An Introduction to the Psychology of Architecture
by
Edward Merkus
- INTRODUCTION
- WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
- THE DOGON
- SIMILAR IDEAS IN WESTERN ARCHITECTURE
a.
The Christian Church
- SPACE AND THE ARCHETYPES IN THE HOME
a.
Two Extremes of Space
b.
Space and Architecture
c.
Archetypes in the Home
d.
The House Plan as
Mandala
- FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT- ARCHITECTURE AS AN
EXPRESSION OF INDIVIDUATION
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. INTRODUCTION
This essay is the result of my attempt to formulate an approach to
architectural practice that includes the wider scenario of psychological
processes and evolution. I cannot say that this essay is in any way conclusive.
My intention is simply to give a broad survey of the most recent views on the
nature and psychology of psychic processes and in turn relate them to the art
of building.
Although the subject of this paper is an analysis of building as an
example of a spontaneous content from the unconscious, I do not consider it to
be in any way concerned with the broad and complex field of psychopathology.
The approach I wish to outline therefore deals mainly with psychological growth
and spiritual awareness. As an architect I can only deal with the building of
personality, indeed the healing of personality must be left to the specialist
medical practitioners who deal with mental illness at its deepest levels.
The many years of working as an architect both as employee and in
private practice has led me to this juncture where the standard approach to
architectural practice cannot satisfy, not only my own architectural instincts,
but also that of my client's. It
is almost without doubt that a client will approach an architect for a building
with a quite elaborate mental image in their minds before the initial meeting.
It is this image that I have become more and more concerned with over the
years. It is true that many clients see the work of an architect in a magazine
or brochure and select the architect on this basis. The style of architectural
work created by a particular architect may correspond to the image the client
has, and a pre-established preference may exist prior to the first
consultation. The more unique the client's individuality however, the more
unique will be the image of their home. On rare occasions a client may seem
totally at sea with respect to the image of their building. Investigation has
shown that the image is indeed present and with a small amount of coaxing
becomes conscious and ready for exploration.
The architectural plan is by nature a patterned arrangement of spaces,
walls and columns. This may be why many people without any architectural
training have difficulty reading plans. The abstract nature of plans is at most
an array of lines and notations of an abstract nature. It is this quality that
entices the participation by the unconscious component of the psyche.
At no point do I wish to proclaim any final truths. What I can do however
is show through examples and material from other fields, that there are certain
patterns, which emerge in an individual's life, and these patterns can be
explored through architectural design. It is however obvious that architectural
design plays an important part in everyone's life from the smallest child
and their idea of a cubby house, to the loftiest ideals of spirit and the
worship of a particular God(s). Architecture is indeed one of the noblest
examples of the spirit in man.
2. WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
The most beautiful and wondrous aspect of life is
that every one of us has lived and been nurtured in the same home, the maternal
womb. It is this fact that not only places us with other mammals, but also
affects our psychology in the profoundest ways. Symbolically, the womb
represents a variety of metaphors, a fiery furnace, an oven, hermetic vessel[1] and the unconscious itself, to name a few.
If we analyse the physical characteristics of the womb it becomes
obvious why the symbolic aspect is rooted in physical reality. These
characteristics are:-
- Enclosed
- Dark
- Warm (relatively)
- Liquid
- Safe
It is these and possibly more characteristics that give us the idea of
what a home should be like and what is contained in that home. You could say
that the womb is the precursor and determining factor for the entire built
environment.
The homes the Dogon people of Central Africa are an
excellent example of how the original container is reproduced almost literal
form. Although these people live quite simply in our terms, their culture
is very complex and closely aligned with nature. To the Dogon, home is not
a particular building, but a series of stages, which includes several buildings.
The home is closely related to the development of the individual. For example
a Dogon wife stays with her father until she has had her third child. She
does however sleep with her husband during the night and returns to her father's
house during the day. It is a hierarchical system where the family is spread
over several houses until they have achieved the status required to own their
own home. Their homes are not owned by individuals as such, but are stages
in one could say, psychic development and are shared as such.
Dogon Home
Plan and Section of Typical Home
The typical Dogon house in plan is modeled on the human
female form. The kitchen is round and represents the respiratory organ. It
and is always located where a fruit of the nono plant (nono=perpetual) is
walled-in during the building process. The kitchen thus becomes the head of
the house. The main living area is thus the body of the woman with two storage
spaces to either side. The entrance of the house is the vulva of the woman.
