Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Architecture: A Study in Inspiration
Author(s): Kevin Nute
Source: Journal of Design History , 1994, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1994), pp. 169-185
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1316114
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Kevin Nute
Frank Lloyd Wright
and Japanese Architecture:
A Study in Inspiration
From the opening of the century through to the
present day, the relationship between the work of
Frank Lloyd Wright and the traditional architecture
of Japan has been a recurring source of discussion,
and no little puzzlement. One of the principal factors
in maintaining this interest has been the fact that
whilst Wright freely acknowledged an important
philosophical debt to Japanese art, and to the woodblock
print in particular, he consistently rejected
suggestions that Japanese architecture had any direct
impact on his work. Indeed, throughout his career
Wright maintained that he found in Japanese culture
not the inspiration which many suspected, but
merely confirmation of many of his own 'organic'
design principles.'
The first of Wright's repeated efforts to differentiate
his appreciation of Japanese aesthetic ideals from
any use of Japanese forms came in response to the
English Arts and Crafts architect C. R. Ashbee,
whom Wright invited to introduce the 1911 Wasmuth
photo-study of his work.2 Despite being a personal
friend, Ashbee felt obliged to raise what he
obviously knew to be a sensitive issue with Wright,
observing in his essay that
the Japanese influence is very clear. He [Wright] is obviously
trying to adapt Japanese forms to the United States,
even though the artist denies it and the influence must be
unconscious. It is particularly evident in the way he brings
out the picturesque element of his buildings.3
The reaction which this drew from Wright was to set
the tone for his general response to suggestions of
any direct formal debt to Japanese architecture, an
issue which, nevertheless, was to come up time and
again throughout the remainder of his long career.
After seeing the early proofs of Ashbee's foreword,
Wright wrote to him protesting:
My conscience troubles me-Do not say that I deny my
love for Japanese art has influenced me-I admit that it has
but claim to have digested it-Do not accuse me of trying
to 'adapt Japanese forms' however, THAT IS A FALSE
ACCUSATION AND AGAINST MY VERY RELIGION.
Say it more TRUTHFULLY even if it does mean say
little more gently.4
Despite Wright's frequent statements t
effect, in the years since his death in 1959 criti
persistently felt obliged to draw attention-if o
passing-to various formal similarities betwe
work and traditional Japanese buildings, th
establishing a vague but none the less wides
perception that he derived more from Japan
simply collateral support for his 'organic' princ
Yet, whilst the belief that Japanese architectur
in fact play a part in Wright's career is now
widely accepted, its precise role remains far
clear. Clarifying the nature of that role is the pr
aim of this paper. More specifically, with a v
casting light on Wright's general approach to d
it is intended to show precisely how he made u
several existing Japanese built-forms.
'Japanism', the late nineteenth-century We
vogue for things Japanese, which developed ini
from French Japonisme,5 was closely related to
general heightening of European and Am
interest in aesthetics and decorative design
the second half of the nineteenth century, u
known as the Aesthetic Movement.6 Whilst extraordinarily
varied in its artistic manifestations, this
movement centred on a conception of beauty as a
universal ideal transcending both social and ethnic
boundaries. And during the latter part of the nineteenth
century, this attitude, combined with a wellestablished
popular taste for the exotic, led to the art
and artefacts of non-Western cultures in general, and
those of the Far East in particular, coming to be
regarded as legitimate sources of inspiration for
Western artists and designers.
In response to a growing popular European interest
in the newly opened Japan, stimulated by the
Japanese presence at the London Exhibition of 1862
Journal of Design History Vol. 7 No. 3 ? 1994 The Design History Society 169
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and at the subsequent Paris and Vienna Expositions
of 1867 and 1873, by the mid-187os a steady flow of
Japanese artefacts had begun arriving in the capitals
of Europe.7 With the exception of Whistler and the
other well-known London-based painter associated
with Japonisile, James Tissot (1836-1902), the artistic
side of Anglo-American Japanism did not really
come into its own until at least a decade after its
French counterpart. As in Europe, early American
interest in Japanese art had been mainly restricted to
a relatively small group of artists and specialist collectors
in the major cities.s However, the Japanese
exhibit at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition
was to change everything. Indeed, according to
the well-known zoologist and Japan scholar Edward
S. Morse (1838-1925) it came as a revelation to most
Americans;" and its Japanese buildings in particular
were to have an especially lasting impact, having
remained as permanent gifts to the city 1l].1"
The architectural impact of the Japanese exhibit in
Philadelphia was immediate and widespread,
appearing in the domestic decor of well-to-do town
houses from Baltimore to Boston, and even in the
form of complete vacation homes at several of the
fashionable eastern resorts." A prime example was
McKim, Mead & White's Victor Newcomb house at
Elberon, New Jersey, in which a grille-like rainila,12
abstract tatam1i mat patterns, and a continuous
timber lintel, or kaimoi, were integrated into an otherwise
essentially Queen Anne interior [2].13
The work of the brothers Charles and Henry
Greene (1868-1957 and 1870-1954) in California is
probably the best-known Japanese-influenced
American domestic architecture of the period around
the turn of the century [3]. The Greenes themselves
made no secret of their admiration for Japanese art
and architecture, and in some of their early designs
in particular even employed several overtly Japanese
motifs, including the iriimoya roof form. 4 Whilst their
productive careers began slightly later and ended at
least four decades earlier than Wright's, the Greenes
were his exact contemporaries, and their work represents
a useful bench-mark against which to judge his
interpretation of Japanese architecture. In fact, as I
hope to show, Wright's particular approach to
Japanese forms would appear to have been quite distinct
from that of the Greenes-and indeed from that
of most of his American and European contemIh..
i.~~ t~~" ........
1 The 'Japanese Bazaar', I'hiladelphia Centennial Exposition, 1876
2 McKim, Mead & White, living room of the Victor Newcomb
house, Elberon, New Jersey, c. 1880 (from Appleton & Co., Artistic
Hoises, 1883-4, vol. 2)
: .. . . . . .
3 Greene and Greene, the Gam
1908
170 Kevi Nute
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I
Library Living Dining
Room Room
4 Wright, 'A Home in a Prairie Town' project, the Ladies' Holl
journal, February 1901
Dining Living
Room Room Library
5 Wright, the Edwin Cheney house, Oak Par
(designed in 1893)
poraries-in apparently being much more concerned
with underlying forms than with surface details."
