In the footsteps of the master

While planning my trip in USA, I had thought of visiting at least one house designed by F. L. Wright, but most of the houses designed by FLW are not part of the routine tours. However, the opportunity came my way quite by co-incidence when we were in Niagara. (If you are an Indian visiting the USA, you must see Niagara-not to visit is almost a sacrilege!) We were discussing plans for the next day and I found a brouchure showcasing an FLW house under renovation with a list of conducted tours of the place. That was great. I had found this system in all the hotels I visited here-in the hotel lobby all the visitor literature is displayed prominently and you can take your pick-It features all the local sight-seeing places, and also all the local happenings in which the visitor can participate alongwith maps, bus/railway-schedules & so on. This is something we can follow at our tourist places too. (Is somebody listening?)


Anyway, the place was near the Hotel, and we decided to give it a try. When we approached the area, I could identify the house easily. It was executed in the distinct prairie style of FLW in an otherwise calm & serene neighbourhood of Buffalo. But I was in for a disappointment when I was told that all the tickets for the conducted tour were sold out for the day. Having come all the way, I would be denied the opportunity of a lifetime.


It was Amruta (my daughter-in-law) who suggested that I declare myself as a tourist from India, and a professor in architecture at that and request the organisers to accommodate me as a special favour. I was skeptical of the result but it worked and I was admitted as a special gesture for the next tour.


This was the Martin House, FLW's early works, published in the Wasmuth Volume. Built in 1903-5, the Martin House is considered one of the most important projects by FLW's prairie school era, and is now taken over by the University of Buffalo for renovation. The Buffalo University has now built a pavillion on the side of the existing house, which works as a reception area, and includes a museum. They have preserved all the original drawings of FLW, including his correspondence with Mr. Martin.


The tour started with a small film on FLW & his work, and also the bio-graphy of Mr. Martin, and his interaction with FLW as a young architect. An umble clerk in the Larkin Soap Co., Mr. Martin had risen to a senior partner and had became a millionaire. The story was interesting and here I could see a pattern in all the early clients of FLW-all the practical down-to-earth people who had started quite low & made it to the top by intellect & hard work. Only these kind of people would appreciate the functional quality of the work of the young architect like FLW and would not bother about the style of the house.

In the group on the tour, there was only one other architect besides myself, and we got acquainted easily. He was from Mexico, and had chanced upon the place just like me. The guide, though not an architect himself, was well versed with the process of design & execution, and gave us an insight into its making.


As it happens, the layout of the neighbourhood was done by a landscape architect, who chose a deviation from the strict grid iron plan and provided curved streets all over the place resulting in varied shapes of plots. In the first letter written by FLW to the Owner, he mentions the fact that the house can be aligned to any one of the sides only, and it was Wright's intention to align it to the neighbouring house. FLW goes on to provide a sketch plan of the site in the letter, clarifying this, which must have been approved, as the final outcome matches the sketch plan done by FLW.



The house has a chequered history. The house was built by Martin when he became a partner in the Larkins, and contains 4/5 independant buildings joined together. One is a house for his sister on the edge of the plot, Martin's own House in front consisting of two separate parts joined together by a covered walkway, a stable and a caretaker's house. It was some kind of a challenge for FLW, as he was asked to design & build the house of the sister first, based on which he was to be given further job. The rest his history-FLW was given not only the remaining part of the house to design but also the Larkin Office Building in Chicago.

Unfortunately, Mr. Martin lost all his money in the stock market crash of 1929, and had to sell of the rear portion of the plot to a developer. The developer built apartments in the rear portion, demolishing part of the house. The front portion was saved as some FLW enthusiast bought it & lived in it himself. It was however declared later as a national monument, and both these portions were purchased by the University of Buffalo, for renovation. Thus the front portion of the house is now the only original portion of the house, but the University has rebuilt the rear portion based on the original drawings-a thing strict conservationists may not like but FLW is a national celebrity in USA and this may be pardonable in a nation which has not much history to start with.


Going through the house, following the detailing of FLW, and seeing for the first time a house which I had only seen in photographs and sketches in the Wasmuth volume, was a unique experience for me. It was almost like a pilgrimage for me. I could imagine FLW with his flamboyant style of functioning moving through the place, giving instructions, supervising the work, and there I was, catapulted into history from a distance of roughly 20,000 miles to witness the result in person.