As the Dogon are marking the plan on the ground,
a series of complex rituals are enacted. It is according to Ogotemmeli,
an old Dogon sage, the marking of the house's image. It is interesting to
note that the Dogon house has no windows therefore it is quite dark inside,
the intention being that the interior is distinct, enclosed and presumably
cooler, in contrast to the exterior which is light, hot and open. A man was
asked during the construction of his house why there were no windows and he
answered by saying Anybody who wants light can go outside. In the house it
should be dark. Its better that way.
As the status of the patriarch develops, he may build the next stage in
the form of a divine couple.
It is also the universal arch
descended from the heavens to reorganise creation. The four main spaces grouped
around the principal one are the four ancestral couples (these together with
the animals, plants, minerals and Nommo[2] constitute the universal arch).[3]
The Ginna or family patriarch's house is Nommo in form. The ideal pair
lying on their sides procreating. The whole plan of the house is contained
within an oval, which represents the universal arch, from which all space and
all beings have emerged.
The Dogon people have no separation between their spiritual and
mythological ancestry and their everyday life. To them, nature and their
spiritual 'arch' are one and all life is permeated by this belief. If we look
at the nature of their homes, it shows a very interesting pattern of behaviour.
The plan is a woman lying down; the entrance to the house is the entrance to
the maternal womb. Indeed, the house is a container of psychic life. This is a
universal idea that exists in many cultures worldwide. The house is a
spiritualised reproduction of the original home, that is, the maternal womb.
The Ginna house on the other hand is a reproduction of not a single person, but
an ideal pair. That is the original parental authorities, the mother and father
of all creation. The first type a pre-birth reproduction of the original home,
the maternal womb, the second, post-birth born and residing within the ideal
pair.
Let us take the example of the Christian Dogma. The Trinity consists of Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost, who is represented by the bird of Astarte, the dove,
and who in early Christian times was called Sophia and thought of as feminine.
The worship of Mary in the later Church is an obvious substitute for this.
Here we have the archetype of the family in a supracelestial place as Plato
expresses it, enthroned as a formulation of the ultimate mystery. Christ is
the bridegroom, the Church is the bride, and the baptismal font is the womb
of the Church, as it is called in the text of the Benedictio fontis. The holy water has salt put into it, with the idea
of making it like the amniotic fluid, or like sea water.
[4]
In a sense we can say that the Christian Church is a home for the
age-old ancestral experience of the family, that is, of father, mother and
child etc.
The physical characteristics of the church also exemplify the idea that
it is a vessel, maternal womb one could say, for transformation. Generally
speaking, we can say that the church is an enclosed space. The interior is
orientated inward, in psychological terms, introverted. The windows are either
at a high level or they contain lead lighting depicting a scene or story. The
windows are therefore to provide a low level illumination, the depiction of
myth and not to view or relate to the external world. It is the inner spiritual
world of the psyche that takes precedence in this case. The idea that a church
is a safe place is well known and has in the past served patrons as a place of
refuge and protection. One could also say that the Church, and indeed any place
of worship is nourishing for the soul and provides food of a symbolic kind in
the form of stories and communion.
The similarities between the Dogon way of life and our Judaic Christian
viewpoint are obvious. The differences however, are also quite pronounced. The
Dogon live their spirituality in their homes and in their everyday lives. The
religious rituals and everyday life are intertwined and complete
5. SPACE AND ARCHETYPES IN THE HOME
The design and selection of a home is a very complex thing. Many attributes
of the house come into play in the selection process. The location is generally
important, the size of the home, the layout, environmental influences, aesthetic
appeal, whether the person or family's belongings and furniture (contents)
will fit into the house and whether they like it or not.
a. Two Extremes Of Space
If we look at the concept of space we see that its extension is
boundless, that is, it becomes, outer space. It is this extension and the
inability to perceive boundaries that forms one extreme of a pair of opposites.
The other opposite to boundless space is naturally space that has definite
boundaries. It is this realm and its relationship to the boundless extension of
space that architecture concerns itself with.
Humans are certainly not alone in the construction and enclosing of
space. We can loosely categorise the creatures that live on the earth into
three groups. The first are those creatures that graze on the landscape or swim
in the ocean. They make no shelter and roam from place to place in search of
food. Animals such as sheep, cows, lions, tigers, fish, whales, dolphins etc.
These creatures do not have closed boundaries like walls or shells. The
boundaries are generally distant and take the form of fences, rivers, oceans,
mountains and the like. The second category is for those creatures that burrow
into the earth. Their space is generally quite enclosed and dark. It offers
protection against predators, heat and cold, light, fire etc.
