non-structural quality of the wooden roof decoration in the living room, every structural component at the Museum plays a key role in the true support and composition of the architectural experience. The white, concrete elevator shaft that reinforces strength and solidity appears as the spine and the ramps as the ribcage or as embracing arms in warm welcome, as though proud of the art collections and people it carries on each level. Both the Museum and the living room employ glass windows as a way to connect nature with architecture, especially in the latter case. At the Little House, rather than adding projections or extensions as a call to invite in a Bernini-esque manner, Wright brings in the natural landscape of Wayzata into the interior quarters of the living room by removing the walls from the two lengths of the room and relying on the transparency of glass windows. The replacement on each length reminds of a wooden post-and-lintel system with uniform linearity, like a Doric temple with colonnades, architraves, metopes and triglyphs except unornamented and positioned with a rational rhythm in a modern, non-historicizing, manner. Furthermore, the horizontal band of rectangular windows on the second tier recalls the clerestory windows in cathedrals that bring in natural light from the ceiling level. Despite his unintentional historical parallels to the Classical temple and Gothic cathedral, Wright pays no attention to historicizing detail, but takes more interest in the styles and techniques of the Japanese temple, a radical shift from Western to Eastern architecture. Regardless, in light of ‘temples’, one may loosely see the domestic institution of the home as a modern ‘temple’ where family and friends unite to share warmth and company at the fireplace, where Wright believed to be the centerpiece and heart of the living room. The enclosure may look like a box in the crudest terms, but in the metaphorical light of an altar, it more accurately resembles a skeletal tent for collective shelter and social gathering, its structure harmoniously composed of rectangular glass windows supported by a balance between horizontal beams and vertical pillars; likewise, the strength and darkness of wood counteracts the fragility and transparency of glass. The rectangular framing of the windows performs as the border of a painting, capturing, like a camera, the scenes of nature outside; instead of artificial representations in painting, real-life ‘paintings’ become the natural decoration of the house.

Ironically, the glass rotunda at the Guggenheim fulfills a more naturalistic effect than the electrical skylight in the living room, even though the latter seems more integral to nature than the former in terms of materials. Inside the Guggenheim, the central rotunda maximizes natural light into the enclosure not only for architectural aesthetic but also to protect the paintings within. Bearing in mind of the diagram featuring the Concert Hall for 3,000 (1863-72) by E. E. Viollet-le-Duc[2], the glass dome at the Guggenheim, supported by modern versions of rib-vaulting using steel reminds one of the industrial train shed at St. Pancras Station in London. The circularity of the low dome may summon the idea of the sundial, displaying the movement of the sun throughout the day. By implementing a rotunda to expose the real sky and natural light from outdoors into the exhibition, the viewers studying the art on the ramp partake in a dual journey of timelessness in the art and real time in the world, all at the same moment. Wright succeeds in breaking the barriers of time and space between past and present, echoing Bruno Taut’s Glass Pavilion in Cologne, Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus Stairway and Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning. Perhaps less triumphant at the Little House, Wright instills a long, rectangular skylight in the low ceiling run by warm electrical light.

In terms of geometry, unlike the curvatures at the Guggenheim, the interior design of the living room reduces to straight lines, including the roof decorations. In contrast to the rotunda, one cannot quite pinpoint the meaning behind the abstraction of the rectangular skylights, both real (in the middle) and faux (on the sides), just like the peculiarity of the triangular lights cut out of the ramp ceilings at the Guggenheim: in the latter, the abrupt appearance of linear geometry in the fabric of curvaceous shapes may be best explained by the abstract art of Kandinsky that involves pure geometry and art for art’s sake. The notion of abstraction continues in the interior of the living room: against the linearity of the brick, the wooden piers and beams, the roof decoration, and parquet flooring, the furniture, from the different couches to the carpets, take on unique geometric patterns and various combinations of verticals and horizontals. Moreover, the glass panes on windows and the door feature delicate triangular and sometimes square ornamentation, as well, altogether stimulating the eye with distinct rhythms and shapes as one surveys the interior space. Back at the Guggenheim, however, it is interesting to note that the use of square tiles on the top ramp as opposed to circular tiles in the rest of the architecture points to the fact^[3] that Wright had intended to close off the top ramp for storage, so the square tiles symbolized utilitarian space, separate from the architectural and artistic experience marked by the circular tiles.