The discussion in the tour, however, centred on simple everyday matters, like the cross-shaped (pin-wheel) plan giving light & ventilation for most rooms from as many as three sides, the special study room that Martin wanted as an extension to the Living room, the placement of library at the edge with its windows on all three sides to help the nearsighted Mrs. martin, the partially hidden staircase signifying the seperation of the living room from the rest of the house, the connection to conservatory with its mechanical equipment to open & close windows which were inaccessible, and hiding of the services in the cluster of brick pillars. At one level, the house was all about functional utility, at other, it talked about the personality of FLW and the insistence of continuity of space with no intervening walls between spaces, and ceilings dramatically lowered in places to indicate division of space. The house flowed into the exterior as easily without a break in detailing and the continuity of finishes made it all the more subtle.

And then there was the masterful organisation of the form and the detailing-the specially chosen roman bricks with horizontal inset mortar joints to accentuate the horizontal lines, the sweeping roof projecting out and joining the entire composition, the full length windows replacing walls as a complete element of design, the urns & many other small detailing reminding one of a chinese house with strict rectangular/square patterns.

The house stands apart in the neighbourhood of borrowed-style duplex bungalows all over, and I could not help wondering why there were no followers. But then, FLW is a difficult man to follow. It was heartening to find out that the University of Buffalo is using sustainable systems (earth-tunnels) to air-condition the house now-which fits in exactly with the philosophy of organic architecture by FLW. I had once remarked that FLW was not understood in the land of plenty when he talked of organic architecture-but things seem to have come a full circle-what with Al Gore (of all the people) making a movie on global warming (The Inconvenient Truth) and the Buffalo University actually installing a sustainable system in an FLW house. If it can happen here-sustainable architecture has a future.

New York

For the uninitiated New York is where the World Trade Centre once stood. The great news is that in spite of the terrorist attacks belief of American people in their greatness has not wavered, and like the proverbial phoenix, the World Trade Centre will rise again from the same place.

Being in New York for the first time in my life, I was, however, searching for the Seagram Building (by Mies van De Rohe). It is ironic that this building, designed by Mies in its rectilinear steel columns & beams was faithfully copied by many, as the new icon of capitalistic America, forgetting that it is not the building but its public plaza in the centre of Manhattan was the single-most important contribution of Mies to the city of New York.

Walking through the wall street earlier, it was difficult to see the sky for the tallest buildings of the world concentrated on that one square mile of Manhattan. The city awed the spectators, but did not give them space to relax. Earlier, when I had only seen these buildings in photographs, it was easy to picture yourself tilting back to see the top, what I was not prepared for was the pain in the neck in doing so.

Mies' building was a study in contrast. The plaza with its two water bodies and the fountains, was just about 18" from road level, giving a comfortable edge to sit on. And obviously I was not the only one who found out that it was so - I could see people sitting around the edges, though not exactly in the fashion of the India Habitat Centre, but enough to justify the creation of the space in the middle of the sky-scrapers.

Lately, this realisation that a city at this scale needs to cater to the pedestrians, has brought out a big change in the centre of Manhattan. The New York Municipal Corporation has decided to pedestrianise Broadway near the Times square, where thousands gather in the evenings. When we went there in the evening, half of the road was closed for the vehicles, and chairs were placed on the street. (A sign-board announced that this was a temporary measure and in another month or so, permanent furniture would be place there) Not only that, a huge staircase was constructed on the street, which would look towards the Times square and people enjoyed sitting on the steps. The view, of course was cluttered with the electronic boards of all varieties-but that is what people would like to see in a place like New York anyway. The important thing was to create a space for people in the city given over entirely to vehicles earlier.

Coming in from Bombay, where each & every square inch of the side-walks in the main city is converted into an imprompteau street market, I was glad to observe that something similar was also happening here. Here & there, I could see an entire street lined with vendors of every description. Near wall street, on the street leading to Battery park, I could see singers on the street corners, with a makeshift sound system, trying to lure people in buying their albums and the overall effect was that of D. N. Road in Fort. In the battery park itself, there were impromptu shows, asking for contribution after the show ('I do not want charity' the leader said-only dollars) and the scene was complete. After all, what is a city without people?