The third and most interesting category is the creatures that create
their own space. This category is surprising in the fact that it does not limit
itself to any particular species. Bees create the most elaborate structure for
their colonies. So to, members of the ant family, particularly termites.
Beavers create the loveliest of structures called dens. They are usually built
on top of a dam that the beavers have crated to capture a ready source of food.
The Den generally has two entrances, one at the bottom of the structure with
direct access to the water. The other entrance is dry and higher in the
structure. Other examples are certain crustaceans that create hard shells to
inhabit which is a fertile area of analysis for architects who have an interest
in shell structures.
A sub category to the creatures that create their own spaces are those
that grow there home as either part of their own physical structure or as an
outer shell of protection. This would include turtles, crabs and other
crustaceans, insects etc. A hybrid and less obvious example would be those
creatures that have developed a hard and tough exterior shell such as the skin
of a crocodile.
If we turn our attention to humans, it is obvious that we do not fit
easily into any of the above categories. Some people do inhabit caves and
create underground homes such as those in Cooperpede near central Australia. At
the other extreme, before Europeans settled Australia, the Australian Aborigine
did not build anything of a permanent nature, preferring to roam in a semi
nomadic way in search of food. These two examples are extremes however and the
majority of people live in purpose made huts or dwellings specifically for
their own use.
As we have seen with the Dogon people of Africa, their homes are
totally enclosed and contained, a representation of the maternal womb and a
space that is introverted. Our own
western culture uses this principal for our own homes. We do not have homes
that are totally contained as the Dogon, but we do make this idea the starting
point.
b. Space and Architecture
The extremes of space have been studied and discussed for many years by
architects. The names given to the two extremes are also many and varied.
Names such as space/anti-space; refuge/prospect; cave/pasture; romantic/modern
are to name only a few. Architecture from the very beginnings to our modern
era has mainly concerned itself with enclosed space. This is mainly due to
the structural and technological limitations on architecture. There are however,
examples of temples in ancient Egypt that demonstrate an urge to create space
that is not contained. Generally speaking though, architecture and in particular
homes, up until recently, were structures of enclosure with windows punched
out in the walls to let in some light. It wasn't until our culture embraced
the new technologies of steel that we were able to explore the notion of space
that is not completely contained.
The best and purest example of this breakthrough is Mies Van der Rohe's
Farnsworth House of 1945.
Farnsworth House- Exterior View
With its unique structural system for the time, Farnsworth house
liberated the spatial and enclosed quality of traditional houses, and gave the
world a house without visible enclosure. It is interesting to note that the
twentieth century was instrumental in the awareness of our place and ourselves
as individuals in the cosmos. The advent of Freud and the awareness of our
instinctive foundations, Jung and the spiritual aspect of these foundations,
were all signs of a new consciousness emerging in the world. The fact that our
idea of what a home should be, also changed, is no coincidence.
It is as if we emerged from the enclosure of our original condition
with a new awareness of ourselves, which was reflected, in our cultural
viewpoint.
c. Archetypes in the Home
I refer the reader to the text called The Archetypes of the Collective
Unconscious
[5]
for a detailed description on the archetypes, as they
appear to us in our personal and complex patterns of behaviour.
To see where the archetypes affect us in our homes lets turn back to
the original container and its characteristics. They are introverted
(enclosed), warm, liquid, dark and safe. We could say that the whole house is
our enclosure and makes us feel safe. The whole house can be warm, particularly
with a good heating system. The whole home can be dark, particularly at night
if the lights are turned off. There are only few places in the home where a
liquid environment exist however. The most obvious space is the bathroom.
The bathroom is a wet environment. It is designed as such with
impervious materials and drainage in the floor. The places we actually get wet
ourselves are the shower and more importantly, the bath. It is indeed the bath
that has all the symbolism attached to it through years of ritualistic use. It
is the place where we cleanse ourselves, where we languish in warm water, we
rest, we rejuvenate and we emerge renewed. The bath also reminds one of cooking
or incubating as a foetus does in the womb.
In alchemy the bath plays a highly significant role in transformation,
cleansing and renewal. There are numerous images of Mercurius being cooked
in the bath until the spirit or white dove ascends, the brother and sister
pair in the bath of life, the conjunction
of soul and body in the marriage bath and the king and queen in the bath of
the philosophers
[6]
.