At the Guggenheim, the spiral with its low ramp barriers provides an openness and complete transparency across and down the central atrium, allowing maximum natural light from the rotunda. The shape of the spiral and the minimal separation between paintings on the ramps produce a byproduct result similar to the audience experience at the Paris Opera (1861-75) designed by Charles Garnier: viewers can see each other and multiple paintings at once across the ramps from every angle. This naturally causes viewers to study the behavior of other viewers, whether intentionally or not. Visitors themselves become an exhibition, as well: we are all on display like the paintings, which is achieved especially efficiently since the paintings themselves are not enclosed in rooms, but rather, are minimally separated by the structural beams of the architecture. Furthermore, if one was to fix his eyes on the rotunda from the fountain on ground level, the human periphery vision perceives the moving visitors on the ramps as not simply walking but as though traveling steadily up and down a conveyor belt. The spiral seems to be transporting them through the different time periods of when the artworks were produced. This illusion was most probably unintentional but arose naturally as a result of the purely white, concrete spiral structure itself.

Less complicated than the Museum, the horizontal expansiveness and furniture arrangement at the Little House replaces the vertically spiraling circulation at the Guggenheim. In place of a singular, dominating mode of movement, such as the spiral, Wright, following after Morris, designs his own household furniture to divide and allocate the freedom of space within the living room into smaller areas for an array of different purposes. In effect, he not only creates the choice of activities in the living room, but also to designate where and how one is to participate and enjoy in the activity. As such, he uses specific, couture-made props to control life in the living room, which may be seen as megalomaniacal but nonetheless very thorough, detailed and intentional in his design and conceptions of space: for example, in terms of how one moves between, say, the study table to the sofa, and how one sits on the long couch to affect how one views the scenery outside. 

Compared to the white, concrete bulk and artificial invention of the elevator at the Museum, the living room in the Little House stands out as being more compatible with nature: the organic origin of mahogany wood, the natural formation of soft-gray pebbles used around the perimeter, the primary use of maple-red and moss-green colors, and the panoramic prospect of a vast body of lake beyond the horizon, altogether evokes the image of the living room as growing out of the ground and belonging to nature, a naturally safe and organic haven for the modern family. Architecture no longer acts as a barrier but as a facilitator: when all the windows open, light, fresh air, chirping of birds, and sounds of insects flow lucidly into the interior, uniting man and nature as one for the emotional, mental and spiritual well-being in the home.

 

Photography by Author, 6 Dec. 2013.

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^[1] “Then & Now | Frank Lloyd Wright Deephaven Home.” Lake Minnetonka Magazine. Apr. 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2013. <http://lakeminnetonkamag.com/article/francis-little/frank-lloyd-wright-deephaven-home>.

[2] E. E. Viollet-le-Duc, Concert hall for 3,000 with new method of vaulting. (From his Discourses on Architecture, Vol. II, 1863-72). Retrieved from Trachtenberg, M., and I. Hyman, Architecture, From Prehistory to Postmodernity. Print. 10 Dec. 2013.

^[3] Guggenheim Museum Staff, Personal communication, 6 Dec 2013.

Guggenheim x Morgan x New Museum

Situated in three very different neighborhoods around Manhattan, the Guggenheim Museum (Frank Lloyd Wright, 1959), the New Museum (Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA, 2007), and the Morgan Library & Museum (Renzo Piano, 2006) become oases for artistic and intellectual contemplation away from the business of the metropolis by orchestrating three distinct spatial experiences: Wright skillfully employs the concrete spiral that simultaneously serves as a captivating sculptural exterior, the primary mode of circulation, and the medium of exhibition to illustrate continuity and a cross-continuum of time; SANAA, however, breaks away from fluidity, and instead uses two elevators and six boxes composed of modern construction materials to transport visitors vertically and out into spaces like the studios of the artist; whereas Piano applies steel and glass techniques to bridge old with new, past with present, allowing visitors to roam freely within an amalgamation of traditional and modern galleries, libraries and study rooms, as though a private fun-mansion rendered public.

