Functional Architecture of Charles Voysey and Frank Lloyd Wright

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The modern movement of the 20^th century in architecture has its roots in both the machine age and the Arts and Crafts movements of the previous century. The start of the Arts and Crafts Movement around 1860 is generally attributed to William Morris. It is generally acknowledged that Morris was working in direct response to the ever-encroaching identical sameness of the machine-made objects which were increasingly churned out of the factories which had supplanted the cottage industries of the past. “Not only art but also everyday objects, buildings, décor, everything lacked a face, and it was the realization of its lack in this particular respect which began to make the period so cruelly conscious of its anonymity” (Cassou, Langui & Peysner, 1962: 19). However, this reaction had a tendency to reach into the impractical as it gained increasing ornamentation with little functional use. Artisans tended to look back at the medieval and gothic for inspiration without considering the practical use of material. Inspired by their ideals of truth to tradition, to materials, and to function, artisans of the Arts and Crafts movement strove to re-introduce a sense of artistry to their architecture, yet it was increasingly realized that form without function was wasteful of materials. Approaching the question from the perspective of form following function, architects such as CFA Voysey and Frank Lloyd Wright introduced the concept that machine-made functional designs could be developed through the use of new materials that also provided a great deal of opportunity to concentrate on form. This transition can be discovered by looking into buildings such as Voysey’s design of Broad Leys at Ghyll Head and Wright’s residential conception known as “Falling Water.

Modernity is often described as a collection of studies into the social processes that order the world we live in while remaining in a constant state of flux. If one is speaking with Marshall Berman, modernity is described as “a mode of vital experience—the experience of space and time, of the self and others, of life’s possibilities and perils—that is shared by men and women all over the world today. I will call this body of experience ‘modernity’” (Berman, 1982). It encompasses the social changes that are constantly taking shape, the way in which these changes are experienced, and the reflection of these experiences in various circles. It is a world of definition and ambiguity, a world of static definitions and constant change. For Marshall Berman, the contradictions of modernity are characterized by a tendency to order space and time while simultaneously promoting their ruination and failure. In describing the modern human, Berman says “they are moved at once by a will to change – to transform both themselves and their world – and by a terror of disorientation and disintegration, of life falling apart” (Berman, 1982). These concepts are imminently evident within architecture. These ideas can be found within the changing architectural ideals of Voysey as he began to combine the newly produced materials of his age, particularly concrete and metal, with the concepts of allowing form to follow function, an important concept of the modern movement.

Voysey’s design of Broad Leys, at Ghyll Head just south of Bowness-on-Windermere, incorporates the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement still going strong when it was built in 1898, but it also provided significant inspiration for the experiments with materials and forms that would come in later works. “Voysey’s masterpiece, according to Pevsner, on a terrace overlooking Windermere, has a more formal garden front with three two-story curved bows breaking into a big hipped roof” (Charles Frances, 2005). While he again illustrates the ideals of the Gothic influence in this building, the changes even this view slightly in order to begin bringing in his own style. Abandoning the attempt to keep building materials in their natural form, his outer walls take on a stucco appearance, covering their underlying structure which introduces a beginning of the use of new materials. However, in doing this, he is able to retain a certain roughness to the walls that emphasize the unique, more ‘natural, and more conventional building forms of antiquity, which bolsters the Arts and Crafts ideals. “Voysey’s buildings were never symmetrical, for he was a firm believer in Ruskinian changefulness and praised Gothic architecture because ‘outside appearances are evolved from internal fundamental conditions; staircases and wweres come where most convenient for use. All openings are proportioned to the various parts to which they apply” (Voysey, 1911: 60). Despite this seeming complexity, the house is known for the simplicity of the design, the originality of the structure, and the complete abandonment of historical tradition in his melding of new materials with old and blending of numerous concepts to create new forms. “Voysey believed to his dying day that ‘simplicity, sincerity, repose, directness and frankness are moral qualities as essential to good architecture as to good men’” (Voysey, 1911: 69), again emphasizing some of the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement in its creation yet illustrating its contradictions in the execution and use as it shifts the emphasis to function allowing form to follow naturally.

Fallingwater is a house designed and constructed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) in 1935 and is considered perhaps the prime example of Wright’s architectural influence within America, as well as having paved the way for international modernism. Rather than constructing the traditional four-square home that observes nature from without, Wright created a structure over a small stream in Bear Run, Pennsylvania that would provide shelter and comfort to the family, but that interacted with nature on a fundamental level. The residence is not so much a house as it is a man-made outgrowth of nature, perfectly in tune with its surroundings, able to take part in the daily occurrences of the river, and thoughtful of its natural neighbors. To Wright, the important aspect of architecture was in providing a sense of shelter, which was a feeling as much as a form, leading to his development of the open-style prairie houses with the emphasis on the horizontal. In his work, Wright took Sullivan’s idea of ‘form follows function to another level, asserting that ‘form and function are one (Curtis, 1996: 114). The horizontal, according to Wright, was the angle of domesticity and so provided a sense of stability despite the loss of the box-like rooms that had been prevalent in the Victorian era. An analysis of the home demonstrates how the exterior works to blend with the surroundings, the interior works to extend or replicate nature indoors, and how these two work together to create a movement and flow to the overall home that provides that same sense of healing nature that could be found at the site prior to the house’s construction.