The Central Hall of the Ho-o-den and the Early
Prairie House (1893-1909)
In the early Prairie House Wright effectively reduced
the American suburban dwelling to a generic form
consisting of a large communal space centred on a
free-standing chimney and flanked by related dining
and study areas 14-5]. Whilst this development in
Wright's domestic work was in line with the general
process of simplification taking place in the American
home at the turn of the century,'6 the particular
configuration of the early Prairie House appears to
have had part of its inspiration in the central hall of
the Ho-o-den, the Japanese pavilion built in south
Chicago for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition,
which remained on its prominent island site at the
centre of Jackson Park for almost half a century 16-
7.171
The plan of the Ho-o-den's central hall consisted
of four main spaces: the jodainiomia, a private sitting
area which was separated by a change of level from
the tsuginomlia, where guests were received; the shosai,
a study or library; and the konnoilia, a food-serving
room 18-9]. The central hall of the Ho-o-den and
the programme for the American family dwelling,
then, accommodated broadly similar domestic functions,
and each element of the Japanese arrangement
appears to have quite logically given rise to its
Western equivalent in the early Prairie House plan:
the jodaiiiioiia becoming a sitting area directly in
front of the hearth, which had replaced the traditional
decorative wall-alcove, the tokoinoma; the
tsuginomaa becoming a living area; the koiinonla a dining
room; and the slosai, a study or library [lo]."S
Under normal circumstances the various spaces of
the central hall of the Ho-o-den were separated by
fusliia (opaque sliding screens). However, during
the World's Fair several of these screens were
removed in order to allow visitors a better view of
the interiors from the surrounding verandah, since
.li d .. ....: .;; . .. . ... ...
X; M ,.; . ::, Jo
6 The Japanese pavilion, the Ho-o
sition, Chicago, 1893
Frank Llo)t1d Wright and Japanese Architectlure 171
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,L. XX. THE JNLAND yAPCHITECT AND kwSx PRECOPD
_ _ _ i e
--i~-----------
-WH , ? H T-ESal
ELEdrvaiwi Ofpc.lIL. i. e m r1.
7 Scale drawings of the Ho-o-den as they appeared in the Inland AJC/zi(LCt in December 1892
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t ~h gU.h ^.R : r;X Tono i ax.
7 cl raig f h oo-e steyapaedi h l1a1 rcit in Deebr19
they were not permitted actually to enter the tatamicovered
rooms. From this point, it required only a
relatively short step, then, to imagine all the internal
divisions removed, leaving essentially one large
space serving several different functions. And the
implications of this for the America
interior were apparently not lost on
later described this characteristic as one of the
central features of the new Prairie House.19
Sitting
i] Sitting Area
O" J- ^
A0 c< Jodan-no-ma 1 p Food St--
2 00| 0 Prep. tudy Dining tudy
Kon-noma i-no-ma Shosai ||inm I
Living
O? [ 1 B Reception Area
o" Irikawa ..
Tokugawa room
8 The plan of the central hall of the Ho-o-den as
9 The main functions of the central hall of the H
io Generic plan configuration of the early Prairi
172 Kevin Nute
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Dwellings of that period were 'cut-up', advisedly and completely,
with the grim determination that should go with
any cutting process. The 'interiors' consisted of boxes
beside or inside other boxes, called rooms. All boxes inside
a complicated boxing. Each domestic 'function' was properly
box to box. I could see little sense in this inhibition,
this cellular sequestration that implied ancestors familiar
with the cells of penal institutions, except for the privacy of
bedrooms on the upper floor. They were perhaps all right
as 'sleeping boxes'. So I declared the whole floor as one
room, cutting off the kitchen as a laboratory, putting servants'
sleeping and living quarters next to it, semi-detached,
on the ground floor, screening various portions in
the big room, for certain domestic purposes-like dining or
reading, or receiving a formal caller. There were no plans
like these in existence at the time.2"
There were indeed no plans precisely like that of the
early Prairie House at the time. However, one only
had to remove the fusunma from the central hall of the
Ho-o-den in order to produce something very
similar. And ironically, it seems this may have been
the origin of some of the practical problems inherent
in several of Wright's early houses.
Without internal divisions, for example, there was
little separation between such incompatible activities
as dining and study. Similarly, although Wright
occasionally used fixed seating and other types of
screen in an attempt to offset the feeling of exposure
in some of the Prairie House living rooms, as in the
1902 Ward Willits house, for example, within an
open-plan arrangement the sitting area in front of
the typical Prairie House hearth was often far from
intimate (see [4-5]). However, despite these drawbacks,
it would seem that Wright's adoption of the
plan configuration of the central hall of the Ho-o-den
in the early Prairie House, although very probably
initiated by an aesthetic admiration of the form itself,
was also based on a not unreasonable analogy
between essentially similar domestic programmes.
The Nikko Taiyu-in-byo and Unity Temple (1905)
Shortly before the end of his first visit to Japan, in
late April 1905, Wright made the popular tourist
pilgrimage to the mountain resort of Nikko, a hundred
miles north of Tokyo, where hotel records
unearthed by Masami Tanigawa indicate that he
stayed at the prestigious Kanaya Hotel from 23 to 26
April 1905.21 The two main attractions of Nikko are
its famous mausoleums, the Tosho-gu and the
Taiyu-in-byo, in which the Tokugawa shoguns Ieyasu
(1543-1616) and his grandson Iemitsu (1604-51)
were interred as gongen, or deified spirits [11]. Like
most visitors to Nikko, Wright seems to have been
impressed with these structures, although not, however,
with their fabulously rich decoration, for which
the Tosho-gu in particular is justly famous, but
rather with their distinctive gongen-style plan
forms.22
Within a month of visiting Nikko, Wright and his
wife Catherine were back in Oak Park, where, three
weeks later, their local Unitarian church was struck
by lightning and burned to the ground.23 Through
Catherine, who had taught Sunday school at the
church, and his own uncle, the Revd Jenkin Lloyd
Jones, Wright had good connections with the
Unitarian elders, and it was no surprise when he was
invited to prepare proposals for a replacement building.