The bathroom as a space is generally somewhat enclosed. Obviously there
are practical reasons for this, privacy being the number one cause. Windows are
generally small and may have obscure glass in them. The bathroom is also the
favourite place for a skylight, thus providing natural light yet retaining
enclosure. It is light from above in its literal form.
The kitchen is another example of the symbolic structure of our lives.
The kitchen is where foods are transformed from its natural and raw state
to a state it can be digested. The kitchen thus satisfies our nutritive instinct.
In a traditional family the kitchen is the realm of the mother. The mother
gives us life and nurtures us. Naturally
the kitchen can also be a man's domain particularly if the man has integrated
some of his own anima material. The shed is a favourite dwelling place for
a man. It is where he can think and be himself. He can make things, break
things and experiment.
We quite often find that one or other family member dominates
particular rooms. As mentioned earlier, the person who cooks in the household
organises the kitchen to suite himself or herself and their nature, and it is
quite possible that our complexes are reflected in our attitudes towards
certain spaces. For example a daughter with a negative attitude towards their
mother may have an impatience and intolerance with cooking. Therefore the
kitchen would be a less favourite place for that person. This shows how we can
learn about ourselves through our attitude towards certain spaces.
d. The House Plan as Mandala Pattern
The house plan is diagrammatic representation of the ground plane of a
building. Technically it is view of a building or proposed building cut through
the walls parallel to the ground plane one metre above the floor and viewed
from above. The plan is by nature an abstraction of the spaces to be constructed
in three dimensions.
There are many influences on spaces and their configuration and
relationship to each other in a house. These include environmental influences,
site configuration, relationship to other spaces, local authority guidelines,
and psychological preferences. On rare occasions, there are buildings
constructed from an idealised and mandala patterned plan. This villa called
Villa Rotunda by Andrea Palladio is an excellent example of the environmental
and other influences given secondary importance to psychological
considerations, that is, the purity of the ideal.
Villa Rotunda Palladio Vincenza 1550
Villa Rotunda Plan View
We can thus say that the plan of a house has the abovementioned
influences working on the design in varying degrees. It is unlikely that the
psychological influence can be ruled out entirely in the design process. As a
consequence there will be some traces of the personal disposition of the
designer in the plan and overall design of the house. This would explain why a house
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is quite different from a house designed by Mies
Van der Rohe.
If we view the plan of a house with a psychological eye we can see some
interesting similarities. For example the centre of a Wright house is with
very few exceptions, occupied by a fireplace. It is also quite common to find
the kitchen in the centre of a house indicating an interest in feeling values
in most cases. Our knowledge of psychology can shed much light on an individual's
psychological development through the architectural plan.
6. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT- ARCHITECTURE AS AN EXPRESSION OF INDIVIDUATION
1867 to 1909
Frank
Lloyd Wright was born on June 8, 1867, in Richland Centre, Wisconsin, to Anna
Lloyd-Jones Wright, a teacher whose large Welsh family of farmers and ministers
settled the valley that became Taliesin, and William Russell Cary Wright, a
preacher and musician. An early influence was his clergyman father's playing of
Bach and Beethoven. (Later on Wright would make comparisons to music and
architecture in relation to the mathematical aspects of both.)
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1904
Before
her son was born, Anna had decided that her son was going to be a great
architect. She placed pictures of buildings in his nursery and bedroom during
his younger years to inspire him to become an architect. Using Froebel's
geometric blocks to entertain and educate her son, young Frank was given free
run of the playroom filled with paste, paper, and cardboard. Except for periods of
several months at a time, he continued to live with or near his mother until
her death in 1923.
His grades were not
outstanding as a student and he dropped out of high school to take a job in an
architectural office when his parents divorced on April 24, 1885. His father deeded the house over to his
mother and left. Frank never saw
him again.
In 1889, at age 22, Wright
married Catherine Lee Tobin, age 18, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, and
acquired social and architectural credentials to become an upper middle class
professional in his mid-twenties.
Cheney House 1903
Cheney House 1903 Perspective
Cheney House Plan
This was a very stable and period
of growth in Wright's life. He had a thriving Architectural practice, a large
family and active social life. The Cheney house as shown here reflects this
stability and order in its Mandala like plan. The characteristics of the house
were relatively new for that time. They include what Wright himself termed,
the destruction of the box and the opening of the interior out into the landscape.