Planned cities

Moving about in any American city is an interesting exercise, particularly for a student of architecture. Most of the cities have the typical grid iron plan, oriented along cardinal directions. The arrangement is uniform all over the place, and the nomenclature is standardised: roads running east-west are called streets & those which run north-south are called avenues.

The development along the roads, however, varies depending on whether you are in the downtown or in the outskirts of the city. However, the detailing & the extent of planning in both cases is remarkable. A lot of attention is given to matters like watering of plants, retention of the border of pathways and prevention of dust. In my entire trip I did not see a single square inch left unattended, either in the downtown or on the outskirts.

In the downtown area, buildings directly abut the streets without any margins. The roadside footpaths are paved, but a part of the area between the roads & the buildings is left entirely for lawns & trees and all this is taken care of systematically. A large area around each tree is covered with a metal grid to allow rainwater to seep through in addition to the water sprinklers. The footpaths are planned for the pedestrians & the wheelchair, so that at each junction, the footpath has a section of ramp leading to the pedestrian crossing. The crossings are demarketed on the road, and the motorists are kind enough to allow you to cross the road. Coming from Pune, where every person walking on the street is the enemy of people who drive and who are determined not to allow the pedestrains any space on the road, I felt the contrast overwhelming.
The street signage is also uniform: name of the street is posted at each crossing, and if you can read, there is no question of getting lost. Except for some very large cities like New York, there are no vendors on the streets, and you see very few people walking about. For a person like me accustomed to the chaos of the hoardings and street shops and the crowds of the Indian cities, the streets looks virtually empty.

The street scape is continuous, and most of the buildings are multi-storied, sometimes disproportionately tall with reference to the street width, so much so that you keep wondering whether they have any FSI regulations at all. I have heard that in places like Manhattan, New York City, the FSI 40.00 No wonder they go for 100 storied buildings without any setbacks at the ground. As if this covering of the ground is not enough, the buildings also span across the streets in many places. We were once travelling in Washington, where one of the main street ran for quite a distance under a huge building. This combination of the street and the buildings is unthinkable in India, with our orthodox ideas about setbacks in a city.

The picture changes dramatically once you come out of the downtown. It is all open countryside, dominated by nature. The buildings are mostly single storied, set well away from the road, so much so that if are moving about in a car, all you see is a continuous strip of well planned landscape with trees and hedges dominating the view, with just a glimpse of buildings behind. It is all picturesque. It is only when you get out of the car, and start walking, then you see the problem - there are very few people about, and the distances are overwhelming: a set-up that virtually prohibits any casual social contact. The picture is good, being part of the scenery may be frustrating at times!

The Great Nation

Like every Indian worth his salt, I too had a fascination for America. Technically a foreign trip from India could as well be made to Dhakka, but apart from the Parliament Building designed by Louis Kahn, Dhakka has little else to stir your imagination. And then the title 'Dhakka returned' would have as great significance here as when you remarked in Pune that once you did a project in Vadgaon Budruk.

But when I really made the great leap forward (without tripping on my feet), what I encountered was an anti-climax. My son lives in Florida, where the climate is similar to Kerala-very hot & humid. But the houses all over the place remind you of England, except that the walls (instead of brick) are in closed wood planks, there is no provision for ventilation, no sun-shades and all the houses have steep sloping roofs with dormers to boot (is it one more example of a mixed metaphor?) For an architect & teacher accustomed to grilling generations of students to take care of the climate in the design you just can not digest anything which so blatantly disregards the climate of the place.

The thing that worries me is nobody thinks that there is anything amiss in all this. I talked to some of the people who live in here, and the response was pretty casual as if nothing mattered. If you find that the house is too hot, there is always airconditioning. In a place where the electricity is considered as coming from God (as free as the air, water & thunderstorms), it is a bit awkward to introduce the motif of saving energy if you wish to retain the attention of the audience.

Not that people are unaware of ecology. But it seems so distant from everyday life that when you talk about ecology, people presume you are talking of the wild africa, or the tropical rain forests. That architecture has anything to do with it would seem a far fetched idea. And this is a land where F. L. Wright lived & worked. No wonder he was labled as eccentric, when he started talking about organic architecture.