The site of the museum in its urban context shapes first impressions of the mood and facade. Known for his passion for nature, Wright chose to build the Guggenheim at one end of a block directly facing Central Park, amid the tranquil and high-end residential area of Upper East Side between 88th and 89th Streets on Fifth Avenue. Removed from the vistas of nature, however, the Morgan Library & Museum rests between 37th and 38th Streets on Madison Avenue, surrounded by tall brick apartments in Midtown South with the Empire State Building in near sight. Unlike these two buildings that occupy their own side of the block, the New Museum appears squeezed to a row of old and short, red-brick, semi-retail, semi-residential row-houses on Prince and Bowery, a gritty but up-and-coming and unprejudiced neighborhood. While the New Museum conforms to the street-line of its neighbors, the Guggenheim sets back several feet from the main road, permitting a spacious sidewalk and a short projecting shelter for shade from rain and heat. The recession presents the architecture as modest rather than imposing but at the same time bold in its audacious abstraction yet elegant in its gracious curves. Like the Guggenheim, the new lobby at the Morgan also recedes with an ascending slope to draw in pedestrians, such that the two Neo-classical buildings on either side protrude like discreet portals of an entryway.

Three available routes to the Guggenheim generate disparate responses from the modern visitor: Firstly, approaching the end of 88th Street towards Fifth Ave and having passed by rows of tall, brownstone apartments, one is suddenly shocked, perhaps frightened, and confused to come across the monumental side-view of an entirely white concrete volume with three circular tinted windows at street level. Disorientation and uncertainty reduce the pace for closer study. The "Museum Restaurant" sign in the South wing quickly comes into view to reveal the function of the building; but unlike the works of Ledoux and Sullivan, the exterior design masks its interior purpose. Secondly, walking from 89th Street to Fifth Avenue, one views the northern side of the museum as a modern building of sorts, which does not really astonish the modern visitor. Upon a left-turn, however, one is inadvertently amazed by the innovative abstraction of the architecture. Finally, approaching northward from afar with Central Park on the left and apartments across the road on the right, one gradually sees a white modern structure looming ahead ambiguously as it seems to blend into the whitish apartment building behind on 89th, stirring anticipation and building up mystery. As the Guggenheim emerges into full view, the white giant spiral sculpture causes one to linger momentarily to comprehend the whole structure; the instinctive unleashing of imagination in attempt to explain the design sets the Guggenheim apart as a work of architecture against its backdrop of domestic buildings.

Approaching eastward from Prince Street and Broadway towards Bowery recalls the first journey reaction to the Guggenheim, as an almost transparent skyscraper composed of an unorganized stack of six boxes may be distinguished from the lower, older brick buildings in SoHo. Drawing closer to the site with the same puzzlement as the third response in visiting the Guggenheim, the arrival at the New Museum elicits an inkling of unease as opposed to the wonderment at the Guggenheim: its oddly tall, bright, irregular and futuristic presence clutched in the midst of the coarse maroon-brick premise engenders the stark tension between new and old, clean and grimy, bright and dark, art and reality. As an extension of the pavement, the large glass panels on the ground floor span from the sidewalk to the ceiling, giving absolute transparency and exposure from the streets to the depths of the lobby. Yet despite the limited lot area and perhaps due to economic differentiation against traditional methods, the Museum only features one exhibition at a time that occupies all of the interior space, such that each exhibition changes the life of the whole architecture, transforming spatial structure and human circulation in each floor. Even the facade and roof may be used creatively to display representational artifacts requested by artists, decorating the streets and the skyline, reflecting the spirit of the temporary exhibition, and attracting pedestrians both close by and from afar.

