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Frank Lloyd Wright is the greatest ever American architect. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:16 | |
Buildings like the Guggenheim Museum, | 0:00:18 | 0:00:20 | |
the Johnson Wax building, | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
and Fallingwater are masterpieces that redefined what was possible | 0:00:23 | 0:00:27 | |
and became famous the world over. | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
But I think the true nature of Frank Lloyd Wright's genius | 0:00:33 | 0:00:36 | |
has become lost, buried under tales of his tempestuous life, | 0:00:36 | 0:00:40 | |
or made into the stuff of coffee table books. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:43 | |
I'm Jonathan Adams, an architect from Wales, | 0:00:43 | 0:00:46 | |
and my 30-year career has taken me all over the world. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:51 | |
Throughout it all, | 0:00:51 | 0:00:53 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright has been a constant touchstone. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:56 | |
Now, I'm going to travel across America | 0:00:59 | 0:01:02 | |
to get to know Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest buildings for myself. | 0:01:02 | 0:01:05 | |
I want to understand how they were conceived, how they work, | 0:01:07 | 0:01:11 | |
and how they make us feel. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:13 | |
Most of all, I want to explore the underlying philosophy | 0:01:17 | 0:01:20 | |
that all these buildings share. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:22 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright called it organic architecture. | 0:01:24 | 0:01:28 | |
And today, 150 years after his birth, | 0:01:28 | 0:01:32 | |
I think it puts him back at the heart | 0:01:32 | 0:01:34 | |
of modern architectural thinking. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
In a career that spanned seven decades, | 0:02:01 | 0:02:04 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright built over 500 buildings. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
And the one he's best known for is his final one - | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
the Guggenheim Museum in New York. | 0:02:12 | 0:02:15 | |
The Guggenheim isn't just something that's beautiful to look at. | 0:02:27 | 0:02:30 | |
All his life, Frank Lloyd Wright strove to create buildings | 0:02:32 | 0:02:36 | |
that expressed an idea of how we should live | 0:02:36 | 0:02:40 | |
and understand the world. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
I'd like to have a free architecture. | 0:02:56 | 0:02:59 | |
I'd like to have architecture that belonged where you see it standing, | 0:02:59 | 0:03:03 | |
and was a grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace. | 0:03:03 | 0:03:07 | |
And the letters we received from our clients | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
tell us how those buildings we built for them | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
have changed the character of their whole land, | 0:03:13 | 0:03:16 | |
and their whole existence | 0:03:16 | 0:03:18 | |
is different now than it was before. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:20 | |
Wright's own life was turbulent, involving financial ruin, | 0:03:24 | 0:03:29 | |
adultery, and tragedy. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:32 | |
Through it all, he stuck to a personal creed based on hard work, | 0:03:32 | 0:03:37 | |
a love of nature, and a fierce independence of thought. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:41 | |
They sound like thoroughly American ideals. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:48 | |
But I think to understand what really shaped Wright's ideas | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
and the man himself, | 0:03:54 | 0:03:55 | |
you have to begin the story far away from America, | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
and closer to where I come from. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:00 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright's Welsh roots are no secret. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:21 | |
He was proud of them and spoke of them all his life. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
His mother, Anna Lloyd Jones, was born in 1838 | 0:04:27 | 0:04:32 | |
near Llandissilio in West Wales. | 0:04:32 | 0:04:34 | |
Their family was large and devout, | 0:04:36 | 0:04:39 | |
and at their chapel, they practised a radical brand of Christianity | 0:04:39 | 0:04:43 | |
known as Unitarianism. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:45 | |
All his life, Frank Lloyd Wright would draw inspiration | 0:04:47 | 0:04:51 | |
from this freethinking spiritual inheritance. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
Unitarianists see God in anything and in all things. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:03 | |
We often talk of the wonder, the awesomeness, the magnificence of... | 0:05:03 | 0:05:09 | |
of nature, and of the world that we're all a part of. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
We've always placed a huge emphasis on the individual's freedom | 0:05:14 | 0:05:18 | |
to choose and to pick and to decide for themselves | 0:05:18 | 0:05:22 | |
where their understanding of God and of human nature lie. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:27 | |
Unitarianism fit in with the people here, | 0:05:27 | 0:05:31 | |
the people who were everyday, hard-working, low-paid people | 0:05:31 | 0:05:36 | |
looking for that freedom and for that spirit of liberalism. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:40 | |
It might have been the search for religious freedom | 0:05:43 | 0:05:46 | |
that took Anna's family away from Wales. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:48 | |
In 1844, the Lloyd Jones clan - | 0:05:50 | 0:05:54 | |
parents, children, aunts, and uncles - | 0:05:54 | 0:05:57 | |
left home, bound for a new, freer life... | 0:05:57 | 0:06:01 | |
in the new world. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:03 | |
The family sailed to New York | 0:06:14 | 0:06:16 | |
and then, with pioneer spirit, set off westward to find a new home. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:22 | |
What they were looking for was something familiar, | 0:06:27 | 0:06:29 | |
something like the land they knew and understood. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:33 | |
Finally, they came upon their new Wales. | 0:06:39 | 0:06:43 | |
Wooded, gently sloping land near Spring Green, Wisconsin. | 0:06:43 | 0:06:48 | |
To Frank Lloyd Wright, | 0:06:48 | 0:06:50 | |
this place would become a lifelong spiritual touchstone, | 0:06:50 | 0:06:54 | |
known simply as The Valley. | 0:06:54 | 0:06:56 | |
The valley that they chose to live in | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
became so identified with them and their purpose | 0:07:04 | 0:07:08 | |
and their way of living | 0:07:08 | 0:07:10 | |
that some people called it the Valley of the God Almighty Joneses. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:14 | |
They didn't really want to become Americans, you know? | 0:07:16 | 0:07:19 | |
They wanted to be Welsh... | 0:07:19 | 0:07:21 | |