At the centre of the house is the all-important fireplace which became a consistent
feature in Wright's houses. If we look at the central hearth for moment we
can see its symbolic significance for Wright. The Hearth's physical characteristics
are as follows:
- Container for creating warmth
- Gives a soft warm yellow light
- Provides a consistent sound of crackling
- The fire consumes its fuel
- If the fire is controlled it is positive
and beneficial, if not can be very destructive.
- Fire converts (separates) matter to
carbon-based ash, various gases, heat and light.
- Fire transforms Earth (wood) into Air and
Earth
- Fire can be controlled with water.
The symbolic significance of
hearth is far-reaching and all encompassing. The ancient Chinese and Egyptians
relate fire to solar rites and associate fire with life and health. The
alchemists had the notion that fire was the agent of transmutation and
regeneration. For some primitive people fire is a demiurge emanating from the
sun, whose earthly representative it was; hence it is related on the one hand
with the ray of light and lightning, and on the hand, with gold. Other
primitive people view the soul as a fire or flame, because warmth is likewise a
sign of life.[7]
Fire has also been equated to our human emotions and passions.
Hardy House 1905
Hardy
House Perspective 1905
During this period of growth,
Wright designed the Hardy house in 1905. The plan shows the same order as the
Cheney house with the central fireplace. The plan has become elongated with
large terraces spreading put into the landscape. This reflects WrightÕs own
movement into the world and his steadily growing reputation.
Hardy
House Plan 1905
1909 to
1932
In 1909 Wright left his wife
Catherine and his family for Europe with Mamah Cheney, the wife of Edwin Cheney
whom he had designed and built a house for in 1903. Wright's Architectural
practice continued to grow even though the press had publicised WrightÕs marital
indiscretions. The size of his commissions grew with the design of the Midway
Gardens in Chicago and the prestigious Imperial Hotel in Japan being secured.
Things were soon to take a turn for the worse however. In 1914 a crazed employee
killed Mamah Cheney and six others including her children and set fire to
WrightÕs residence Taliesin East. Something in him died with her,Ó his son
John Lloyd Wright remembered sadly, something loveable and gentle É.in my
father's.
With this tragedy still
fresh, Wright met Miriam Noel who accompanied him to Japan where he worked on
the Imperial Hotel during World War 1. WrightÕs extended marital and financial
difficulties in the 1920Õs contributed to his own architectural doldrums long
before the stock market crash affected the rest of the nation. His relationship
with Miriam was extremely tempestuous due mainly to WrightÕs pining for Mamah
Cheney and abrasion between Miriam and WrightÕs mother Anna. Things were to get
worse for Wright however, with the death of Anna in 1923 and the departure of
Miriam in 1924.
Miriam was to become a
haunting figure for Wright for many years to come. She would not grant Wright a
divorce even though she had left, and accused Wright of assault, and accusation
that was never substantiated. During this period of instability and turmoil
WrightÕs houses changed dramatically.
Hollyhock House 1917
Image of Front
As you can from this image of
Hollyhock House, gone are the sweeping low rooves, gone are the dramatic
cantilevers and gone is the idea of extending the interior spaces to the
landscape. The material used for its construction was sculpted concrete block
making the aesthetic of the house monumental, that is, heavy and solid. Another
change in his design was the introduction of water as shown in the plan below.
The fireplace no longer presents
itself in the centre, or even near the centre although it does have new elements
added to it, and that is a pool of water surrounding the hearth and a skylight
in front of the chimney. The alchemical overtones are unmistakable and indeed
Wright was entering a period of deep introversion and transformation. Perhaps
this was an attempt on WrightÕs part to reconcile the loveable and gentle
nature he had attained while in relationship Mamah Cheney. The English theologian
and alchemist John Pordage wrote the following in a letter to Jane Leade,
which illustrates the combination of Fire and water.
You must see to it that they lie
together in the bed of their union and live in sweet harmony; then the virgin
Venus will bring forth her pearl, her water spirit, in you, to soften the
fiery spirit of Mars, and the wrathful fire of Mars will sink quite willingly,
in mildness and love, into the love fire of Venus, and thus both qualities,
as fire and water, will mingle together, agree, and flow into one another;
and from their agreement and union there will proceed the first conception
of the magical birth which we call Tincture, the love-fire Tincture.
[8]
The fireplace in the
Hollyhock house is a symbolic representation on WrightÕs part to combine the
four elements earth, air fire and water. The wood in the fireplace, the air
required for the burning process and the fire itself. The introduction water in
front to of the fireplace and the skylight in front of the chimney brings
together the elements that were hitherto not included. Fresh water comes from
the air and the skylight is directly above the water. We shall see later that
Wright combines the four elements in a different way in his house Fallingwater.