Unlike the vertical prominence of the Guggenheim and New Museum to be seen from a distance, and considering the lofty Neo-classical residential towers teeming in the vicinity, one almost stumbles upon the Morgan by its subdued signage at the entrance. The glass-and-steel lobby astonishes the visitor in a manner like the full-glass lobby at the New Museum: while the latter appears compressed, the former expands generously as an attempt to integrate the northern Morgan House (now the Shop and Dining Room) with the south Annex. The three combined structures result in a bizarre coalescence of modern and historic architectural elements. Although the intrinsic neutrality and transparency of glass attempts to bridge the two pre-existing edifices, the affiliation of glass to industrial modernity enforces the obvious fissure and disunity in the tonal and visual harmony of the establishment.

While the New Museum extols the virtues of manmade production and material technology, and relies chiefly on the brightness of white walls and white fluorescent lights, the Guggenheim and the Morgan strive to invite nature into the interior, forming a semi-outdoor space to maximize natural light from the rotunda and glass windows in the former and through the glass-enclosed garden within Gilbert Court in the latter. Save the new glass courts and lobby entrance, the rest of the Morgan allows minimal to no natural light inside its exhibitions and library museum, due to insufficient window installments and the need to protect the artifacts from damage by excessive light. The Guggenheim includes greenery on almost each ramp and instills fountains in the lobby and outside the entrance for a relaxing ambience, whereas the Morgan installs two trees in awkwardly aloof and separate places; but the outdoor garden inside Gilbert Court makes the central building appear bigger, brighter, longer, lighter, and fresher.

Using different materials, each of the three museums employs three disparate structural mediums through which visitors travel within the space to orchestrate unique experiences. Embracing modernity to its fullest, the New Museum, like a skyscraper, relies on two elevators to raise visitors to the fifth floor to begin their experience and work their way down. The concept reminds of the elevator that moves through the realms of dreams or pockets of memories in the movie Inception. Instead of dreams, the elevator doors in the New Museum may open into chapters of the artist's personal life or genres of his career. As the elevator travels up and down, it builds anticipation and suspense. When the massive door opens to each floor, the built anticipation may either burst into satisfaction or disappointment; there is a risk in showing too much at once. Further, the rationale of servicing with both a huge cubed elevator and a second narrow rectangular elevator perplexes the mind. Apart from the significance of geometric ideal forms and rational linearity with reference to modern industrialization, a tint of Cubism, and shadows of Renaissance humanism, the shaft that accommodates the huge cubic elevator eats up an unnecessarily large volume and floor-area on each storey. On top of economic inefficiency, both elevators also take quite a while to arrive, which impedes on the fluidity of the museum experience, adding to ineffectiveness and frustration. The choice of green walls in the elevator interior walls remains unconvincing, save that the color abstractly alludes to new life, youth and growth. Due to dissimilar dimensions of the six boxes that compose the New Museum, each floor has slightly different floor plans, but all five exhibition spaces look exactly the same in color and materials, so it gets boring by the time one reaches the third floor. Radically diverging from the more serious mood at the Guggenheim and certainly at the Morgan, the New Museum looks and feels like a modern department store in the lobby, especially with the loud, upbeat music, and looks and feels like a factory warehouse in the exhibition floors above (at least for the Chris Burden exhibition in the present): in addition to the elevator floor, the wire mesh ceiling and curvaceous shelf in the lobby, the glossed, cracked concrete groundwork in the rest of the building, accompanied with the repetition of white fluorescent lights hung from corrugated aluminum roofing mirror that of a factory, warehouse, or a laboratory, emphasizing its intention as an industrially and scientifically 'hi-tech' museum. The materials speak for themselves and function to its rightful purpose, but with a twist of creativity in their combination. The raw, undecorated effect succeeds in exposing its ‘true self’ but strikes as aesthetically unrefined in light of the Guggenheim. As its name suggests, perhaps it celebrates its difference by pledging the message of being constantly "new", contemporary and fresh just like a blank, white canvas ready to showcase new imaginations, new ideas and new art. White also alludes to laboratory coats, the ethos of experimentation and trial-and-error towards the progress, discovery, ambition, and sophistication of man. Comparatively, the white concrete at the Guggenheim portray strength, steadfastness and timelessness; its glass features also produce a unique simplicity out of the ubiquitous brick surroundings, achieving the effect of an outlandish spaceship that invites one to be in repose with nature, as windows look over the trees and fields in Central Park East, vaguely reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye in countryside Poissy, France.

