ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE

© FLWrightFDN
LANGUAGE OF AN ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE
Organic (or intrinsic) architecture is the free architecture of ideal de-
mocracy. To defend and explain whatever I have myself built and written on
the subject I here append a nine-word lexicon needed, world-wide, at this
moment of our time.
The words.
1. NATURE. Why? As in popular use this word is first among abuses
to be corrected.
2. ORGANIC. \"\Thy? Ignorant use or limitation of the word organic.
3. FORM FOLLOvVS FUNCTION. \Vhy? Too many foolish stylistic
constructions are placed upon the slogan.
4. _ROMANCE. Why? A universal change is taking place in the use of
this word, a change to which organic-architecture has itself given rise. No
longer sentimental.
5. TRADITION. Why? Cqnfusion of all eclectics, especially critics,
concerning the word.
6. ORNAMENT. Why? The grace or perdition of Architecture; for the
past 500 years "Applique".
7. SPIRIT. Why? Any version or subversion of the word by the so-
called International-style or by any Fashion promoted by experts.
8. THIRD DIMENSION. \Vhy? \Vhere and why the term was original.
\Yhat it now means in Architecture.
9. SPACE. \Vhy? A new element contributed by Organic-architecture
as STYLE.
D D D D D D

© FLWrightFDN
2
\Vhen lhe nine words I have listed here are added together (they often
are) a degradation of original form and intent which no vitality can bear, is
widespread. Due to much prevalent imposition the gutter seems the only
visible destination of an original idea of architecture that is basic to democratic
culture: an Ideal that might become the greatest constructive creative-phil-
osophy of our day if only understood and well practiced. That philosophy is
surely the center-line of integral or democratic culture in these United States
if and when we awaken to the true meaning and intent not only of organic-
architecture but also of the American democracy we are founded as a nation
to maintain. So I shall try to explain these nine terms. All are on the center-
line of both architecture and democracy. Current trends of standardized
education today tend to turn young lives more and more toward sterility.
Elimination of creation in favor of any cliche that will best serve mechanization.
Mediocrity serves it best because mechanization best serves the mediocre.
Present tendencies toward the mediocre international style not . only degrade
organic American-Architecture but will eventually destroy the creative architect
in America, as elsewhere.

0 0 0 0 0 0

DEFINITIONS
1. NATURE means not just the "out-of-doors," clouds, trees, 'storms, the
terrain and animal life, but refers to their nature as to the nature of materials
or the "nature" of a plan, a sentiment, or a tool. · A man or anything concerning
him, from within. Interior nature with capital N. Inherent PRINCIPLE.
2. The word ORGANIC denotes in Architecture not merely what may
hang in a butcher shop, get about on two feet or be cultivated in a field. The
word organic refers to entity, perhaps integral or intrinsic would therefore be
© FLWrightFDN
 3
a better word to use. As originally used in architecture, organic means Part-
to-Whole- as- Whole-is- to- Part. So Entity as integral is what is really
meant by the word Organic. INTRINSIC.

3. FORlVI FOLLOvVS FUNCTION. This is a much abused slogan. Nat-

urally form does so. But on a lower level and the term is useful only as indi-
cating the platform upon which Architectural Form rests. As the skeleton is
no finality of human-form any more than grammar is the "form" of poetry,
just so function is to architectural form. Rattling the bones is not architec-
ture. Less is only more where more is no good.

Form is predicated by function but, so far as poetic imagination can go

with it without destruction, transcends it. "Form Follows Function" has be-
come spiritually insignificant: a stock-phrase. Only when we say or write
"Form and Function are One" is the slogan significant. It is now the
password for sterility. Internationally.

4. ROMANCE, like the word BEAUTY refers to a quality. Reactionary

use of this honorable but sentimentalized term by critics and current writers
is confusing. Organic-architecture sees actuality as the intrinsic romance of
human creation or sees essential Romance as actual in creation. So romance
is the new reality. Creativity divines this. No team-work can conceive it.
A committee can only receive it as a gift from the inspired Individual. In the
realm of organic-architecture human imagination must render the harsh language
of structure into becomingly humane expressions of form instead of devising
inanimate facades or rattling the bones of construction. Poetry of Form is as
necessary to great architecture as foliage is to the tree, blossoms to the plant
or flesh to the body. Because sentimentality ran away with this human
need and negation is now abusing it is no good reason for taking the abuse of
the thing for the thing.

© FLWrightFDN
 Until the mechanization of building is in service of creative archi-
ture and not creative architecture in the service of mechanization we
will have no great architecture.

