About the Usonian Vision of Frank Lloyd Wright

About the Usonian Vision of Frank Lloyd Wright The Usonian house - the brainchild of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) - is the embodiment of an idea for a simple, stylish small house of moderate cost designed especially for the American middle class. It is not so much a style as a type of residential architecture. Style is important, wrote Wright. A style is not. When looking at a portfolio of Wrights architecture, the casual observer might not even pause at the Jacobs I house in Madison, Wisconsin - the first Usonian house from 1937 looks so familiar and ordinary compared with Wrights famous 1935 Fallingwater residence. The Kaufmanns’ Fallingwater in the Pennsylvania woods is not a Usonian, yet, Usonian architecture was another obsession of the famous Frank Lloyd Wright in the last decades of his long life. Wright was 70-years-old when the Jacobs house was finished. By the 1950s, he had designed hundreds of what he was then calling his Usonian Automatics. Wright didnt want to be known solely as an architect of the rich and famous, although his early residential experimentation in Prairie house design had been subsidized by families of means. The competitive Wright quickly became interested in affordable housing for the masses  - and doing a better job than the catalog companies like Sears and Montgomery Ward were doing with their prefabricated house kits. Between 1911 and 1917, the architect teamed up with Milwaukee businessman Arthur L. Richards to design what became known as American System-Built houses, a type of prefabricated small, affordable home easily and quickly assembled from ready-cut materials. Wright was experimenting with grid design and a less labor-intensive construction process to create beautifully designed, affordable dwellings. In 1936, when the United States was in the depths of the Great Depression, Wright realized that the nations housing needs would forever be changed. Most of his clients would lead more simple lives, without household help, but still deserving of sensible, classic design. It is not only necessary to get rid of all unnecessary complications in construction... wrote Wright, it is necessary to consolidate and simplify the three appurtenance systems - heating, lighting, and sanitation. Designed to control costs, Wrights Usonian houses had no attics, no basements, simple roofs, radiant heating (what Wright called gravity heat), natural ornamentation, and efficient use of space, inside and out. Some have said that the word Usonia is an abbreviation for United States of North America. This meaning explains Wrights aspiration to create a democratic, distinctly national style that was affordable for the common people of the United States. Nationality is a craze with us, Wright said in 1927. Samuel Butler fitted us with a good name. He called us Usonians, and our Nation of combined States, Usonia. Why not use the name? So, Wright used the name, although scholars have noted that he got the author wrong. Usonian Characteristics Usonian architecture grew out of Frank Lloyd Wrights earlier Prairie style home designs. But most importantly, perhaps writes architect and writer Peter Blake, Wright began to make the Prairie house look more modern. Both styles featured low roofs, open living areas, and built-in furnishings. Both styles make abundant use of brick, wood, and other natural materials without paint or plaster. Natural light is abundant. Both are horizontally inclined - a companion to the horizon, wrote Wright. However, Wrights Usonian homes were small, one-story structures set on concrete slabs with piping for radiant heat beneath. The kitchens were incorporated into the living areas. Open carports took the place of garages. Blake suggests that the modest dignity of the Usonian homes laid the foundation for much modern, domestic architecture in America yet to come. The horizontal, indoor-outdoor nature of the popular Ranch Style home of the 1950s is anticipated by the realization of the Usonian. Blake writes: If one thinks of space as a sort of invisible but ever present vapor that fills the entire architectural volume, then Wrights notion of space-in-motion becomes more clearly understandable: the contained space is allowed to move about, from room to room, from indoors to outdoors rather than remain stagnant, boxed up in a series of interior cubicles. This movement of space is the true art of modern architecture, for the movement must be rigidly controlled so that the space cannot leak out in all directions indiscriminately. - Peter Blake, 1960 The Usonian Automatic In the 1950s, when he was in his 80s, Frank Lloyd Wright first used the term Usonian Automatic to describe a Usonian style house made of inexpensive concrete blocks. The three-inch-thick modular blocks could be assembled in a variety of ways and secured with steel rods and grout. To build a low-cost house you must eliminate, so far as possible, the use of skilled labor, wrote Wright, now so expensive. Frank Lloyd Wright hoped that home buyers would save money by building their own Usonian Automatic houses. But assembling the modular parts proved complicated - most buyers ended up hiring pros to construct their Usonian houses. Wrights Usonian architecture played an important role in the evolution of Americas midcentury modern homes. But, despite Wrights aspirations toward simplicity and economy, Usonian houses often exceeded budgeted costs. Like all of Wrights designs, Usonians became unique, custom homes for families of comfortable means. Wright admitted that by the 1950s buyers were the upper middle third of the democratic strata in our country. Usonian Legacy Beginning with a house for a young journalist, Herbert Jacobs, and his family in Madison, Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright built more than a hundred Usonian houses. Each house has taken on the name of the original owner - the Zimmerman House (1950) and Toufic H. Kalil House (1955), both in Manchester, New Hampshire; the Stanley and Mildred Rosenbaum House (1939) in Florence, Alabama; the  Curtis Meyer House (1948) in Galesburn, Michigan; and the Hagan House, also known as Kentuck Knob, (1954) in Chalk Hill, Pennsylvania near Fallingwater. Wright developed relationships with each of his clients, which was a process that often began with a letter to the master architect. Such was the case with a young copy editor named Loren Pope, who wrote to Wright in 1939 and described a plot of land he had just purchased outside of Washington, D.C. Loren and Charlotte Pope never tired of their new home in northern Virginia, but they did tire of the rat race surrounding the nations capital. By 1947, the Popes had sold their home to Robert and Marjorie Leighey, and now the home is called the Pope-Leighey House - open to the public courtesy of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Sources The Usonian House I and The Usonan Automatic, The Natural House by Frank Lloyd Wright, Horizon, 1954, pp. 69, 70-71, 81, 198-199Frank Lloyd Wright On Architecture: Selected Writings (1894-1940), Frederick Gutheim, ed., Grossets Universal Library, 1941, p. 100Blake, Peter. The Master Builders. Knopf, 1960, pp. 304-305, 366Chavez, Mark. Prefabricated Homes, National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/prefabricated-homes.htm [accessed July 17, 2018]American System-Built Homes, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, https://franklloydwright.org/site/american-system-built-homes/ [accessed July 17, 2018] SUMMARY: Characteristics of a Usonian Home one story, horizontal orientationgenerally small, around 1500 square feetno attic; no basementlow, simple roofradiant heating in concrete slab floornatural ornamentationefficient use of spaceblueprinted using a simple grid patternopen floor plan, with few interior wallsorganic, using local materials of wood, stone, and glasscarportbuilt-in furnishingsskylights and clerestory windowsoften in rural, wooded settingsUsonian Automatics experimented with concrete and patterned concrete blockdesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright

Teenage Pregnancy essays

Teenage Pregnancy essays Although the rate of teenage pregnancy in the United States has declined greatly within the past few years, it is still an enormous problem that needs to be addressed. These rates are still higher in the 1990's than they were only a decade ago. The United State's teenage birthrate exceeds that of most other industrialized nations, even though American teenagers are no more sexually active than teenagers are in Canada or Europe. Recent statistics concerning the teen birthrates are alarming. About 560,000 teenage girls give birth each year. Almost one-sixth of all births in the United States are to teenage women are to teenage women. Eight in ten of these births resulted from unintended pregnancies. (Gormly 347) By the age of eighteen, one out of four teenage girls will have become pregnant. (Newman 679) Although the onset of pregnancy may occur in any teenager, some teens are at higher risk for unplanned pregnancy than others. Teenagers who become sexually active at an earlier age are at a greater risk primarily because young teenagers are less likely to use birthcontrol. African-American and Hispanic teenagers are twice as likely to give birth as are white teenagers. Whites are more likely to have abortions. Teenagers who come from poor neighborhoods and attend segregated schools are at a high risk for pregnancy. Also, teenagers who are doing poorly in school and have few plans for the future are more likely to become parents than those who are doing well and have high educationsl and occupational expectations. Although the rate of teenage pregnancy is higher among low- income African-Americans and Hispanics, especially those in inner city ghettoes, the number of births to teenagers is highest among white, nonpoor young women who live in small cities and towns. (Calhoun 309) In addition to the question of which teenagers become pregnant, interest is s...

Governance and International Relations Lifeboat Ethics Essay

Governance and International Relations Lifeboat Ethics - Essay Example This divide is the basis of much talk within the ranks of the economists and gurus who understand ethics and how it should be implemented across the board . What is even more interesting is the fact that surrounds the determination of resources for the developing nations as they seem to go beyond a certain level of growth within their respective regimes. It is a fact that the world is not that rosy for the underdeveloped countries which essentially have to make both ends meet to ensure that they are on the right path – geared to achieve results which are attainable and positive along the way . On the same token, this paper gives a good look at the lifeboat ethics which indeed is a way to find out where the resource distribution should be acknowledged and how this would mean sheer value for all the nations in the world. Philosophically, it is quintessential to understand the phenomenon behind the lifeboat ethics. This is a term that was proposed by Garrett Hardin, who was an ecologist in the year 1974. Hardin used this metaphor to describe a situation where a lifeboat consisted of 50 people which had room for another 10 individuals to get on board. Since this lifeboat is on the move as it is in the ocean where hundreds of swimmers surround it, the ‘ethics’ element comes in when the dilemma arises with regards to the swimmers . This dilemma discusses whether these swimmers should be taken on board the lifeboat or left as they are at the moment. Hardin believed that the lifeboat metaphor could easily be compared alongside the Spaceship Earth model which consisted of resource distribution where he asserted that a spaceship would be led by a single leader who is essentially the captain of the spaceship. However, the earth lacks a captain4. He also opined that the tragedy of the commons came about from the spaceship model which was completely different from the lifeboat premise where rich nations were seen as the lifeboats while poor countries were termed as the swimmers5. In the same setting, Hardin’s lifeboat ethics resembles closely with the environmental ethics, utilitarianism, resource depletion talks and so on. He uses lifeboat ethics to find out the queries regarding policies such as immigration, foods banks and foreign assistance in the form of aid. Purely from a philosophical perspective, the aspect of lifeboat ethics should be understood with regards to how the policies are drafted for the rich and the poor nations at the same time. This means that their domains are drawn up in such a way that there are successful touch points for the rich countries while extreme losses for the poor ones. This divide is something that has a huge say in deciding who is going wrong and which country needs to pull up its socks to bring harmony within this world in terms o f resource allocation6. Hence lifeboat ethics is a good enough measure of finding out how ethical domains should be understood within the basis of bringing about equality so that no one misses out on the resources which are available throughout the world. In terms of the philosophical undertakings, it is only with the presence of adequate policies that things will get resolved and that too in an amicable fashion for all the nations in the world – without any discrimination whatsoever. Hence attention should be paid towards the philosophical side as well because these remain significant to comprehend within the relevant thick of things. When one discusses the tangent of lifeboat ethics, it is also of paramount essence to gain an insight into what the fallacies are. The future is never known with a particular degree of certainty which is indeed required for the problem at hand. Also there is the basis of no one being likely to be in the situation which has been