..on American soil. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:24 | |
It was into this world that in 1867 Frank Lloyd Wright was born. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:33 | |
It was here, too, that his values were shaped. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
Throughout his childhood, | 0:07:44 | 0:07:45 | |
Frank would spend his summers here in the valley, | 0:07:45 | 0:07:48 | |
labouring on the farm, living a rural life, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:50 | |
and hearing the Welsh language of his aunts and uncles. | 0:07:50 | 0:07:54 | |
For the rest of his days, | 0:07:54 | 0:07:55 | |
he would look back on those summers as a kind of paradise. | 0:07:55 | 0:07:58 | |
Frank's mother encouraged his early ambitions to build. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:04 | |
After studying engineering at a local college, | 0:08:04 | 0:08:08 | |
he left home to seek an architectural apprenticeship. | 0:08:08 | 0:08:11 | |
As luck would have it, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:24 | |
the nearest city was one of the most exciting places | 0:08:24 | 0:08:27 | |
in the entire world for an aspiring young architect. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:30 | |
Chicago. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:32 | |
New styles of building were being created here... | 0:08:35 | 0:08:39 | |
including the skyscraper. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:41 | |
Before long, Wright's youthful energy and talent landed him a job | 0:08:45 | 0:08:50 | |
with the city's leading architect. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:52 | |
And it was in Chicago, too, that he found his first love. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:57 | |
Catherine Tobin, known as Kitty, was just 16 when they met. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:03 | |
Within two years, they were married, | 0:09:04 | 0:09:06 | |
and had a child of their own on the way. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:08 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright was a young man in a hurry. | 0:09:11 | 0:09:14 | |
Borrowing money from his boss, | 0:09:14 | 0:09:16 | |
he bought a plot of land here in the respectable suburb of Oak Park. | 0:09:16 | 0:09:20 | |
The place where, it was said, the saloons ended | 0:09:20 | 0:09:23 | |
and the steeples began. | 0:09:23 | 0:09:25 | |
And it was here that he first built a home for himself. | 0:09:25 | 0:09:28 | |
It might be difficult for anyone looking at this today | 0:09:41 | 0:09:44 | |
to see it as anything other than a slightly quirky | 0:09:44 | 0:09:46 | |
gable-fronted suburban house. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:48 | |
It's only when you put it alongside all of the other houses | 0:09:50 | 0:09:53 | |
of the same period, here or anywhere else in the Western world, | 0:09:53 | 0:09:57 | |
that you realise just how strange it is. | 0:09:57 | 0:10:00 | |
Take this massive symmetry. | 0:10:02 | 0:10:05 | |
It's highly classical, but stylised. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:07 | |
You can see the faint outlines of the triangle pediment | 0:10:07 | 0:10:10 | |
of a Greek temple, with the two bays at the bottom | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
instead of columns supporting the weight. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:15 | |
It's classical discipline applied to a small cottage. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
The upper part of the house conveys a huge sense of weight and sanctity. | 0:10:22 | 0:10:27 | |
So you might expect the inside to be pokey and dark. | 0:10:28 | 0:10:32 | |
But what you actually find is the opposite. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:40 | |
The rooms all flow, one into another. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:43 | |
It must have been a huge surprise to people back in the 1880s. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:46 | |
This is open-plan before the idea of open-plan really existed. | 0:10:46 | 0:10:51 | |
Perhaps this is where it began. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:54 | |
The free flow of Wright's design reflects an idea of family life, | 0:11:05 | 0:11:10 | |
learned in the Unitarian value of his childhood - | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
honest, equal, and communal. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
He even inscribed these values above the hearth, clear for all to see. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:23 | |
In its open spaces and its open spirit, | 0:11:31 | 0:11:36 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park home was his first step | 0:11:36 | 0:11:40 | |
towards a new kind of architecture. | 0:11:40 | 0:11:42 | |
Over the next few years, Wright's career took off. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:52 | |
His house attracted the attention of curious neighbours, | 0:11:52 | 0:11:55 | |
and commissions flowed in. | 0:11:55 | 0:11:58 | |
He would eventually design over 50 houses for local clients. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:05 | |
Many, like his own, subtle experiments with traditional forms. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:09 | |
By now, Frank and Kitty had six children. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:18 | |
Wright was in his late 30s, and more than ready for his big break. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
But when that came, it was a bolt from the blue. | 0:12:23 | 0:12:27 | |
Every Sunday, Frank Lloyd Wright and his young family | 0:12:29 | 0:12:32 | |
would walk a half-mile to worship at the local Unitarian church. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
It wasn't the kind of building that he really approved of. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:38 | |
It was vaguely Gothic with a pretentious spire. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
And then, one night in 1905, | 0:12:41 | 0:12:43 | |
it was struck by lightning and it burned to the ground. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:46 | |
Never slow to see his chance, | 0:12:52 | 0:12:53 | |
Wright proposed a new building for the site. | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
It was unlike anything seen before in America. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:59 | |
Wright's plans for the new building cast aside all traditional styles, | 0:13:02 | 0:13:07 | |
as he seized the chance to express his own spiritual | 0:13:07 | 0:13:10 | |
and architectural beliefs. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:13 | |
Gone would be ornament, arches and the showy spire. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:20 | |
What emerged instead was Unity Temple, | 0:13:23 | 0:13:27 | |
the world's first truly modern building. | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
Few people even today would guess that this is a church. | 0:13:46 | 0:13:51 | |
The building doesn't even have an obvious way in. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:54 | |
The very material the Unity Temple is constructed from | 0:13:55 | 0:13:59 | |
seems unsuitable for a place of worship. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