The resulting plan, which Wright presented to
the church committee in early September 1905, bore
a marked resemblance to the gongen-style forms
11 The Taiyu-in-byo, Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, 1653 12 Wright, Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, 1905-6
Frank Lloiyd Wright and Japanese A rclitectiure 173
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which he had seen at Nikko a few months earlier
[12-14],24 and this distinctive dual-function parti
appears to have provided the basis for several of his
subsequent public buildings, including, for example,
the Johnson Administration Building [15-16].25
The plan form of Unity Temple, then, which Peter
Blake suggested every functionalist 'found an
eminently satisfactory solution to the organisation of
a multi-functional building',26 seems to have had its
primary inspiration in the gongen-style plan form of
the Nikko Taiyu-in-byo. And this might well explain
why Wright persuaded his client, Pastor Rodney
Johonnot, to look upon his new church as a 'temple',
the Pastor having suggested in his description of
Unity Temple:
This building which is to be dedicated to the worship of the
one true and living God in the spirit of Christian faith may
then very properly be called a 'temple'. The term is further
made specially fitting here because the building has the
feeling and to some extent the form of an ancient temple.27
Given this explanation, it may be significant, then,
that the Nikko Taiyu-in actually functions as
Buddhist temple, as opposed to a Shinto shrine,
which is the more common use of the gongen-style
plan form.28
The gongen-style parti consists of three distinct
elements reflecting its principal functions: th
honden, a sanctuary reserved for the spirit deity; the
haiden, an oratoy for worshippers; and a narrow
Main sanctuary
Worship hall
13 The goiige-style plan form of the Nikko Taiyu-in-byo
,, , .... :,
1 ----11 ------
Unity Temple
Unity House
14 Plan of Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, 1905-6
Main sanctuary
Worship hall
15 The gongetn-style plan form of the Nikko Tosho-gu, Tochigi
Prefecture, 1634
Work room
Administration
16 Wright: the Johnson Administration Building, Racine, Wisconsin,
1936
174 Kevin Nute
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intermediate corridor connecting these two spaces,
which was originally simply a paved covered-way
for the use of the priests as they moved between the
main structures. In a later development this central
space was enclosed and given a timber floor, as in
the Nikko Tosho-gu, for example, where it retains
the name ishinoma or 'stone area' (see [15]). In subsequent
plans, such as that of the Nikko Taiyu-in,
the floor of this intermediate or 'between' space was
raised to the same level as that of the worship hall,
where it is usually known as the ainoma (see [13]).
The gongen-style plan form, then, had developed in
order to accommodate a programme consisting of two
primary functions which needed to be physically
linked, and as Pastor Johonnot explained-apparently
under Wright's guidance-the programme for Unity
Temple encompassed an essentially similar dual role:
'A modern church building has a two-fold purpose; it
is erected for the worship of God and for the service of
man. These two functions demand a different architectural
treatment that each may best be served.'29
There would seem to have been a fairly logical correlation,
then, between the gongen parti and the programme
for Unity Temple. Indeed, in explaining the
design to his client, Wright appears to have emphasized
the appropriateness-if not the origin-of this
dual-purpose plan form, Pastor Johonnot having particularly
stressed this point in his description of the
new church:
In the design adopted for Unity Church there are two distinct
buildings, one designed for public worship and other
suitable public meetings, and another for purposes of
social service and religious meetings of a less formal
character. They are, however, connected by a large
Entrance Hall by which they are knitted together into a
single integral and harmonious structure in outward
appearance, thus giving unity to the two functions of a
church, and guarding against the idea that the one purpose
of worship is alone holy and the other common and
unclean.3"
Despite the appropriateness of the formal analogy,
however, and the fact that the Unity Temple plan
seems to have worked well in practice, Wright was
apparently reluctant to acknowledge its origin, preferring
instead to explain the design of the new
church on the basis of purely practical considerations.
Via Pastor Johonnot, for example, he suggested
that 'the plan and style of architecture ... are
the natural and even necessary outcome of existing
conditions; the rational solution of a given prob-
lem'.31
In accordance with this pragmatic explanation,
Wright justified his choice of a square plan for the
main room of Unity Temple on the basis that it was
the simplest and therefore cheapest form to cast in
concrete, having explained:
What shape? Well, the answer lay in the material. There
was only one material to choose-as the church funds
were $45,ooo000-to 'church' 400 people in 1906. Concrete
was cheap ...
The wooden forms or moulds in which concrete buildings
must at that time be cast were always the chief item of
expense, so to repeat the use of a single one as often as
possible was necessary. Therefore a building, on all four
sides alike, looked like the thing. This, reduced to simplest
terms, meant a building square in plan. That would make
their temple a cube-a noble form in masonry.32
Undoubtedly the square form did make constructional
and therefore economic sense. However, this
does not appear to have been the prime motive for its
use, but simply a useful bonus deriving from the
square plan of the Taiyu-in sanctuary.
Similarly, Wright suggested that the positioning of
the main entrance to Unity Temple had been dictated
by the practical need to avoid the noise of the
adjacent main street, having explained that 'the site
was noisy, by the Lake Street car-tracks. Therefore it
seemed best to keep the building closed on the three
front sides and enter it from a court to the rear at the
centre of the lot'.33 In fact, the inspiration for the
shared central entrance to Unity Temple appears to
have had its origin in the ainoma of the Taiyu-in; and
there was simply no other way to position the elongated
gongen plan form on the available site other
than by orientating it along the wider, Kenilworth
Avenue frontage. So the ainoma, and with it the
entrance, would inevitably have ended up some distance
away from Lake Street.34
Likewise, in the knowledge of his awareness of the
gongen plan form from early 1905, the impression
given by Wright, that the similarly 'semi-detached'
parti of Unity Temple sprang entirely from the
requirements of the new programme, suggests the
kind of post hoc rationalization with which most
designers can probably identify. Several decades
after the event, Wright recalled in his autobiography:
Unity Temple itself with the thoughts in mind I have just
expressed, arrived easily enough, but there was a secular
Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Architecture 175
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side to the Universalist church activities-entertainment
often, Sunday school, feasts, and so on.
To embody these with the temple would spoil the simplicity
of the room-the noble Room in the service of man
for the worship of God. So I finally put the secular space
designated as 'Unity House', a long free space to the rear of
the lot, as a separate building to be subdivided by moveable
screens for Sunday school or on occasion. It thus
became a separate building but harmonious with the
Temple-the entrance to both to be the connecting link
between them. That was that.35
Wright described his decision to raise the floor of
the main hall of Unity Temple above that of the
entrance lobby as deriving from a similar combination
of practical considerations, having explained:
Should the pulpit be put toward the street and let the congregation
come in and go out at the rear in the usual disrespectful
church fashion so the pastor missed contact
with his flock? And the noise of the street cars on Lake
Street come in?
No. Why not put the pulpit at the entrance side at the
rear of the square Temple entirely cut off from the street
and bring the congregation into the room at the sides and
on a lower level so those entering would be imperceptible
to the audience? ... Out of that thought came the
depressed foyer or 'cloister' corridor either side, leading
from the main entrance lobby at the center to the stairs in
the near and far corners of the room.36
In fact, the change of level between the entrance
lobby and the main hall of Unity Temple appears to
have been inspired by the similar one between the
ainoma and the main sanctuary in the Taiyu-in,
something which would seem to be further suggested
by the central steps which appeared in one of
the earlier versions of the Unity Temple plan [17]
(and see also [13]).
Likewise, the change of level between the central
area of the main hall of Unity Temple and the sunken
'cloister corridors' surrounding it may well have
come from the raised podium in the middle of the
Taiyu-in sanctuary (see [13,17]). Indeed, although
Wright justified these depressed corridors on the
grounds that they reduced the disturbance caused by
late arrivals, at 13 ft in width they seem remarkably
generous considering they were only to be used for
circulation, and the need for them could have been
avoided altogether if the position of the pulpit had
been conventional, i.e. at the opposite end to the
entrance doors, late-comers simply slipping into the
U
c cloister cofridor' w ei ntl
Entrance lobby vi _
71-I-rrrl ri . E
Unity Temple
Unit House
17 An early version of the Unity Temple plan, c. 1905-6
rear pews unnoticed in the time-honoured tradi
So the question arises of whether these sunken
'cloisters', of which Wright was evidently fond, may
not have been the motivation for the unconventional
location of the pulpit, rather than vice versa.
