ABSTRACT
In the quotaton opposte, whch occupes the space of one of the ellpses n the quotaton at the begnnng of the analyss of Fallngwater, Frank Lloyd Wrght was not specfically referrng to Le Corbuser’s Vlla Savoye but to the Amercan ‘Colonal’ house. Wrght wanted to cultvate the dea of an Amercan archtecture rooted n Amercan ground n contrast to an archtecture mposed by colonal powers. It was a matter of assertng ndependence and dentty. Even so, t s temptng to suggest that Wrght was also takng a sde swpe at hs man rval for the ttle of ‘greatest arch- tect of the twenteth century’ – Le Corbuser, whose Vlla Savoye, n contrast to Fallngwater’s strong relatonshp to ts topography, stands aloof from the ground on columns, whch Le Corbuser
The dfference between the two archtects’ atttudes to the ground – as exemplfied n Wrght’s Fallngwater and Le Corbuser’s Vlla Savoye – neatly hghlghts one of the tmeless quandares of archtecture: should archtecture be somethng that human bengs mpose on the world, or should t be responsve to what the world offers? It s not of course a quandary that requres a defintve answer. Archtecture has been produced accordng to both atttudes. I dscussed ths n the chapter on ‘Temples and Cottages’ n Analysing Architecture. The Vlla Savoye does have a fireplace but t s far from beng a domnant core element, founded on a natural boulder, as t s n Fallngwater. It s, by contrast, a small brck box wth a concrete lt and a tube-lke flue. Dfferences such as these suggest,
T W E N T Y B U I L D I N G S e v e r y a r c h i t e c t s h o u l d u n d e r s t a n d
about our relatonshp wth the world. Archtecture s phlosophcal. It makes propostons about how to make sense of, and how to relate to, the world. Sometmes such propostons are nstlled n buldngs unthnkngly, as n most tradtonal archtecture when thngs are done n the ways they always have been. Sometmes archtects are conscous of the phlosophcal dmensons and potental of what they do, and contrve ther propostons as poltcal or socal arguments. We are perhaps used to thnkng of phlosophy as somethng that s done wth words; archtects (whether formally traned and professonally accredted or not) do t wth space and matter.