These walls and every detail of the exterior | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
are made from solid, unadorned, reinforced concrete. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
Wright's justification was that it was cheap - | 0:14:10 | 0:14:13 | |
a utilitarian material used for low-grade engineering structures. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:18 | |
The impoverished church committee was persuaded to go along. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
But Wright's real reason for using concrete | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
was that it was a new and exciting technology with unlimited potential. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:31 | |
It put Frank Lloyd Wright just where he wanted to be - | 0:14:32 | 0:14:35 | |
on his own at the frontier of architecture. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:38 | |
If the exterior of Unity Temple expressed an idea of the divine, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:45 | |
it was in austere geometric forms. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
But the space that those forms created on the inside | 0:14:49 | 0:14:53 | |
was among Frank Lloyd Wright's most beautiful | 0:14:53 | 0:14:56 | |
and spiritually uplifting rooms. | 0:14:56 | 0:14:59 | |
The sanctuary of Unity Temple is a perfect square. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:11 | |
Golden light streams in through coloured glass | 0:15:12 | 0:15:15 | |
in the coffered ceiling... | 0:15:15 | 0:15:17 | |
while ornament and structure combine to unite the whole. | 0:15:17 | 0:15:21 | |
This building is unique. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:31 | |
It is hard to figure out how to even get into the sanctuary. | 0:15:32 | 0:15:38 | |
And when you find it, it just opens up and it's a gem of a space. | 0:15:38 | 0:15:42 | |
I love the intimacy, | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
this capacity to worship while in community with one another, | 0:15:46 | 0:15:51 | |
being able to see one another. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:53 | |
It's the most important part of the building for the most of us. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:58 | |
Wright based the distinctive interior layout of Unity Temple | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
closely on the Lloyd Jones family chapel back in Wales. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:13 | |
But his new building's overall radicalism | 0:16:15 | 0:16:18 | |
was still too much for some in its congregation. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:22 | |
It's said that they prayed for ivy, and were happy when ivy came. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:26 | |
All the while that Unity Temple was taking shape, | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright was busy designing houses. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:44 | |
By now, he had his own architectural practice, | 0:16:44 | 0:16:48 | |
and his designs had become far more daring. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:50 | |
Pointed roofs had started to flatten out, as windows widened. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:57 | |
Cellars and attics vanished, | 0:16:59 | 0:17:02 | |
and houses spread out, low to the ground. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
Wright was inspired by the vast open spaces | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
that stretched away beyond Chicago. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
The buildings even became known as prairie houses. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:18 | |
He brought this early vision to perfection with the Robie House, | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
a gorgeous steamship of a building with windows like prows. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
It sailed through an open green landscape, | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
a vessel of the Midwest prairie. | 0:17:30 | 0:17:32 | |
The Robie House looked as modern and powerful | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
as the Great Lakes steamers that docked in Chicago. | 0:17:41 | 0:17:44 | |
It was an impressive feat of engineering. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
The huge projecting roof was Wright's most daring to date. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
Inside, too, Wright used this building to experiment, | 0:17:58 | 0:18:02 | |
creating a sense of drama around the simple act of entering. | 0:18:02 | 0:18:07 | |
You come into the Robie House through the front door, | 0:18:09 | 0:18:12 | |
which is actually at the back, | 0:18:12 | 0:18:13 | |
and you find yourself in this low, dark lobby, | 0:18:13 | 0:18:17 | |
which pushes you towards this flight of stairs. | 0:18:17 | 0:18:21 | |
And as you climb the stairs, you get glimpses of light at the top, | 0:18:21 | 0:18:25 | |
which lead you upwards and build a sense of anticipation. | 0:18:25 | 0:18:28 | |
But then, you're forced to turn. | 0:18:28 | 0:18:30 | |
And you turn again, and then there's another few steps | 0:18:31 | 0:18:35 | |
which lead you up, and one final turn... | 0:18:35 | 0:18:40 | |
and then you're released into this fantastic wide room, | 0:18:40 | 0:18:45 | |
surrounded by windows and bathed with natural light. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:48 | |
Wright liked to call conventional houses boxes, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:58 | |
and their rooms boxes within boxes. | 0:18:58 | 0:19:02 | |
In the unlimited free flow of the Robie House, | 0:19:03 | 0:19:07 | |
to use his own phrase, he destroys the box. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:10 | |
One final thing about the Robie House that's true | 0:19:16 | 0:19:19 | |
of almost all of Wright's houses - | 0:19:19 | 0:19:21 | |
if you commissioned one, you didn't just get the building, | 0:19:21 | 0:19:24 | |
you got the furniture too, | 0:19:24 | 0:19:26 | |
which Wright designed, along with a list of dos and don'ts. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
Curtains and blinds were out, | 0:19:30 | 0:19:32 | |
as were paintings on the wall and ornaments. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:35 | |
Wright had astonishing self-belief, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:38 | |
almost to the point of being overbearing. | 0:19:38 | 0:19:41 | |
He called interior decorators inferior desecrators. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:45 | |
It wasn't unusual for former clients to arrive home | 0:19:45 | 0:19:48 | |
to find that Wright had made an unannounced visit | 0:19:48 | 0:19:50 | |
and rearranged all their furniture. | 0:19:50 | 0:19:52 | |
In the case of the Robie House, | 0:19:52 | 0:19:54 | |
he even designed a dress for Mrs Robie to wear here. | 0:19:54 | 0:19:56 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright, now in his early 40s, | 0:20:02 | 0:20:05 | |
was riding high and creating a real stir. | 0:20:05 | 0:20:09 | |
But increasingly he was chafing against conventional family life | 0:20:10 | 0:20:14 | |
in a polite suburb. | 0:20:14 | 0:20:16 | |
He himself started to see | 0:20:18 | 0:20:21 | |
that the world was a lot bigger than Oak Park, | 0:20:21 | 0:20:25 | |