It would seem, then, that several of the changes of
floor-level in the plan of Unity Temple may well
have stemmed from elements in the Taiyu-in finding
their way into the new building on less than entirely
logical grounds, an effect which Geoffrey Broadbent
has characterized as 'analogue takeover'.37 Perhaps
one of the clearest examples of this at Unity Temple
was the carrying over of the end projection formed
by the main entrance steps of the Taiyu-in, although
again Wright actually turned this to good use in the
new plan, as a kitchen serving Unity House.
According to Wright, the square geometric 'grammar'
of Unity Temple derived from the practical
demands of building its essential idea, the 'cubic
room'. Yet, as we have seen, the Taiyu-in, rather
than practical necessity, appears to have been the
primary inspiration for the square plan of this main
room. So the decision to make it a cube would
appear to have derived ultimately from the s
source, although Wright was also able to justify t
square geometry on purely constructional grou
having suggested:
The grammar of such style as is seen here is simply
logically determined by the concrete mass and flat l
formation of the slab and box construction of the squ
room, proportioned according to concrete-nature-or
nature of the concrete.3
176 Kevin Nute
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In explaining the design of Unity Temple Wright
suggested that certain simple geometric forms had
distinct psychological associations, 'as, say, the cube
or square, integrity; the circle or sphere, infinity; the
straight line, rectitude; if long drawn out ... repose;
the triangle . . . aspiration, etc'.39 However, his own
approach to these forms does not seem to have been
particularly consistent. For example, several years
earlier, in The Japanese Print, Wright had cited the
spire-as opposed to the triangle-as representing
that most essential of religious sentiments, 'aspiration'.4?
Yet later, in his autobiography, he justified
his exclusion of a spire from Unity Temple on the
very grounds of its powerful symbolism, having
argued:
Why not avoid the symbol, as such? The symbol is too
literal. It is become a form of Literature in the Arts.
Let us abolish, in the art and craft of architecture, literature
in any 'symbolic' form whatsoever ...
Then why the steeple of the little white church? Why
point to heaven? ...
Was not that 'finger,' the church steeple, pointing on
high like the man who climbed on high to see HIM? A misleading
symbol perhaps.41
Although Wright spoke of primary forms as though
they were universal symbols, then, in practice he
appears to have interpreted their meanings quite
pragmatically, which would seem to reinforce the
view that the cubic form of Unity Temple probably
derived as much from the square plan of the Taiyu-in
sanctuary as from any preconceived symbolism,
although there is no denying its power as a meditative
space.
However, despite certain elements of the Taiyu-in
plan having apparently ended up in Unity Temple on
other than entirely logical grounds, Wright's use of
the gongen-style parti would appear to have been
essentially rational and, in the case of Unity Temple
at least, eminently justified.
Edward Morse's Japanese Homes and the
Life House (1938)
The design which Wright produced for Life magazine
in September 1938 for a prototype middleincome
family dwelling appears to have had part of
its inspiration in one of the Japanese house plans
illustrated in Edward Morse's pioneering work Japanese
Homes and Their Surroundings (1886), with which
Wright had almost certainly been familiar from well
before his first visit to Japan in 1905 [18-19].42 The
parallel is probably most apparent if Morse's Japanese
plan is compared with the Life house as it was
SR - . V
H St
C D T
LC
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Homes and Their Surroundings, 1886 (Fig. 97)
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ITT
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19 Wright, 'House
magazine, Septembe
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20 The Life hou
Schwartz house,
Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Architecture 177
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eventually built the following year in the form of the
Bernard Schwartz house [20].
Whilst the precise disposition of functions within
the Life house is somewhat different from that of the
Japanese plan, the basic zones for sitting, sleeping,
and cooking remained essentially the same, the
original Japanese arrangement having been logically
designed to separate wet and dry functions, and to
turn the most private rooms to the south-facing rear
of the house. Indeed, the open plan of the Life house
could well have been inspired by the multiple roles
which rooms are commonly required to perform in
the Japanese home, especially since in describing
this particular house Edward Morse had specifically
commented on the advantage of being able to make
use of the entire floor if necessary.43
However, Wright clearly did not simply remove
the fusuma and use Morse's Japanese plan as found.
On the contrary, he was evidently quite prepared to
break with it when necessary, as, for example, in his
relocation of the main entrance to a position which
made more sense in terms of the privacy of the new
open plan. Similarly, the dining area was moved to a
fixed location where it was more convenient to the
kitchen.
Perhaps one of the most striking instances of
Wright turning an existing form to an entirely new
purpose was his extension of the verandah of the
Japanese plan to become the swimming pool of the
Life house, which was even given the same 'timberplank'
rendering (see [18,191). However, the reverse
was also occasionally true, elements sometimes
remaining for no apparently logical reason. For
example, a benjo, or 'privy', in the Japanese plan
became simply an external planter in the Schwartz
house, where its purpose appears to have been as
much aesthetic as practical. Indeed, the way in
which some features of the Japanese plan were given
new functions, other disappeared, and yet others,
such as the benjo, remained as aesthetic relics, would
seem to be an example of a process analogous to biological
evolution operating in an architectural form.44
However, despite the fact that Wright's initial
interest in this Japanese plan was probably aesthetic,
his use of it in the Life house again seems to have
been underpinned by a reasonable analogy between
essentially similar domestic programmes.
Yakushi-ji Pagoda and the Johnson Research
Tower (1944)
Whilst in Japan, either in 1905 or subsequently
during the building of the Imperial Hotel (1916-22),
Wright appears to have visited the historic city of
Nara, just south of Kyoto. And as Clay Lancaster
first pointed out, the unusual staggered section of
the east pagoda of Yakushi-ji temple (718), on the
southern outskirts of this ancient capital, seems to
have made a particular impression on him,45 having
apparently provided the inspiration for several of
Wright's subsequent cantilevered-tower designs
I21-23].46 Although the first of these, the 1929 St.
Mark's Tower project, never came to fruition, its distinctive
cantilevered section was eventually to be
realized fifteen years later in the form of the Johnson
Research Tower [24]. It was no coincidence, then,
that having drawn an analogy between the pagoda
form and the pine tree,47 Wright later described the
~?
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......,,.,,,,.;..'...,,......................':'........ ...... ....... .
* :..:... .;.... .. ::::..
21 The east pagoda of the temple of Yakushi-ji, near Nara, 730
.: .. ...