  

 

The top-bottom circulation at the New Museum aligns with Wright's original intention[1] for the Guggenheim with visitors traveling to the top via an elevator and strolling down the ramps of the spiral structure while viewing the paintings en route. While this offers a visually aesthetic and spatially meaningful effect when everyone proceeds in the same clockwise direction down the spiral like the hands of a clock, it actually restricts freedom and flexibility in the viewing of the paintings, compromising ascension for a one-way descending procession. Further, the exclusivity of hanged paintings on the walls as opposed to sculptures, artifacts and modern mediums of exhibition forced the need to later convert the annex into traditional gallery spaces[2]. In these aspects, Wright failed to fulfill the maximum potential of the museum space. The Guggenheim eventually liberated the top-bottom system involving a logical bottom-top then top-bottom route that allows one to follow the life and works of the artist chronologically to the top, then revisit and relive the odyssey by going back in time, as if retrospectively admiring and understanding the life and works, tracing back to where and how the artist and the visitor himself had started. As such, one embarks on multiple journeys on one spiral: (chronologically) from the earliest to the latest works of the artist, (metaphysically) from life to death of the artist, (spatially) from the lowest ramp rooted on the ground to the top ramp with closest proximity to the rotunda featuring the true sky, and in effect, (spiritually) from Earth to Heaven. Unlike the New Museum that offers a disconnected and interrupted transition between levels, the unendingly circular nature of the spiral raises the imagery of a spinning top frozen in time, halting a motion to appreciate, study and preserve; a desire to treasure the fleeting seconds. It also draws on the cocoon as the incubator of life, a natural transition from past and present to the future. Both cases capture motifs of continuity, infinity and cyclical flow, as in nature.

In comparison to the seamless voyage at the Guggenheim, the Morgan, like the New Museum, embodies a haphazard and incoherent arrangement of exhibition spaces. On one hand, the logical and cost-effective adaptation of the original study quarters and earlier Library into the program of a public museum induces sentimentality and authenticity, vis-à-vis the Soane Museum in London. However, the addition of the central glass building falls short in its lack of spatial orientation to newcomers: it offers too much freedom with a dominant emphasis on the soaring heights of the steel-and-glass panels of the Gilbert Court in relation to inconspicuous signs above narrow doors to the galleries and exhibitions. In effect, unlike the Guggenheim and the New Museum, the Morgan forces one to wander and explore autonomously as though the piazza and adjoining mansions belong to one’s own. One then realizes that the architecture also houses two gallery rooms in the Annex, one new gallery above the renovated lobby, and one open-concept exhibition space in the basement, in addition to scanty sculpture displays along the right wall of the ground floor. The traditional galleries in the Annex resemble that of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery in London but on a smaller scale: concrete screens act as dividers to vary circulation, and, as in the Guggenheim but unlike the New Museum, people predominantly walk the perimeter of the walls to view the exhibits. Although a rational and most straightforward method, viewers solely focus on the objects whereas the Guggenheim engages the spatial movement such that people fully participates in the architectural experience as well as the exhibition. In contrast, however, the New Museum focuses on one exhibition at a time to permit versatility and metamorphosis in organizing interior spaces and manipulating circulation.

                                   

 

                                   

With the advancement of industrial materials since the twentieth-century, the nature of the museum has evolved tremendously in the scenes of design and architecture from being merely a public institution dedicated to the display of valuable artifacts and exhibitions into a dynamic spatial masterpiece, as worthy of appreciation and study as the art collections within. Strategic choices of the site in relation to its urban context, alongside the various artistic possibilities of expressing and fulfilling the role of a modern museum, all work concurrently, like a living organism, to create novel adventures of seeing the architecture from afar and upfront, then entering and moving through the interior spaces. Of the three examples, the Guggenheim comes across as the most successful in fashioning a unified and captivating journey, relevant to and revolutionary in the experience of a museum.

Photography by Author, 6 Dec. 2013.

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[1], [2] Guggenheim Museum Staff, Personal communication, 6 Dec. 2013.