and at a certain point he realised he was interested | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
in looking much further forward. | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
How did he become someone to be reckoned with? | 0:20:32 | 0:20:36 | |
Well, one way to do that is to dress differently | 0:20:36 | 0:20:40 | |
and to go out more and... | 0:20:40 | 0:20:43 | |
to have girlfriends, I suppose. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:46 | |
I think that was the start of what one might call | 0:20:46 | 0:20:52 | |
almost anti-social behaviour. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:54 | |
Wright's unconventional conduct crossed a line | 0:21:01 | 0:21:04 | |
when he began an affair with the wife of a client. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
Mamah Cheney was a feminist, a freethinker. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:14 | |
The ideal partner for a radical man, | 0:21:14 | 0:21:17 | |
albeit a mother of two. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:19 | |
When their relationship was discovered, | 0:21:20 | 0:21:23 | |
Wright took decisive action. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
Closing down his studio, | 0:21:25 | 0:21:27 | |
he abandoned his family, and together with Mamah fled to Europe. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:32 | |
When the couple returned a year later, | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
it was to set up home together. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:49 | |
Wright knew they wouldn't be welcome in Oak Park, | 0:21:52 | 0:21:55 | |
so he began building a new house on land owned by his mother. | 0:21:55 | 0:21:59 | |
It was in the one place that for him represented safety, | 0:22:02 | 0:22:06 | |
community and integrity. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:08 | |
The valley of his childhood. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:10 | |
He even gave his new house a centuries-old Welsh name... | 0:22:12 | 0:22:17 | |
Taliesin. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:19 | |
Taliesin sits on the brow of a hill. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:32 | |
As Wright liked to point out, | 0:22:32 | 0:22:34 | |
its Welsh name actually means "shining brow." | 0:22:34 | 0:22:37 | |
It's been compared to an Italian villa | 0:22:39 | 0:22:41 | |
or even to a mediaeval Welsh farmstead. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:44 | |
A fortified state built at a time when he needed to feel secure. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:48 | |
But Taliesin is very much more besides. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:59 | |
More than any other building, it embodies Wright's ideal | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
of how architecture and nature should coexist. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:08 | |
I said that Taliesin sits on a hill. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:13 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright would have taken pleasure in correcting me. | 0:23:13 | 0:23:16 | |
He preferred to say that it was of the hill, that it graces the hill, | 0:23:16 | 0:23:20 | |
that the hill and the house are improved by each other | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
so that they become a unity. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
Taliesin I learned a lot from. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
The way that he marries his buildings with the landscape | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
and the way...their juxtaposition with each other | 0:23:35 | 0:23:38 | |
and the way that spaces flow through them. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:40 | |
It sort of comes out of the landscape. | 0:23:42 | 0:23:44 | |
It's constant and it's green hills and trees and grass and such. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:49 | |
I remember being unbelievably impressed. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:52 | |
Wright summed up the philosophy that lay behind Taliesin | 0:23:55 | 0:23:59 | |
in a simple phrase - | 0:23:59 | 0:24:01 | |
organic architecture. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
It's a memorable expression, | 0:24:04 | 0:24:06 | |
but just what is it that makes a building organic? | 0:24:06 | 0:24:10 | |
Well, here he used local materials. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:14 | |
Stone, sand and timber sourced from nearby. | 0:24:14 | 0:24:18 | |
What's more, the same materials are used inside and outside, | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
so that interior and exterior flow together. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
Windows are low and linear, | 0:24:26 | 0:24:29 | |
so that when you are seated inside, | 0:24:29 | 0:24:32 | |
you have a continuous view through tree tops, | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
as if you're elevated, floating among them. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
But it's important to say that for Wright, organic architecture | 0:24:42 | 0:24:47 | |
didn't just mean using local materials | 0:24:47 | 0:24:50 | |
and blending a building into a landscape. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:53 | |
What he meant was that the philosophy of the building, | 0:24:55 | 0:24:58 | |
what it says about how we should live, would, | 0:24:58 | 0:25:00 | |
when blended with the character of the site, | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
give rise naturally and organically to its unique form. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:07 | |
In this case, a building that belongs to its hill | 0:25:11 | 0:25:15 | |
and could never be built anywhere else. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:17 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney lived happily at Taliesin, | 0:25:24 | 0:25:29 | |
for all that local newspapers dubbed their house a love bungalow. | 0:25:29 | 0:25:33 | |
Wright was defiant. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:37 | |
Around a building he carved the Welsh symbol | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
that represented his Unitarian family motto, | 0:25:41 | 0:25:44 | |
truth against the world. | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
But the dream of this new world wasn't to last. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:54 | |
Taliesin, like almost all large houses of its time, | 0:26:02 | 0:26:06 | |
was built to be run by servants. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:08 | |
But Wright's liberal principles meant that here they lived | 0:26:09 | 0:26:12 | |
on the main floor with everybody else, not in some pokey garret. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:19 | |
Treat your servants as your friends, Wright had written. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
In 1914, a new servant was taken on at Taliesin... | 0:26:24 | 0:26:29 | |
Julian Carlton, a butler and all-round help. | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
One day in September, when Frank Lloyd Wright was away, | 0:26:35 | 0:26:39 | |
the unimaginable happened at Taliesin. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
While Mamah and her children were sitting down to lunch, | 0:26:44 | 0:26:46 | |