21 The east pagoda
178 Kevin Nute
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v, 1
l iri :fi
22 Vertical section of the east pagoda of Yakushi-ji temple (after Clay Lancaster)
23 Vertical section of Wright's unbuilt St. Mark's Tower project, New York, 1929
24 Vertical section of the Johnson Research Tower, Racine, Wisconsin, 1944
similarly cantilevered Harold Price Tower (1952) as
'the tree that escaped the crowded forest'.48
In fact, Yakushi-ji pagoda itself was never
intended to be ascended other than for occasional
maintenance purposes, and its pent roofs are not
actually cantilevered from the central pillar, the
primary function of which is symbolic rather than
structural, simply marking the resting place of the
sacred Buddhist relics which lie beneath its base.
Wright himself was probably aware of this. Indeed,
his analogy between the pagoda and the pine tree
suggests that he may well have combined these two
models in generating the concept of the cantilevered
tower. However, in the case of the pagoda at least,
he would appear to have been applying a form to the
Johnson laboratory whose original purpose was not
primarily practical at all, and which, in the St. Mark's
Tower project, he had himself previously proposed
for a quite different, domestic programme.
Wright's apparent determination to use the cantilevered
tower form for the Johnson laboratory,
irrespective of the particular characteristics of the
programme, seems to be borne out by the running
battle over the design which he fought with the
Johnsons' chief chemist J. Vernon Steinle.49 In fact
the Research Tower would appear to be a prim
example of how aesthetically motivated design decisions
can often be explained on perfectly convincing
logical grounds. As Philip Johnson correctly sensed,
long before Wright knew anything of the brief for th
laboratory he had already decided that any extension
to the Johnsons' buildings should take the form of a
tower.50 However, Wright subsequently justified the
decision to expand the complex vertically on the
grounds that it minimized the lengths of the many
service runs required for the new laboratory.51
Although this particular idea would appear to hav
derived from the tree trunk analogy rather than from
the pagoda, it was a compelling argument. However,
the decision to build vertically also made circulation
for people considerably more difficult, of course
movement from one laboratory to another generally
necessitating using the stairs or an elevator. And a
Jonathan Lipman has pointed out, this was no minor
inconvenience for a group of scientists involved in
closely related research. It was apparently argue
Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Architecture 179
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that the mezzanine floors were actually intended to
overcome this potential lack of contact.52 Yet,
delightful though the double-height spaces are, in
practice they would seem to have allowed little
effective communication between levels, and in fact
they added to the fire risk of the building, which in
the end proved to be its Achilles' heel as a working
laboratory.53
It seems, then, that Wright may well have chosen
the cantilevered tower form for the Johnson laboratory
on primarily aesthetic grounds, which is not to
say that there were no perfectly logical reasons for its
use, but simply that in this case the formal motivations
would appear to have outweighed the rational.
It could, however, still be argued that Wright was
employing a reasonable analogy, since the main
purpose of the pagoda form itself was symbolic, and
for Wright, at least, this would also seem to have
been one of the primary functions of the Johnsons'
new research facility.
From the above examples, it seems clear that
Wright's initial interest in Japanese architectural
forms was frequently aesthetically driven. Yet it is
equally evident that he was engaged in something
quite distinct from simply 'borrowing' forms on
aesthetic grounds alone. In fact, his use of these
particular forms appears to have been highly selective
and generally, although not always, underpinned
by a rational analogy. Moreover, far from
simply using these forms directly, Wright was clearly
subjecting them to a fairly rigorous process of
abstraction, after which it is questionable whether
they could be described as 'Japanese' any longer.
Without this process of simplification Wright
would, of course, have been guilty of simply copying
existing forms. However, unless guided by some
kind of analogy, no matter how rudimentary, simply
abstracting existing forms would have been unlikely
to have produced practically useful results. The two
processes involved, then, were mutually interdependent,
the tacit analogy both determining which
forms would be the subject of abstraction, and also
setting the parameters for that process of simplification
by dictating those elements of the existing form
which were relevant to the new context and those
which could be discarded.
If one accepts that the essential concept of a building
is generally contained in its plan and section,
then if Wright was actually drawing rational analogies
with Japanese buildings-as opposed to
simply adopting their forms on aesthetic grounds
alone-most of the similarities between his work and
Japanese structures would tend to be at the level of
plan and section rather than in superficial details,
and this is in fact generally found to be the case. The
accuracy of those analogies may in some cases be
open to question, but the process itself would seem
to be a perfectly legitimate, not to say fundamental
creative device.54
In his use of these Japanese forms, then, Wright
was engaged-as most artists surely must be-in an
essentially analogic process leading to new syntheses
between previously existing, but separate,
concepts and forms. Yet Wright himself had declared
that 'Ideas exist for us by virtue alone of form. The
form can never be detached from the idea'.55 It would
have been unthinkable, then, for him to have used a
form without regard to the concept which it embodied,
and it is this crucial point which seems to
have lain behind Wright's fierce objection to what he
clearly perceived as Charles Ashbee's 'charge' that
he had been adapting Japanese forms, the term
'adapting' implying a use of forms in spite of, rather
than because of, the ideas which they encapsulated.
Wright would have taken particular exception to this
suggestion because developing forms from within
the characteristics of the programme itself, rather
than imposing them preconceived, was one of the
primary distinctions which he drew between his
own 'organic' architecture and the superficial historical
styles he was so against, as he made quite clear a
few years after his disagreement with Ashbee, when
he explained: 'By organic architecture I mean an
architecture that develops from within outward in
harmony with the conditions of its being as distinguished
from one that is applied from without'.56
The implication was that if the concept encapsulated
by an existing built form was not essentially
analogous with the structure of a new programme,
then its form could not be appropriate for that programme,
and would certainly not be adapted to make
it so. As we have seen, in his analogies with Japanese
forms at least, Wright would appear to have adhered
to this principle fairly consistently. Indeed, far from
simply borrowing, or even 'adapting' these forms, he
was generally engaged in abstracting analogous
form-ideas, a quite distinct process carrying with it
an implicit awareness-albeit imprecise-of the
180 Kevin Nute
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essential concepts which these form-ideas embod-
ied.
In the end these examples probably tell us as much
about Wright's approach to existing built forms in
general as they do about his use of Japanese forms in
particular. Indeed, if the terms 'religion' and 'Christianity'
are replaced by the words 'architecture' and
'organic architecture' respectively, Wright's general
approach to architectural history would seem to have
been encapsulated in his summing up of the design
of Unity Temple, when, via Pastor Johonnot, he
explained: 'Informed by the same spirit which
characterized the ancient temples, this structure
typifies the thought that "while religions are many,
religion is one", and that the vital power and superiority
of Christianity consists in its ability to absorb,
perfect, and use whatever was good in all preceding
forms of religion.'57 Ironically, then, in his approach
to Japanese forms, its seems that Wright was
engaged in a process of creative simplification for
which the Japanese themselves have long been
noted.58
KEVIN NUTE
University of Cambridge
Notes
This paper is an extract from the author's recently
published book Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of
Traditional Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank
Lloyd Wright, Chapman & Hall, 1993, and stems from his
doctoral research at the University of Cambridge Martin
Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies.