The plan of Hollyhock is
still somewhat symmetrical and an enclosed courtyard now occupies the centre.
The courtyards of the Living room are now closed off from it and accessible
indirectly through single doors. The views were made secondary to the interior,
which is turned inward.
The interior of the Freeman
House, similar in nature in that period shows the introverted and enclosed
interior of the Living Room.
Hollyhock House Plan
Freeman House 1923
Living Room
Jacobs House 1936
Jacobs House Front
Jacobs House Plan
Exterior from Creek
The site chosen for the house was quite significant for the
client Edgar J Kaufman. He told Wright that he had a special rock where he
would sit and view the creek and waterfall. Wright subsequently took this
information on and designed a house with the rock protruding inside and in
front of the fireplace. Again, we have a situation where Wright combined the
four elements in an interesting way. The hearth is once again pivotal in the
design. The fire and fuel remain unchanged. The natural rock (earth) environment
is given feature prominence in front of the hearth. Stone has off course alchemical
significance. The other major addition is the spherical kettle net to the
hearth which is suspended on a pivoting arm and places the kettle directly
over the flames of the fire. Wright has here recognised the next step in combining
the elements. We all know that water extinguishes fire and an intermediary
substance is required to combine their respective effects. In this case the
spherical kettle allows the water to be effected by the fire without changing
the fire.
Interior Living room
Fallingwater Ground Floor Plan
During this period and the
preceding two decades, Wright spoke and wrote so frequently that it damaged
his credibility. His style obscured his substance and his outrageous remarks,
esoteric jargon, and abysmal prose fostered misunderstanding and dismissal.
He pushed his philosophy of Organic Architecture beyond that of architecture
itself and proposed it as a philosophy of life. The creative faculties of
the human race,Ó he told a student group in 1954, are intimately linked to
the relationship of man to the cosmos. This transcendental belief that the
artistic side of humanity represented its divinity led Wright to insist that
a kind of structure Ð a coherent pattern Ð characterised all life: Organic
architecture feels at home with the ideal of unity,Ó he once remarked. One
of the two key words in his philosophical vocabulary, in fact, was unity a
defining attribute of the second word, nature,Ó from which everything else
flowed. The two became one in organic structure which brought cosmic unity
to natural variety and was, Wright believed, a proper basis for all social
relations.
WrightÕs awareness of his
own unity was everywhere to be seen. In an interview he stated that he never
lost site of his youth and indeed it was necessary for him to retain that
youth, even into old age. The buildings of WrightÕs final years show how he
believed this idea and expressed it in his work. The mandala like aesthetic
of the Greek Orthodox Church is unmistakeable. Not only is this church a mandala
in plan, its external shape would indicate some affinity with the archetypal
flying saucer. WrightÕs contribution to the myth of the flying saucer cannot
be denied. I refer the reader to Flying Saucers A Modern Myth of Things Seen
in the Skies
[9]
for the psychic determinants behind the flying saucer.
Wright underwent emergency
surgery for an intestinal tract obstruction and related haemorrhaging at the
age of 91. He seemed to recuperate and make his way to full recovery but died
on April 9, 1959 after developing a coronary thrombosis.
Greek Orthodox Church 1956
Lykes House 1959
Huntington Play Resort (1959) Unbuilt
Wright intuitively
expressed his psychic state in his architectural work. His ability to reflect
on his state was poor however. He once told a friend that the reason he took
out the back window of his car and filled it with an opaque material, was
because he never looked back. This is typical of WrightÕs attitude to life and
his work. He was aware of his relation to the archetypal world of the
unconscious and expressed it so without critical analysis.
The 800 buildings that Frank
Lloyd Wright left the world are a testament of what is attainable when the
governing personal attitude is accepted and expressed in its purest form.
Architecture is indeed the expression of the psyche in its most concrete form
and the determining factors are the laws of nature. Wright knew this fact
and fought against any detraction from it. The client became a means to express
these laws of nature, including the laws of Wright's own nature. Had Wright recognised the relation between
his work and his psychic state, there may have been a dramatic change in the
direction of his work. We may have seen the creation of the a new architectural
attitude where the psychic state of the client had at least as much if not
more importance as the architect.
Frank Lloyd Wright was an
artistic genius and his work has and will inspire generations to come. It is
not only professionals in the field that are inspired, but anyone that lives in
a house can appreciate the beauty and unity of a Wright building.