Julian Carlton ran amok. | 0:26:46 | 0:26:48 | |
Using petrol, he set fire to the house. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:52 | |
As its terrified residents fled, he attacked them with a hatchet. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:58 | |
Seven people died here, | 0:27:13 | 0:27:15 | |
including Mamah Cheney and her two young children. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:19 | |
Taliesin was all but destroyed. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:21 | |
The seemingly senseless slaughter made national headlines. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:30 | |
Julian Carlton refused to speak about what he'd done. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:35 | |
He starved himself to death in jail two months later. | 0:27:35 | 0:27:39 | |
Mamah Cheney was buried in the valley, | 0:27:44 | 0:27:47 | |
in sight of the ruins of Taliesin. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:51 | |
The years after the calamity were turbulent ones | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
for Frank Lloyd Wright. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:11 | |
He had gone from the happiest time in his life | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
to the time of deepest despair. | 0:28:14 | 0:28:16 | |
He threw himself into the rebuilding of Taliesin, | 0:28:18 | 0:28:22 | |
but much of the decade he spent working abroad. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:25 | |
When he returned to America, it would not be to the Midwest, | 0:28:32 | 0:28:36 | |
scene of his previous triumphs and his greatest tragedy. | 0:28:36 | 0:28:41 | |
Instead, he turned to a new horizon | 0:28:41 | 0:28:44 | |
and an extraordinary new phase in his work. | 0:28:44 | 0:28:48 | |
Wright received five commissions to build houses in Los Angeles. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:05 | |
The biggest and boldest of them was designed for a wealthy LA couple, | 0:29:05 | 0:29:10 | |
the Ennises. | 0:29:10 | 0:29:11 | |
If Taliesin is of the hill, the Ennis house really is on the hill. | 0:29:23 | 0:29:28 | |
This is a fortress. | 0:29:28 | 0:29:30 | |
It's a mysterious interior place that sits proud in its landscape. | 0:29:30 | 0:29:35 | |
Is it organic? | 0:29:38 | 0:29:41 | |
It's a building that perfectly suits its city - | 0:29:41 | 0:29:44 | |
the ambition and boldness of LA, | 0:29:44 | 0:29:47 | |
and the bright sun that shines here all year round. | 0:29:47 | 0:29:50 | |
For Frank Lloyd Wright, now 57 years old, | 0:29:59 | 0:30:03 | |
the Ennis House was a creative rebirth. | 0:30:03 | 0:30:05 | |
The design was inspired by the ancient forms of Mayan temples. | 0:30:07 | 0:30:11 | |
But to build it, Wright devised a brand-new construction method. | 0:30:12 | 0:30:17 | |
The entire house was made out of patterned concrete blocks. | 0:30:20 | 0:30:25 | |
27,000 of them, all manufactured on-site. | 0:30:25 | 0:30:29 | |
As the building rose, | 0:30:30 | 0:30:31 | |
steel rods were threaded between them for support. | 0:30:31 | 0:30:35 | |
Wright liked to say that he was weaving here rather than building. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:42 | |
I think you can see what he meant. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:44 | |
You have the steel rods running along these joints, | 0:30:44 | 0:30:47 | |
interleaving the warp and weft, | 0:30:47 | 0:30:49 | |
and then the concrete blocks that form the finish. | 0:30:49 | 0:30:53 | |
He also said he wanted to elevate an unloved building material, | 0:30:53 | 0:30:57 | |
the humble concrete block, into something much more beautiful, | 0:30:57 | 0:31:01 | |
and he certainly succeeded. | 0:31:01 | 0:31:03 | |
Entering the Ennis house feels like stepping into an adventure. | 0:31:15 | 0:31:20 | |
The forbidding exterior really gives you no idea what to expect. | 0:31:20 | 0:31:24 | |
Inside, the house is made from exactly the same concrete blocks | 0:31:31 | 0:31:35 | |
as outside. | 0:31:35 | 0:31:36 | |
But whereas the exterior is solid and massive, | 0:31:38 | 0:31:42 | |
these columns create a series of intriguing interlinked spaces. | 0:31:42 | 0:31:47 | |
This really is... It's an incredible space. | 0:31:53 | 0:31:57 | |
Being inside this rock-like structure | 0:32:01 | 0:32:04 | |
makes you feel as if you're in a complex of caves. | 0:32:04 | 0:32:08 | |
It's a really powerful sense of mystery. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:11 | |
No idea how far it extends or where you're being taken. | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
I think that's what must have made it | 0:32:14 | 0:32:16 | |
such an exhilarating place to live. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:18 | |
There's a timelessness and drama to the Ennis house, | 0:32:24 | 0:32:28 | |
and it's no surprise that it's proved a favourite | 0:32:28 | 0:32:30 | |
with Hollywood film-makers. | 0:32:30 | 0:32:32 | |
It's been featured in horror films and thrillers, | 0:32:32 | 0:32:35 | |
and most famously... | 0:32:35 | 0:32:37 | |
..in the seminal 1980s science-fiction film Blade Runner. | 0:32:39 | 0:32:43 | |
I wanted to see you. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:45 | |
The sheer originality of Wright's creation | 0:32:51 | 0:32:54 | |
means it can fit easily into any world of the imagination. | 0:32:54 | 0:32:58 | |
It's remarkable, given how instantly recognisable this building is. | 0:32:59 | 0:33:04 | |
The Ennis house was a triumph for Frank Lloyd Wright. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:16 | |
But as the 1920s drew to a close, | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
storm clouds were once again gathering. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:24 | |
Wright had found a new love. | 0:33:29 | 0:33:31 | |
Olgivanna Milanoff was Montenegrin, | 0:33:31 | 0:33:35 | |
a professional dancer and some 30 years his junior. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:39 | |
Their relationship became mired in scandal. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:45 | |
Business suffered and worse was to follow. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
The Wall Street crash of 1929 decimated American architecture, | 0:33:52 | 0:33:57 | |
and for three years Frank Lloyd Wright | 0:33:57 | 0:33:59 | |
had not a single commission. | 0:33:59 | 0:34:01 | |
Always a spendthrift, he was finally flat broke. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:08 | |
Now in his mid-60s, | 0:34:10 | 0:34:12 | |
Wright was coming to be seen as yesterday's man, | 0:34:12 | 0:34:15 | |
a talent who had faded away. | 0:34:15 | 0:34:17 | |
Some simply assumed that he was dead. | 0:34:19 | 0:34:22 | |
Then, at Taliesin, something remarkable happened. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:40 | |
A plan was hatched that would define Wright's later life. | 0:34:40 | 0:34:45 | |
It was ingenious but simple. | 0:34:45 | 0:34:48 | |
The legendary Frank Lloyd Wright would offer apprenticeships. | 0:34:48 | 0:34:53 | |
The Taliesin Fellowship was born. | 0:34:53 | 0:34:55 | |
The fellowship did a lot of things for Wright. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:03 | |
It provided him with young men and women | 0:35:05 | 0:35:08 | |
who wanted to learn and who were very happy to work in the garden, | 0:35:08 | 0:35:15 | |