The exterior of the building is such that it tends to melt into its surroundings while also managing to remain separate from them. “As we move around the house, our vantage point changes dramatically in height, from above the house, to even with it, to below it; the horizontal concrete planes and vertical rock walls constantly change position relative to one another, not allowing us to establish any static image of its exterior form (McCarter, 1997: 212). This shifting nature of the totality of the exterior is in concert with the constantly shifting waters and patterns of the stream and waterfall as well as with the shifting, changing seasons in the Pennsylvania woods even as it stands firm and rooted in place like the trees growing up all around it. “In this house, Wright has created a powerful dichotomy: the natural rock layers are repeated almost exactly, in thickness and random pattern of setting, in the vertical walls that emerge from the boulders above the waterfall, while the lighter colored horizontal reinforced-concrete terraces and roof planes exfoliate from this rock wall core, cantilevering both along and across the stream” (McCarter, 1997: 210). While the rocks are allowed to look as though they are simply natural conformations of the surrounding stream bank, the concrete horizontals provide the sense of permanence and stability these fractured rocks might not otherwise suggest.

The interior of the home equally reflects this symbiosis with nature with the purposeful use of gray flagstones to pave the main living area floors and other material usages that serve to mimic or suggest natural forms. The flagstones are polished and waxed to give them a lustrous sheen that closely parallels the reflecting, shimmering, uneven surface of the water below and the dark gray bedrock of the streambed that can be seen through the shallow water. This smooth floor surface is only broken occasionally, once for the hatch to descend to the actual water below and again to make way for the huge boulder anchored in the stream itself, predating the house and now serving as a hearth for the large fireplace. “Wright had apparently intended to cut the boulder off flat, even with the slate floor, but – much to Wright’s delight – Kaufmann suggested it remain as it was when his family used to picnic upon it before the house was built” (McCarter, 1997: 214). The boulder remains as natural as it was found, arising out of the polished flagstones “like the dry top of a boulder peering above the stream waters” (Harrison, 1992). The fireplace itself is not so much a cut from the wall as it is the wall of the house, naturally formed by the same rock that forms the vertical spine of the house and providing a central gathering place for the family and serving as a closing contrast to the openness of the terraces and windows. The room itself is designed to provide the essential elements of a weekend home. The south end is designed for easy conversation and affords spectacular views of the surrounding forest while the northwest corner is given over to the enjoyment of food, complete with a built-in table designed by Wright to work with the structure of the house in much the same way as the house was designed to work with nature. Intimate conversations could be held in a small area just opposite the hearth while the southeast corner housed the library and the hatch steps going down to the stream.

It is not only through his extensive use of natural local material to construct the exterior environment of the Kaufmann house, but it is also through a complex web of design concerns meshed with human comfort concerns and artistic concerns that Fallingwater emerges as an extension of nature carefully customized for its human creature rather than the modern work of art, with the cold connotations that term has come to imply, that it is. “Fallingwater appears to us to have grown out of the ground and into the light, making present the latent power of the boulder on which it sits above the waterfall – the same boulder which emerges from the rippling ‘water’ of the flagstone living-room floor to provide a place of stability in front of the fireplace” (McCarter, 1997: 220). Through its use of local natural material and purposeful mimicking of elements, such as the gray flagstones, Wright provides an abstract impression of the natural beauty of the site while maintaining the necessary stability and sense of permanence. This permanence is offset by the careful balancing act of the entire structure, not only over the stream but also as each level is carefully balanced and juxtaposed over the other. More than simply introducing function into architecture, Wright introduced the idea that form and function were equally and inseparably important in creating architecture for the modern world.

Through the work of Voysey and Wright, new materials were put to functional use as the architects worked to more accurately address the needs of those who would use the structures created. Voysey brought a concentration on function back into the world of architecture that had been drifting away from this concept in reaction to the machine age. In this treatment, he worked to make the new materials of the machine age meet the functional needs of the building, forcing form to adapt to function. Wright also worked from this foundational concept but took it one step further by insisting that form and function were each essential elements to the extent that neither one could be considered more important than the other. Nevertheless, he seemed to work from the same approach of allowing form to follow function in his design of the Falling Water house. This can be seen as the house focuses on providing the family with useable living areas while still inviting the outside in and the inside out through his use of materials and the cantilevered design of the concrete horizontals. Like Voysey, Wright made use of both new and old materials in his designs and strove to bring about harmony and balance within the work. These were the primary concepts of modern design emerging from the extravagance of the earlier century and were ideas brought forward in numerous other architectural designs as well.

References

Cassou, Jean, Emil Langui and Nikolaus Pevsner. (1962). Gateway to the Twentieth Century: Art and Culture in a Changing World. New York: McGraw-Hill: 19.

“Charles Francis.” (2005). Visit Cumbria. 2008. Web.

Curtis, William J. R.. (1996). Modern Architecture Since 1900. London: Phaidon Press.

Harrison, Robert P. (1992). “Fallingwater.” Forests: The Shadow of Civilization. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

McCarter, Robert. (1997). Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Phaidon Press.

Voysey, C.F.A. (1911). “The English Home.” The British Architect. Vol. LXXV.

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Functional Architecture of Charles Voysey and Frank Lloyd Wright

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