1 As late as 1956, for example, Wright was still insisting:
'I found in Japan, not the inspiration which everybody
thinks I found ... What happened to me was a great
confirmation of the feeling I had and work I had myself
done before I got there.' 'Japanese culture', tape transcript,
Taliesin, 5 February 1956. ? The Frank Lloyd
Wright Foundation. On the role of the woodblock print
in Wright's work, see K. Nute, 'Frank Lloyd Wright and
the woodblock print: the geometric abstraction of
natural, man-made and social forms', Andon: Journal of
the Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts, vol. 45, 1993,
pp. 3-14.
2 For more on the relationship between Wright and
Ashbee, see A. Crawford, 'Ten letters from Frank Lloyd
Wright to C. R. Ashbee', Architectural History: Journal of
the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, vol.
13, 1970, pp. 64-73, and H. A. Brooks, The Prairie
School: Frank Lloyd Wright and His Midwest Contem
poraries, W. W. Norton, 1976, pp. 17-18.
3 C. R. Ashbee, 'Frank Lloyd Wright: Eine Studie zu
seiner Wurdigung' (Frank Lloyd Wright: a study and
appreciation), in Frank Lloyd Wright: Ausgefuhr
Bauten, Verlegt bei Ernst Wasmuth A. G., 1911, a
reprinted in Frank Lloyd Wright: The Early Work, with an
introduction by E. Kaufmann, Jr, Horizon Press, 1968
p. o1. On p. 9 of the 1968 Horizon edition it was su
gested in a margin note that the section of the introdu
tion containing the comments on Japanese influen
was not part of Charles Ashbee's original English
script. However, Wright, at least, seems to have he
Ashbee responsible (see note 4 below).
4 Wright to Ashbee, 26 September 1910, the Ashbe
Journals, King's College Library, Cambridge. ? FLW
first published in A. Crawford, 'Ten letters from Fran
Lloyd Wright to Charles Robert Ashbee', Architectur
History: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians
Great Britain, vol. 13, 1970, p. 69. The comments o
Japanese influence caused something of a row betwee
Wright and Ashbee, and it seems that Wrigh
attempted-apparently unsuccessfully-to have the
references to Japanese influence omitted from the fina
publication. He ended his letter: 'Please forward
immediately all proofs that may have arrived before my
letter to Wasmuth cuts them off.' Wright to Ashbee, 26
September 1910.
5 The word Japonisme was coined in 1872 by the French
art critic Philippe Burty (1830-90), who used it to
describe the enthusiasm for Japanese artefacts which
had developed in Paris during the 186os. See P. Burty,
'Japonisme: I', La Renaissance litteraire et artistique, vol.
4, May 1872, pp. 25-6; idem, 'Japonism', The Academy,
vol. 8, no. 170, 7 August 1875, pp. 150-1. Burty subsequently
described the equivalent English term
'Japanism' as 'a new word coined to designate a new
field of study, artistic, historic and ethnographic'. See
idem, 'Felix Buhot, painter and etcher', Harper's New
Monthly Magazine, vol. 76, no. 453, February 1888,
p. 334. For a comprehensive view of European
Japonisme, see S. Wichmann, Japonisme: The Japanese
Influence on Western Art Since 1858, Thames & Hudson,
1981.
6 The term 'Aesthetic Movement' describes the general
heightening of interest in the purely aesthetic qualities
of man-made artefacts-in 'art for art's sake'-which
emerged in Britain during the 185os and flourished,
primarily in Britain and America, until the mid-188os.
For an account of its origins and leading protagonists,
see R. Spencer, The Aesthetic Movement: Theory and Practice,
Studio Vista, 1972. On the important role played
by Japanese art in the Aesthetic Movement, see R.
Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Architecture 181
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Spencer et al. (eds), The Aesthetic Movement and the Cult
of Japan, The Fine Art Society, 1972. On the influence of
Japanese art on British aestheticism in particular, see
'The Japanese taste', in E. Aslin, The Aesthetic Movement:
Prelude to Art Nouveau, Elek Books, 1969, pp. 79-
96.
7 For an excellent concise account of the impact of
Japanese objets d'art on French art in particular, see G.
Weisberg et al., Japonisme: Japanese Influence on French
Art 1854-1910, Robert G. Sawers Publications, 1975.
8 For a good account of the graphic side of American
Japanism, which includes a good section on Wright's
collecting of woodblock prints, see J. Meech & G. Weisberg,
Japonisme Comes to America: The Japanese Impact on
the Graphic Arts 1876-1925, Harry N. Abrams, 199o.
9 A decade after the Exposition, Morse recalled that 'the
Japanese exhibit at the Centennial exposition in Philadelphia
came to us as a new revelation; and the charming
onslaught of that unrivalled display completed the
victory. It was then that the Japanese craze took firm
hold of us'. E. S. Morse, Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings,
Ticknor & Co., 1886, Preface, p. xxxvii.
io The Japanese buildings at the Centennial Exposition
were first described in Anon., 'Japanese work at the
Centennial grounds', American Architect and Building
News, vol. 1, 12 February 1876, pp. 55-6.
11 The architectural impact of these structures is discussed
by Clay Lancaster in 'Japanese buildings in the
United States before 19oo: their influence upon American
domestic architecture', Art Bulletin, vol. 35, no. 3,
September 1953, pp. 217-25. For a more extensive
account, see idem, The Japanese Influence in America,
Walton Rawls, 1963, which remains the single most
comprehensive study of Japanese influence on American
architecture. On the role of Japanese art and architecture
in the reform of the late nineteenth-century
American domestic interior, see V. Scully, Jr, The
Shingle Style: Architectural Theory and Design from
Richardson to the Origins of Wright, Yale University
Press, 1955. Also see G. Wilson, 'American Arts and
Crafts architecture', in W. Kaplan (ed.), The Art that is
Life: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Anerica, 1875-
1920, Little, Brown & Co., 1987, p. 109.
12 The ramma is the ventilating latticework located over
openings in the traditional Japanese domestic interior.
13 The kamoi is the flat timber plate which acts as a lintel
for openings in the traditional Japanese interior, and as
an upper runner for the sliding screens, the fusuma and
shoji. On McKim, Mead & White's integration of
Japanese elements into their domestic interiors generally,
see Scully, op. cit., pp. 133-9. The Newcomb
house was first published in D. Appleton & Co., Artistic
Houses, Being a Series of Interior Views of a Number of the
Most Beautiful and Celebrated Homes in the United States
. . ., 2 vols., D. Appleton & Co., 1883-4, vol. 2, part I,
opposite p. 1.