in the farm. | 0:35:15 | 0:35:16 | |
They were building, they were cooking, cleaning, | 0:35:16 | 0:35:21 | |
and most of them had the money to support Wright | 0:35:21 | 0:35:27 | |
in a way that he couldn't possibly otherwise have managed. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
Mr Wright said, "This is not a school and I am not a teacher. | 0:35:34 | 0:35:38 | |
"You are here to help me with my work, | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
"and if you get something out of that, that's good." | 0:35:42 | 0:35:44 | |
You were really here to help him, | 0:35:44 | 0:35:46 | |
but, you know, when you're helping a master, | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
unless you're just totally immune to it, your life gets changed. | 0:35:49 | 0:35:54 | |
It's as though there was like a real magician, not a fake, | 0:35:54 | 0:35:58 | |
and that magician made things happen just by being there. | 0:35:58 | 0:36:03 | |
But in the huge drafting room at Taliesin, | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
real architectural work was in short supply. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:19 | |
All Wright and his apprentices could do was to draw and dream. | 0:36:19 | 0:36:23 | |
Then at last a commission came in. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:29 | |
The result would relaunch Frank Lloyd Wright's career | 0:36:29 | 0:36:33 | |
and take it to new heights. | 0:36:33 | 0:36:35 | |
In 1933, a wealthy Pittsburgh businessman, | 0:36:39 | 0:36:44 | |
Edgar Kaufmann, decided to rebuild his holiday cottage | 0:36:44 | 0:36:48 | |
deep in the Pennsylvania woodland. | 0:36:48 | 0:36:50 | |
As chance would have it, his son was an apprentice at Taliesin. | 0:36:56 | 0:37:00 | |
Wright and Kaufmann met and the deal was done. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
The story of the origins of Kaufmann's new house | 0:37:09 | 0:37:12 | |
has the quality of a legend. | 0:37:12 | 0:37:14 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright visited and surveyed this very challenging site | 0:37:14 | 0:37:18 | |
and he'd had detailed maps of it drawn up. | 0:37:18 | 0:37:20 | |
But afterwards, months passed with no sign of progress. | 0:37:20 | 0:37:24 | |
Then, at Taliesin one day, the phone rang. | 0:37:26 | 0:37:30 | |
Mr Kaufmann was in the area. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:33 | |
Could he call by and look at Frank's plans for the new building? | 0:37:34 | 0:37:38 | |
Wright sat down in his drafting room, and in just two hours, | 0:37:38 | 0:37:43 | |
set down an astonishing vision. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:47 | |
What he had designed has been called | 0:37:54 | 0:37:56 | |
the greatest house of the 20th century. | 0:37:56 | 0:37:59 | |
Fallingwater. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:01 | |
80 years on from its construction, it still takes your breath away, | 0:38:05 | 0:38:11 | |
looking fantastically modern and yet timeless. | 0:38:11 | 0:38:14 | |
This really is a phenomenal sight. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:30 | |
I've been looking at buildings for a very long time now | 0:38:30 | 0:38:32 | |
and I've not seen anything quite as thrilling as this. | 0:38:32 | 0:38:36 | |
Fallingwater. That's the one quintessential building, to me. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
It's the way it's situated in its landscape, | 0:38:45 | 0:38:48 | |
the way it occupies a space which is much bigger than its physical size. | 0:38:48 | 0:38:53 | |
In our minds it's a vast city of horizontals and verticals. | 0:38:54 | 0:38:58 | |
In that one building, he created modern architecture. | 0:39:00 | 0:39:02 | |
Now the fundamental call that Wright made was also the most daring. | 0:39:11 | 0:39:15 | |
Edgar Kaufmann had expected that his new house would be sited | 0:39:15 | 0:39:18 | |
somewhere around here looking back at the waterfall. | 0:39:18 | 0:39:21 | |
Nobody anticipated that Wright would site the building | 0:39:21 | 0:39:24 | |
directly on top of the fall itself. | 0:39:24 | 0:39:27 | |
And yet that one inspired decision | 0:39:27 | 0:39:29 | |
led directly to this extraordinary, floating, | 0:39:29 | 0:39:33 | |
almost dreamlike building that we see today. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
The huge slab of rock from which the water drops was echoed by Wright | 0:39:40 | 0:39:44 | |
in Fallingwater's extraordinary projecting terraces. | 0:39:44 | 0:39:48 | |
The effect is to harmonise the building with its setting. | 0:39:51 | 0:39:55 | |
Something conspicuously man-made, | 0:39:55 | 0:39:58 | |
yet in sympathy with nature. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:00 | |
Inside too, every detail of Fallingwater | 0:40:06 | 0:40:10 | |
responds to the natural world in which it is set. | 0:40:10 | 0:40:13 | |
The floor is polished stone | 0:40:15 | 0:40:16 | |
and evokes the rippled surface of the river below | 0:40:16 | 0:40:20 | |
just before it goes over the falls. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:22 | |
The long lines of windows lift you into the tree tops, | 0:40:26 | 0:40:30 | |
while the vibrant chairs and rugs are like birds or flowers, | 0:40:30 | 0:40:35 | |
bright splashes of colour in the deep canopy. | 0:40:35 | 0:40:38 | |
There's a wonderful feeling of security here, | 0:40:44 | 0:40:47 | |
of being in a shelter in the wild. | 0:40:47 | 0:40:50 | |
There's even room at Fallingwater for a staircase that leads nowhere. | 0:40:55 | 0:41:00 | |
Just down to the water where you can stand and contemplate. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:06 | |
After barren years, Fallingwater was Frank Lloyd Wright's | 0:41:22 | 0:41:26 | |
most spectacular success, | 0:41:26 | 0:41:29 | |
and a vindication of his lifelong architectural philosophy. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:33 | |
No other building of Wright's more clearly expresses | 0:41:36 | 0:41:38 | |
his personal idea of organic design. | 0:41:38 | 0:41:42 | |
The waterfall on its own was undoubtedly beautiful, | 0:41:42 | 0:41:45 | |
but it's enhanced by this vision of a building | 0:41:45 | 0:41:47 | |
that seems to have grown out of the rocks and trees | 0:41:47 | 0:41:49 | |
while still pushing technology to its limits. | 0:41:49 | 0:41:52 | |
Very few buildings anywhere from any time in history | 0:41:54 | 0:41:57 | |
express an uplifting idea of humanity's place in the world | 0:41:57 | 0:42:00 | |
like this one does. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:02 | |
While Fallingwater was being built, | 0:42:23 | 0:42:25 | |
work was progressing rapidly on a second breakthrough project. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:29 | |
The site could hardly have been more different. | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
A flat industrial lot on the outskirts of a dull Wisconsin town. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:42 | |
The commission didn't sound inspiring, either. | 0:42:42 | 0:42:45 | |
An office building for a cleaning products company. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:49 | |
But, once again, Wright worked his magic. | 0:42:49 | 0:42:53 | |
When you look at it today, | 0:43:03 | 0:43:05 | |
the Johnson Wax building is straight out of vintage science fiction. | 0:43:05 | 0:43:08 | |
