HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE ASSIGNMENT

ASSIGNMENT

SUBMITTED BY: ARCHANA SAKHARWADE AR-11

WARD WILLITS HOUSE, HIGHLAND PARK, III. (1901)

The prairie has a beauty of its own and we should recognize and accentuate this natural beauty, its quiet level. Hence, gently sloping roofs, low proportions, quiet sky lines, suppressed heavy-set chimneys. FLW (1908)

SITE AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH THE SURROUNDING: It is located on a large site facing south west and populated with tall, oak trees in the North Chicago suburb of Highland Park. The building as a whole is associated with the site by extension and emphasis of all the planes parallel to the ground. BUILDING TYPE It is a house in the sub urban area, a perfect example of the Prairie style home. Though the outer appearance of the house resembled my preconception of a typical suburban house, its interiors are quite surprising in their rich and lavish appearance and in the way they connect you to the surroundings.

INTERMINGLING INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR SPACES Frank Lloyd Wright deliberately blurred the distinction between interior space and the surrounding terrain. Wright acclaimed "the new reality that is space instead of matter" and, about architectural interiors, said that the "reality of a building is not the container but the space within."The partitions are short, their top halves forming spindle oak screen thus merging the interiors with the exterior. The plan is so organized that it provides views on three sides into the garden so it can be said that the view is controlled.

CIRCULATION IN THE BUILDING One enters from a porte-cochere to the right of the building up some steps. Wrights buildings generally had a path running through them; in this case there is an instant choice of either turning back up the square spiral stairs to the bedroom level or taking the most prominent route out of the vestibule by following the diagonal view into the living- room. This is on the main axis and is one and half storeys high. It has the chimney on its axis and vertical screen windows. The walls are plastered and smooth and there are slats of wood which bring down the scale and relate structure, furnishings and details to the main proportions. From this space one can see in turn along another diagonal into the dining room, situated on a cross axis with views in three sides into the garden; in the rear wing of the house is the kitchen.

OPENINGS AND DETAILS Details such as grills, brick texture, in the fire place, window mullions, even the leaded lines of the glass, bear the imprint of the same formal intelligence which conceived the whole, as the smallest parts all had the generating idea implicit within them. Thus the abstract shapes of the plan and the ornamentation of the windows are sensed as variants on the same geometrical patterns. All the openings to the inside or to the outside are harmonized with good human scale and occur naturallysingly or as a series in the scheme of the whole building. Usually they appear as light screens instead of walls.

INTER-RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ROOMS The rooms are large being about 24x27ft. There are a few walls separating the first floor rooms, which produces a feeling of space flowing between them. The dining room is perhaps the most interesting space; it has extensions out to the end with a very large open porch and to the left side, a smoking porch. the primary and secondary axes which are reinforced by the centre lines of the roof and placement of chimney creates a kind of pinwheel rotation, experienced in three dimensions as a spatial tension which varies as one moves through the interior spaces. To Wright the dynamism was perhaps the equivalent to the force he sensed in nature; it gave his dwellings something of the quality of spatial music in the rhythm, movement, repetition and variation of similar elements achieved moods and emotions of different pitch and intensity.

IMPRESSION OF THE BUILDING FROM OUTSIDE The Ward Willits house stands back from the road and the first impression is of low roofs extending behind the nearby trees and of hooded windows with dark chinks of glass set under eaves. The building is broken down into four main wings, so that the size is never overwhelming. All the openings are harmonized with good human scale and occur naturally- singly or as a series in the scheme of the whole building. Usually they appear as light screens instead of walls.

IDEA UNDERLYING THE FORM The house is first true example of the ideal dwelling type The home in a Prairie Town developed by Frank Lloyd Wright and was built by following its guidelines or basic principles. For exampleThe sprawling roofs extended to the surroundings and drew the porches, the portr-cochere and the main volumes into a vital, asymmetrical unity. Much of the furniture was built-in and the character of the interiors was commodious yet elegant. There was still axial control and hierarchy, but the rotational and asymmetrical were combined with this in an architecture of sliding and overlapping planes enlivened by an intense rhythm. The basis idea was to incorporate organic architecture into the building, rather make the building on its principles.

INTERIOR SPACES The interiors spaces are spacious, lively and also well lit up by the use of skylight and ceiling lights fitted with electric bulb. Wright did not aspire
simply to design a house, but to create a complete environment, and he often dictated the details of the interior. He designed stained glass, fabrics, furniture, carpet and the accessories of the house. The interiors too were remarkable in that there were no rigid demarcated rooms. Instead, the Prairie house had an open plan with spaces flowing into each other. The formal rooms were dissolved into free-flowing living spaces Wright was committed to destroying the box in architecture.

PRESENT CONDITION OF THE BUILDING

The building was well built up so it is in excellent condition today. The building seems to age gracefully.