5. TRADITION may have many lraditions just as TRUTH may have

many truths. vVhen we of organic-architecture speak of truth we speak of
generic principle. The genus "bird" may fly away as flocks of infinitely differing
birds of almost unimaginable variety: all of them merely derivative. So in
speaking of tradition we use the word as also a generic term. Flocks of traditions
may proceed to fly from generic tradition into unimaginable many. Perhaps
none have creative capacity because all are only derivative. Imitations of
imitation destroy an original tradition.
TRUTH is a divinity in architecture.
6. ORNAMENT. Integral element of architecture, ornament is to archi-
tecture what efflorescence of a tree or plant is to its structure. Of the thing, not
on it. Emotional in its nature, ornament is - if well conceived ·- not only the
poetry but is the character of structure revealed and enhanced. If not
well conceived, architecture is destroyed by ornament.
7. SPIRIT. What is spirit? In the language of Organic-architecture the
"spiritual" is never something descending upon the thing from above as a
kind of illumination hut exists within the thing itself as its very life. Spirit
grows upward from within and outward. Spirit does not come down from
above to be suspended there by skyhooks or set up on posts.
There are two uses of nearly every word or term in usual language but in
organic sense any term is used in reference to the inner not the outer substance
A word, such as "nature" for instance, may be used to denote a material or a
physical means to an end. Or the same word may be used with spiritual signifi-
cance but in this explanation of the use of terms in Organic-architecture the
spiritual sense of the word is uppermost in use in every case.
© FLWrightFDN
 5
8. The THIRD DIMENSION. Contrary to popular belief, the third
dimension is not thickness but is depth. The term "third dimension" is used
in organic architecture to indicate the sense of depth which issues as of the
thing not on it. The third dimension, depth, exists as intrinsic to the building.
9. SPACE. The continual becoming: invisible fountain from which all
rhythms flow to which they must pass. Beyond time or infinity.
The new reality which Organic architecture serves to employ in building.
The breath of a work of art.
D D D D D D
If what I have myself written upon the subject of Architecture and
anyone of the 560 buildings I have built are studied with this nine word lexicon
in mind, I am sure we will have far less of the confusion and nonsensical criticism
upon which inference, imitation, doubt and prejudice have flourished. Isms,
ists and ites defeat the great hope we are still trying to keep alive in our hearts
in face of prevalent expedients now sterilizing the work of young American
architects and rendering our schools harmful to the great art of Architecture
although perhaps profitable to science commercialized. If organic (intrinsic)
architecture is not to live, we of these United States of America will never live
as a true culture. Architecture must first become basic to us as creative art,
therefore beneficent the world over. Present tendencies in education are so
far gone into reverse by way of museum factotums, various committees and
university regents spending millions left behind by hard working millionaires
that owing to fashions of internationalism promoted by the internationalite we
will have seen the last of the architecture of great architects not only in our
democracy but all over the world beside where there is danger of the machine
becoming a pattern of life instead of life using the machine as a tool.
D D D D D D
1 Because our Declaration of Independence saw democracy as the Gospel of
l Individuality and saw it as above polemics or politics, probably a definition of
© FLWrightFDN
 6
the word democracy should be added to this lexicon of nine words. Therefore
a tenth:
DEMOCRACY is our national ideal . . . not yet well understood by
ourselves so not yet realized. But we are a new republic professing this ideal of
freedom for growth of the individual. Why not cherish it? Freedom is not to be
conceived as numbered freedoms. If true, freedom is never to be conceived in
parts. Freedom is of the man and is not accorded to him or ascribed to him
except as he may require protection. For that purpose government - as
protection - exists, not as a policy maker. Democracy is thus the highest form
of aristocracy ever seen. Aristocracy intrinsic.
A gentleman? No longer chosen and privileged by autocratic power he
must rise from the masses by inherent virtue. His qualities as a man will give
him title and keep it for him. Individual conscience will rule his social acts. By
love of quality as against quantity he will choose his way through life. He will
learn to know the difference between the curious and the beautiful. Truth will
be a divinity to him. As his gentlehood cannot be conferred, so it may not be
inherited. This gentleman of democracy will be found in any honest occupation
at any level of fortune, loving beauty, doing his best and being kind.
0 0 0 0 0 D

Anyone may see by our own absurd acts and equivocal policies how con-
fused we are by our own Ideal when we proceed to work it out. But the principles
of organic architecture are the center line of our democracy in America when we
do understand what both really mean.
Only by the growth and exercise of individual conscience does the man
earn or deserve his "rights". Democracy is the opposite of Totalitarianism,
Communism, Fascism or Mobocracy. But democracy is constantly in danger
from mobocracy - the rising tide of as yet unqualified herd-instinct. Mechan-
ized mediocrity. The conditioned mind instead of the enlightened mind.
Taliesin May 20, 1953
© FLWrightFDN
\
© FLWrightFDN