Even on a grey day like this, | 0:43:08 | 0:43:10 | |
it still fills me with a sense of joyous possibilities. | 0:43:10 | 0:43:13 | |
It's when you step inside, though, | 0:43:21 | 0:43:24 | |
that the genius of the building fully reveals itself. | 0:43:24 | 0:43:27 | |
Wow, what an awe-inspiring room. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:35 | |
The great workroom of the SC Johnson building | 0:43:41 | 0:43:44 | |
has been called the greatest room in all American architecture. | 0:43:44 | 0:43:49 | |
And you can see why. | 0:43:50 | 0:43:52 | |
Wright's answer to the dreary surroundings was simple enough. | 0:43:55 | 0:43:59 | |
No windows. | 0:43:59 | 0:44:01 | |
Instead, he created an artificial interior world | 0:44:01 | 0:44:06 | |
that is itself as inspiring and uplifting as a wild landscape. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:11 | |
Delicate light enters through patterns of Pyrex tubes, | 0:44:14 | 0:44:19 | |
while huge otherworldly columns leap up to the skies. | 0:44:19 | 0:44:24 | |
The beauty of Wright's design was clear for all to see. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:38 | |
But back in the 1930s, | 0:44:38 | 0:44:41 | |
the technical challenge of turning vision into reality | 0:44:41 | 0:44:44 | |
was making some people distinctly nervous. | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
These extraordinary columns were like nothing | 0:44:48 | 0:44:50 | |
the local building control officers had ever seen, | 0:44:50 | 0:44:53 | |
and so, before construction could begin, | 0:44:53 | 0:44:55 | |
they insisted on testing one under a full load. | 0:44:55 | 0:44:58 | |
Wright, as confident a showman as he was an engineer, | 0:44:58 | 0:45:01 | |
was happy to oblige, and to invite the press along. | 0:45:01 | 0:45:05 | |
Six tonnes of sandbags were loaded onto the column. | 0:45:08 | 0:45:12 | |
The officials were satisfied. | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
But Frank Lloyd Wright had a point to prove. | 0:45:16 | 0:45:20 | |
Ten tonnes went on, then 20. | 0:45:20 | 0:45:23 | |
And finally, 60 tonnes. | 0:45:23 | 0:45:25 | |
Wright strode up to the column, kicked it, hit it with his cane. | 0:45:27 | 0:45:32 | |
It was only when the wooden props holding the column upright | 0:45:34 | 0:45:37 | |
were removed that it finally crashed down. | 0:45:37 | 0:45:40 | |
There was so much weight on it | 0:45:44 | 0:45:46 | |
that a sewer 20 feet underground fractured. | 0:45:46 | 0:45:50 | |
The strength and ingenuity of Wright's columns | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
allowed him to create a vast cathedral-like room. | 0:45:57 | 0:46:01 | |
It embodied his lifelong Unitarian belief in the sanctity of nature | 0:46:02 | 0:46:07 | |
and the sanctity of work. | 0:46:07 | 0:46:09 | |
It's called the great workroom for a good reason, | 0:46:15 | 0:46:18 | |
it's a great place to work. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:20 | |
When you're working here, it's like working in a glade of trees. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:24 | |
With the sun streaming down through the glass tubing in the ceiling, | 0:46:31 | 0:46:34 | |
and creating these wonderful vistas of a sense of outdoorness. | 0:46:34 | 0:46:39 | |
It's an incredible place to work. | 0:46:39 | 0:46:41 | |
The twin triumphs of the Johnson Wax building and Fallingwater | 0:46:49 | 0:46:53 | |
ushered in a new period of creativity and success for Wright. | 0:46:53 | 0:46:57 | |
It's been said that American lives have no second act. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:04 | |
Well, here was one, | 0:47:04 | 0:47:06 | |
perhaps bigger and bolder than the first. | 0:47:06 | 0:47:10 | |
By now, Frank Lloyd Wright was 70 years old and life was good. | 0:47:21 | 0:47:27 | |
His home was still Taliesin, | 0:47:27 | 0:47:30 | |
now standing proud once more in the Wisconsin Valley of his childhood. | 0:47:30 | 0:47:34 | |
He was happily married to Olgivanna, | 0:47:35 | 0:47:38 | |
but there was one thing about life at Taliesin | 0:47:38 | 0:47:41 | |
that she could no longer bear. | 0:47:41 | 0:47:43 | |
The long frozen winters when temperatures plummeted to minus 20 | 0:47:45 | 0:47:50 | |
and snow settled for months on end. | 0:47:50 | 0:47:53 | |
And so, in 1937, a convoy set off from Taliesin | 0:47:57 | 0:48:02 | |
in the depths of December. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:04 | |
The cars were packed with provisions, the tools of the trade, | 0:48:06 | 0:48:10 | |
and the entire Taliesin Fellowship. | 0:48:10 | 0:48:14 | |
From now on, winter would be spent at a new home in the sun. | 0:48:14 | 0:48:20 | |
The parched Arizona desert was the most extreme environment | 0:48:30 | 0:48:33 | |
that Frank Lloyd Wright had ever built in. | 0:48:33 | 0:48:36 | |
It would test his philosophy of organic architecture to the limit | 0:48:36 | 0:48:41 | |
and result in a kind of building never seen before. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:44 | |
Taliesin West is such a unique and beautiful place. | 0:49:00 | 0:49:04 | |
It was designed and constructed over seven years, | 0:49:04 | 0:49:08 | |
and it was loosely based on a diagram | 0:49:08 | 0:49:10 | |
that connects the various angles of the building | 0:49:10 | 0:49:12 | |
to geological features and to prominent hilltops on the horizon. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:16 | |
It's like a piece of free-form architectural jazz. | 0:49:16 | 0:49:20 | |
Taliesin West was constructed entirely | 0:49:28 | 0:49:30 | |
by members of the Fellowship. | 0:49:30 | 0:49:32 | |
Building supplies were hard to come by in the desert, | 0:49:34 | 0:49:37 | |
so Wright improvised, turning to the boulders that littered the site. | 0:49:37 | 0:49:41 | |
I love this material. | 0:49:45 | 0:49:47 | |
Wright called it desert masonry. | 0:49:47 | 0:49:49 | |
And I bet that anyone who studied here during those years | 0:49:49 | 0:49:52 | |
could take me straight to their section of the wall, | 0:49:52 | 0:49:55 | |
and that they would recognise their own boulders, | 0:49:55 | 0:49:57 | |
almost as if they were personal friends. | 0:49:57 | 0:49:59 | |
The massive walls of Taliesin West | 0:50:03 | 0:50:06 | |
seemed to grow out of the desert floor itself. | 0:50:06 | 0:50:10 | |
But on top of them, Wright placed canvas. | 0:50:10 | 0:50:14 | |
It was so delicate, it had to be replaced each year, | 0:50:14 | 0:50:18 | |
as if pioneers were making camp. | 0:50:18 | 0:50:21 | |
Inside and outside were never more happily merged. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:29 | |
It was a kind of natural air conditioning, | 0:50:29 | 0:50:31 | |
a building that worked with its environment and not against it. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:35 | |
It was actually green architecture before that phrase even existed. | 0:50:35 | 0:50:39 | |
The open, airy world of Taliesin West | 0:50:45 | 0:50:48 | |
created a relaxed, communal way of living and working. | 0:50:48 | 0:50:52 | |
Today, it's home | 0:50:57 | 0:50:59 | |
to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, | 0:50:59 | 0:51:03 | |
a place where students still work and live together. | 0:51:03 | 0:51:08 | |
The allure of Frank Lloyd Wright lives on. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:11 | |