14 The irimoya is a half-gable and half-hipped roof form,
the ridges of the latter section having a pronounced
curvature. According to Clay Lancaster, the Greene
brothers were particularly impressed with the Japanese
exhibit at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in
Chicago, which is discussed later in this paper. See C.
Lancaster, The Japanese Influence in America, p. og9.
15 For an excellent account of the Greenes' adoption of
Japanese details, see Lancaster, ibid., pp. 1og-18.
However, as several writers have pointed out, the main
elements of the Greenes' aesthetic, notably the use of
strongly expressed rusticated joinery, owed at least as
much to the Arts and Crafts movement and the timberlodge
tradition as to anything from Japan. On the
parallels between the Greenes' work and Scandinavian
and Alpine timber lodges, for example, see Reyner
Banham's Introduction to R. Makinson, Greene &
Greene: Architecture as a Fine Art, Peregrine Smith Inc.,
1977, p. 20.
16 On the general simplification of the American domestic
interior during this period, see 'The minimal house', in
G. Wright, Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic
Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago 1873-1913,
University of Chicago, 1980, pp. 231-53. On the
innovations of Wright's Prairie House in particular, see
ibid., pp. 137-8. Interestingly, as early as 1903 a
member of the University of Chicago Department of
Household Administration was welcoming the 'orientalizing'
of American taste 'toward the standards of
extreme simplicity which give the charm and aesthetic
quality to Japanese home life'. See Annie Howes Barus,
'Order and disorder in the home', The House Beautiful,
vol. 14, June 1903, p. 53.
17 Although it had been briefly mentioned by others,
Grant Manson was the first writer to attempt to analyse
the impact of the Ho-o-den on Wright's work. See
G. C. Manson, 'Frank Lloyd Wright and the Fair of '93',
Art Quarterly, vol. i6, no. 2, 1953, pp. 115-23.
Similarly, see C. Lancaster, 'Japanese buildings in the
United States before 19oo: their influence upon American
domestic architecture', Art Bulletin, vol. 35, no. 3,
1953, pp. 220-2, and more recently, K. Nute, 'The Hoo-den:
the temple and the villa married in South
Chicago', Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan: The Role of Traditional
Japanese Art and Architecture in the Work of Frank
Lloyd Wright, Chapman & Hall, 1993, pp. 47-72.
18 The Western equivalents of the various spaces in the
central hall of the Ho-o-den had been clearly set outalbeit
not entirely accurately-by the locally based
architect Peter Bonnet Wight in a contemporary article
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in the Inland Architect, in which he explained: 'The
main building contains ... a reception hall, sittingroom,
study and dressing-room.' P. B. Wight, 'Japanese
architecture in Chicago: Part II', Inland Architect and
News Record, vol. 20, no. 6, 1893, p. 61.
19 In fact, it has been suggested that the traditional
Japanese interior played an important part in the
development of the open plan in American domestic
architecture generally. See Scully, op. cit., pp. 21-2,
135.
20 Wright, Modern Architecture, Being the Kahn Lectures for
1930, Princeton University Press, 1931, as reprinted in
Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings, selected by
E. Kaufmann & B. Raeburn, Horizon Press, 1960,
PP. 43-4.
21 Wright was sufficiently impressed to return to Nikko,
and to the Kanaya Hotel, in December 1918. See M.
Tanigawa, 'Kanaya Hoteru Register Book ni Mirareru
Wright no Toushiku Kiroku' (Evidence of Wright's stay
from examination of the Kanaya Hotel Register book),
Architectural Institute of Japan Hokkaido Branch Research
Bulletin, no. 42, 1975, pp. 251-4. On Wright's activities
in Japan generally, see K. Nute, 'Frank Lloyd Wright in
Japan: giving and receiving in "Yedo"', Scroope: The
Cambridge Architecture Journal, vol. 5, 1993, pp. 64-71.
22 Wright was unusual amongst foreign architects in
being able to get beyond the surface treatment of the
buildings at Nikko to appreciate their underlying
forms. Three decades later, for example, the German
modernist Bruno Taut was completely put off by the
decorative scheme of the Tosho-gu, which he described
as 'barbaric overloaded baroque' and contrasted
unfavourably with the restrained aesthetic of Katsura
Rikyu, a perception which has persisted amongst succeeding
generations of Western architects. See B. Taut,
Houses and People of Japan, John Gifford, 1938, pp. 261,
299. Apparently influenced by his compatriot's view,
for example, Walter Gropius later drew a similar contrast
between the Nikko Tosho-gu and Katsura Rikyu.
See W. Gropius, Apollo in the Democracy: The Cultural
Obligation of the Architect, McGraw-Hill, 1968, p. 128.
23 The Wrights' return from Japan was announced in their
local paper, the Oak Park Reporter (Oak Park, IL), 20
May 1905, p. 4. The destruction of the Unitarian church
took place three weeks later in the early morning of
Sunday 4 June, and was reported in 'Unity church fire',
Oak Leaves (Oak Park, IL), lo June 1905, p. 1.
24 I am indebted to Masami Tanigawa for first pointing
out this similarity to me in June 1987. Wright's
appointment as architect for the new church was
reported in Oak Leaves (Oak Park, IL), 16 September
1905, p. 13. He subsequently presented slides and a
plaster model of the proposed building to about
seventy-five of the churchmen on 31 January 1906. See
'Unity church men see plans', Oak Leaves (Oak Park,
IL), 3 February 1906, p. 12. A few weeks later the new
church design was featured again. See 'Unity plans
unique', Oak Leaves (Oak Park, IL), 24 February 1906,
p. 3.
25 The plans of the Larkin Building (1904) and the Guggenheim
Museum (1956), for example, also seem similar
to the gongen parti. However, the first of these had
actually begun on site a full year before Wright visited
Nikko, and Jack Quinan, who knows more about the
construction of the Larkin Building than most, informs
me that to his knowledge there were no major changes
to the design during 1905.
26 P. Blake, Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture and Space,
Penguin, 1964, p. 50.
27 R. Johonnot, in The Nezo Edifice of Unity Church, Oak
Park, Illinois, Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect. Descriptive
and Historical Matter by Dr. Rodney F. Johonnot, Pastor,
The New Unity Church Club, 1906, reprinted edn, Oak
Park Unitarian Universalist Church, 1984, p. 3.
Although Pastor Johonnot is named as the author of
this descriptive booklet, Wright was listed as a member
of the three-man committee on the brochure, and his
influence is evident throughout. It may have been considered
diplomatic to name the pastor as author in
order to bolster the credibility of the design with the
church members, some of the more conservative of
whom were initially less than enthusiastic.
28 The mixing of Shinto and Buddhist architectural forms
was common during the Edo period (1603-1868) when
the unification of the two belief systems was a deliberate
policy. Hence the Taiyu-in is a temple with an
essentially shrine form and the Tosho-gu is a Shinto
shrine with several Buddhist architectural features.