When you see the level of freedom and experimentation they had, | 0:51:14 | 0:51:18 | |
that it was not concerned with a particular style | 0:51:18 | 0:51:22 | |
or keeping things as they are, | 0:51:22 | 0:51:25 | |
but actually into challenging and questioning what architecture means. | 0:51:25 | 0:51:28 | |
And I think that's what we really can take away | 0:51:28 | 0:51:32 | |
from the experience of being in his legacy. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:36 | |
The years passed | 0:51:59 | 0:52:01 | |
and Frank Lloyd Wright approached the age of 90. | 0:52:01 | 0:52:04 | |
He was now the grand old man of American architecture, | 0:52:06 | 0:52:10 | |
lauded by his peers at home and abroad, | 0:52:10 | 0:52:13 | |
interviewed on television, a household name. | 0:52:13 | 0:52:17 | |
I understand that last week, in all seriousness, you said, | 0:52:17 | 0:52:21 | |
"If I had another 15 years to work, I can rebuild this entire country, | 0:52:21 | 0:52:25 | |
"I could change the nation." | 0:52:25 | 0:52:27 | |
I did say that... | 0:52:27 | 0:52:29 | |
and it's true. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:30 | |
He continued to work tirelessly, designing a Unitarian church... | 0:52:32 | 0:52:36 | |
..a skyscraper... | 0:52:38 | 0:52:39 | |
..a synagogue... | 0:52:41 | 0:52:42 | |
..and, as ever, houses. | 0:52:43 | 0:52:46 | |
But in the self-proclaimed capital of American architecture, | 0:52:58 | 0:53:02 | |
he had failed to make any mark. | 0:53:02 | 0:53:04 | |
With his final masterpiece, | 0:53:07 | 0:53:09 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright would change all that. | 0:53:09 | 0:53:12 | |
There is a wonderful picture of him six months before he died | 0:53:24 | 0:53:28 | |
on top of the Guggenheim Museum, | 0:53:28 | 0:53:30 | |
and he's looking on top of the world. | 0:53:30 | 0:53:33 | |
I think that's a very apt metaphor for him. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:38 | |
I think Frank was having a lot of fun saying, | 0:53:38 | 0:53:41 | |
"Here it is, take it or leave it," you know? | 0:53:41 | 0:53:45 | |
"I'm the boss here, this is what I'm giving you." | 0:53:45 | 0:53:48 | |
The evolution of the Guggenheim is fascinating, | 0:53:52 | 0:53:55 | |
and it's a great illustration of how Wright worked. | 0:53:55 | 0:53:59 | |
So much in his late career was there in embryo in his early days, | 0:53:59 | 0:54:03 | |
but his philosophy and his imagination never changed course. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:07 | |
Here he turned to an old, unbuilt design | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
that featured a ramp for cars to drive up. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:15 | |
First, he turned it upside down, | 0:54:15 | 0:54:18 | |
so that the building was wider at the top. | 0:54:18 | 0:54:22 | |
Then, he turned it inside out, putting the ramp on the interior. | 0:54:22 | 0:54:27 | |
The result became one of the most famous buildings in the world. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:33 | |
The Guggenheim Art Museum was Frank Lloyd Wright's | 0:54:45 | 0:54:48 | |
poke in the eye for New York City, | 0:54:48 | 0:54:50 | |
and the people he called the "Glass Box Boys", | 0:54:50 | 0:54:55 | |
the modernist architects and critics who had no time for his work. | 0:54:55 | 0:54:59 | |
Into their landscape of soaring vertical lines, | 0:55:00 | 0:55:04 | |
glass, and right angles, he smuggled a low, curvaceous newcomer... | 0:55:04 | 0:55:08 | |
..and it stole the show. | 0:55:10 | 0:55:12 | |
Inside, the Guggenheim was the logical culmination | 0:55:21 | 0:55:25 | |
of Wright's lifelong desire to open up interiors | 0:55:25 | 0:55:28 | |
and create a free flow of space. | 0:55:28 | 0:55:31 | |
It's a building with just one room and one path to follow. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:38 | |
Some people prefer to start at the top. | 0:55:39 | 0:55:41 | |
Others, like me, would rather begin at the bottom. | 0:55:41 | 0:55:44 | |
But once you're on your way, | 0:55:44 | 0:55:45 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright is leading you every step you take. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:48 | |
In traditional museums, | 0:55:52 | 0:55:54 | |
you're sometimes not sure where you're going, | 0:55:54 | 0:55:57 | |
whether you missed a room, | 0:55:57 | 0:55:59 | |
or if there might be better art hiding just around the corner. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:03 | |
Here, everything is open. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:05 | |
You can see where you're going, how far you have to go, | 0:56:05 | 0:56:08 | |
and the artworks that await you. | 0:56:08 | 0:56:10 | |
You're drawn naturally up the path. | 0:56:10 | 0:56:13 | |
And after looking closely at the painting in front of you, | 0:56:13 | 0:56:16 | |
you can turn away and relax to an open vista, the movement of people, | 0:56:16 | 0:56:20 | |
and glimpses of artworks on the walls. | 0:56:20 | 0:56:24 | |
You're not just looking at art, | 0:56:24 | 0:56:26 | |
you're getting a lesson in the act of looking at art. | 0:56:26 | 0:56:29 | |
Back in the 1950s, however, | 0:56:37 | 0:56:40 | |
many people thought that Wright's design for a circular art museum | 0:56:40 | 0:56:43 | |
was little short of madness. | 0:56:43 | 0:56:46 | |
The sloping walls, they said, | 0:56:47 | 0:56:49 | |
would mean that paintings leaned backwards. | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
The windows would allow in too much or too little light. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:58 | |
And as for Wright's choice of colour, | 0:57:00 | 0:57:02 | |
that was better not mentioned. | 0:57:02 | 0:57:04 | |
In the end, that un-Wright-ian thing, a compromise, was reached. | 0:57:08 | 0:57:12 | |
The colour was off-white, | 0:57:12 | 0:57:13 | |
the paintings were fixed on brackets off the wall, | 0:57:13 | 0:57:16 | |
and daylight was mixed with fluorescent light. | 0:57:16 | 0:57:20 | |
I'd say I like the building more | 0:57:30 | 0:57:32 | |
because I don't really try and fight it any longer. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:37 | |
What we like to say to one another is, | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
"We're a circle in a world of squares." | 0:57:40 | 0:57:43 | |
It was a bloody expensive building, | 0:57:45 | 0:57:48 | |
but you see the unbelievable joy and astonishment, | 0:57:48 | 0:57:52 | |
particularly first-time visitors, | 0:57:52 | 0:57:54 | |
and that doesn't come through so often in today's world. | 0:57:54 | 0:57:58 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright died in April 1959, | 0:58:09 | 0:58:13 | |
six months before the Guggenheim Museum opened. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:17 | |
His life had encompassed a huge swathe of history. | 0:58:19 | 0:58:22 | |
Born in the wake of the American Civil War, | 0:58:23 | 0:58:26 | |
the son of a pioneer, | 0:58:26 | 0:58:28 | |
he died a television personality in the Space Age. | 0:58:28 | 0:58:32 | |
He had changed architecture, not just in America, | 0:58:35 | 0:58:38 | |
but around the world. | 0:58:38 | 0:58:41 | |
Frank Lloyd Wright was laid to rest | 0:58:41 | 0:58:44 | |
in the one place that meant most to him - | 0:58:44 | 0:58:48 | |
the valley of his childhood, among his ancestors. | 0:58:48 | 0:58:52 |