This policy was reversed after the restoration of the
Emperor in 1868, after which Shinto was adopted as
the national religion and all temples and shrines were
obliged to revert to one or other creed.
29 Johonnot, op. cit., pp. 2-3.
30 Ibid., p. 3.
31 Ibid., p. 8.
32 Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography, Faber & Faber
and Hyperion Press, 1945, p. 139.
33 Johonnot, op. cit., p. 8.
34 Pastor Johonnot explained: 'The site of the building is a
corner lot having a frontage of loo feet on Lake street,
the main street of Oak Park, and a depth of 170 feet on
Kenilworth avenue.' The Newz Edifice of Unity Church,
op. cit., p. 5. Concerning the size of the building itself,
he continued: 'The depth of the whole structure on its
main axis running through the Entrance Hall is 143
feet.' Ibid.
Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese A rchitecture 183
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35 Wright, An Autobiography, 1945, op. cit., pp. 139-40.
36 Wright, 'Designing Unity Temple', An Autobiography,
Longman, Green & Co., 1932, as reprinted in Kaufmann
& Raeburn (eds), Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and
Buildings, op. cit., pp. 77-8.
37 I have borrowed this term from Geoffrey Broadbent,
whose analysis of the designing of Unity Temple provided
the inspiration for the current one. See G. Broadbent.
Design in Architecture: Architecture and the Human
Sciences, John Wiley, 1973, pp. 40-3.
38 Wright, 'Designing Unity Temple', An Autobiography,
1932, op. cit., p. 82.
39 Ibid., p. 77.
40 Wright had earlier suggested: 'It would carry us far
from our subject if we should endeavor to render an
accurate, convincing account of the reason why certain
geometric forms have come to symbolize for us and
potently to suggest certain human ideas, moods, sentiments,-as
for instance: the circle, infinity; the triangle,
structural unity; the spire, aspiration; the spiral,
organic progress; the square, integrity.' The Japanese
Print: An Interpretation, Fletcher Seymour, 1912, pp. 6-
7.
41 Wright, An Autobiography, 1932, op. cit., p. 75.
42 E. S. Morse, Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings,
Ticknor & Co., 1886. On the general influence of
Morse's book on Wright's domestic work, see 'Japanese
Homes: the Japanese house dissected', in Nute, Fralk
Lloyd Wright and Japan, op. cit., pp. 36-46.
43 Morse, who had apparently stayed in this particular
house, commented: 'The absence of nearly all furniture
gives one an uninterrupted sweep of the floor, so that
the entire floor can be covered with sleepers if necessary,-a
great convenience certainly when one has to
entertain unexpectedly a crowd of guests over-night.'
Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings, op. cit., p. 112.
44 For a fascinating account of this parallel, and of biological
analogies in architecture generally, see P. Steadman,
The Evolution of Designs: Biological Analogy il
Architecture and the Applied Arts, Cambridge University
Press, 1979, pp. 103-23.
45 See Lancaster, The Japanese Influence in America, op. cit.,
p. 162. There were originally twin pagodas at Yakushiji,
but the west one was destroyed by fire during the
sixteenth century and was only rebuilt after Wright's
time in Japan. Interestingly, Wright's East Coast contemporary,
the Gothic Revivalist Ralph Adams Cram,
had been similarly impressed with the pagoda at
Yakushi-ji, having described it as 'one of the most daring,
original and yet successful works of architecture in
Japan'. See R. A. Cram, Impressions of Japanese Architecture
and the Allied Arts, Baker & Taylor Co., 1905,
pp. 37-8.
46 Jonathan Lipman has suggested a very plausible alternative
source for the staggered section of the St. Marks
Tower project in a 1927 cartoon by Buckminster Fuller
'Zeppelin Delivery of 4-D Houses'. See J. Lipman,
Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings, Architectural
Press, 1986, p. 12. However, there was no central
core in Fuller's tower, so the question arises of
whether Wright might have combined these two disparate
sources.
47 Wright suggested: 'The pagodas of China and Japan
definitely resemble the pines with which they were
associated.' The Future of Architecture, Horizon Press,
1953, p. 45. In fact, the pagoda form is thought to have
derived from the spire of the Indian stupa, although
some believe that the Japanese version may have
developed from a combination of this Buddhist form
with the Shinto idea of the sacred tree or pillar. Whatever
the case, Wright's analogy with the pine tree
would seem to provide a clue to the origin of the structural
service core of the Johnson Research Tower.
48 See Wright, The Story of the Tower: The Tree that Escaped
the Crowded Forest, Horizon Press, 1956.
49 The battle of wills between Wright and Steinle is
described by Lipman in Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson
Wax Buildings, op. cit., pp. 121-44, where the
author reports Steinle and his fellow chemist Edward
Wilder as having been generally pleased with the final
outcome, but adds that 'they felt that they would have
been equally satisfied with a conventional laboratory
building, and that almost every way in which the building
varied from conventionality imposed some compromise
on them'. Ibid., p. 159.
50 Johnson suggested of the research tower that 'it was
the terrific problem of a man who wants a beautiful
building but the only thing he has to build is a laboratory.
Wright puts it into a tower. It doesn't work; it
doesn't have to work. Wright had that shape conceived
long before he knew what was going into it'. 'On the
responsibility of the architect', Perspecta, The Yale Architectural
Journal, vol. 2, 1953, p. 47, as quoted by
Kenneth Frampton in Modern Architecture: A Critical
History, Thames & Hudson, 1985, p. 245. Johnson's
perception has since been confirmed by Jonathan Lipman;
see Frank Lloyd Wright and the Johnson Wax Buildings,
op. cit., p. 122.
51 See 'Genesis of the research tower', in ibid. pp. 122-3.
52 See ibid., p. 159.
53 On the persistent concern over the tower's fire safety
see ibid., pp. 164, 167.
54 For a perceptive account of the role of analogy in the
creative process generally, see A. Koestler, The Act of
Creation, Picador, 1969. For a good discussion of the
use of analogy specifically in relation to architectural
184 KKevin Nute
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design, see Broadbent, Design in Architecture, op. cit.,
pp. 30-5.
55 Wright, The Japanese Print, op. cit., p. 11.
56 Wright, 'In the cause of Architecture: second paper',
Architectural Record, vol. 35, no. 5, 1914, as reprinted in
F. Gutheim (ed.), In the Cause of Architecture: Frank Lloyd
Wright, Architectural Record and McGraw-Hill, 1975,
p. 122, footnote.
57 Johonnot, op. cit., p. 16.
58 For further discussion of this topic, see K. Nute, 'Fr
Lloyd Wright and the arts of Japan: a study in how
borrow properly', Architecture and Urbanism, no. 23
February 1990, pp. 26-33.
Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Architecture 185
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