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discovery? Uh huh. Presented by the San Francisco Museum of Art and Station, KPI s and now your host for today, Dr Lloyd Luckman. Good afternoon. Today we have the very great honor of presenting one of the truly great men of our time. He is, without question,

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the foremost American architect and one of the leading thinkers in 20th century America. Here is Frank Lloyd Wright, Mr Right. In preparation for our meeting this afternoon, I've been doing a little research on my own. And I have here this very comprehensive catalog of a an

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exhibit, a traveling exhibit of your work in this catalogue Swiss catalog. And I was wondering if you tell me where the exhibit is now. Well, the exhibitors on Fifth Avenue in New York and a pavilion of its own permanently. It is the first time New York

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has had a glimpse of the third dimension. See, everything has been in to here comes the third. I see, and they're quite excited. They million has been crowded. They have to stop selling tickets. And it's really surprising to find New Yorkers interested in architecture. Is it

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now in its permanent building? No, there is to be. As soon as we get through with this show, we're going to build a permanent building. Tear this down. Let the show go to the Orient. I see. Well, now I've also found in my reading that you

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admit a certain influence in your beginning of your career by the architect Louis Sullivan. Uh, what was that influence, man Influence. Silence the pencil in his hand for seven years. Yeah. So I must have had a great deal of influence from that hand. I used to

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call him leave. Burmeister was a true master. He had the quality of mind We call the mastermind and he masterminded the skyscraper. Before he came, it was all a series of little things went on top of another. They tried to keep it from being tall. Mhm.

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But Louis Sullivan said, Hell, I suppose I shouldn't use his words. But he said, Hell, the thing is tall Let it be tall And it was tall. It's been tall ever since. So it's in the skyscraper particularly? Yes. He was the patriarch of the skyscraper. Would

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they? Now I follow you now. I've also heard to that the term organic is always associated with your architecture. Would you tell me how you define this word? Organic, organic means natural, and it refers to entertain. You see, artists to hold the whole list to the

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park, and the organic thing comes from within outward. Instead of being collected and picked up and stuck on this way. I see. So it's organic is integral. I think you could say integral just as well. Yes. Well, if we have this word organic and integral. Uh,

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when did you first evolve this organic hyphen? Integral? Um oh, I think we'll have to go back to Walt Whitman for that. So and Walt Whitman? I think Louis Sullivan was greatly impressed by Whitman, and he used the word organic, and I've been using it, of

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course ever since. And because it is the natural word to use for architecture that comes from within outward. Uh huh. There is no other word, but the critics seem to think it's an awkward word. And I guess they're thinking of something hanging in a butcher shop.

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You're getting far too literal interpretation. Well, this would go back to the turn of the century, then wouldn't have that you announced this particular. Oh, 60 years ago? Yes, before the turn of the century. Then certainly then this is one of the evidence is that you

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were a student of architecture and of nature and were far ahead of your time. Particularly if you keep in mind, say, a contrast between a typical 20th early 20th century house and Frank Lloyd Wright design. How would you, uh, describe for me the differences between the

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traditional house of the 20th century? The gingerbread, uh, type house and your house? Uh, well, it's quite a quite a and undertaking. Well, at the house of the time was all chopped up into little compartments. It was a box, and little boxes were fitted into the

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box. And it was box within the box. Mm hmm. And when you got through that you were from box to box and pretty well boxed up. Mhm. And they had a hole cut in the box to get in, and they had holes to let enlighten their,

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uh It was entirely an inorganic thing. And the prairies recovered with those things. Not only the prairies, I'm sure. Well, now, Chicago, Perry C. On which I was born architecturally well, then using this term prairie. I'm reminded of Robie House. And this is called the Robie

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House. Was called by the Germans when they saw it in 1910. Dump for architecture, dump for architecture. Steamboat architecture. Well, what was that? Were you pleased by that description? Not exactly. No. But it was the only thing they had to rise to it with. You see,

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they reminded them of steam ship the long, graceful streamline. This is, of course, where the I'm afraid to bring this word streamline in. But now I invented it. Yes, it was first used by myself and my works. As far as I know, I see a straight

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line flat plane. And this is the Robie house. The prairie house. The prairie is the plane made just before I went to Germany. I see 19 9 and I went to Germany. 1910, 1910. All this was published in Germany. Una Franca discovered me out on the

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prairie. He was an exchange professor at Harvard that you remember when Theodore Roosevelt got the idea of exchanging our professors for foreign professors? I read about that, and this was the professor of aesthetics at Harvard I see who dug me up. I see came out and

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wanted me to go to Germany. Certainly people who weren't ready for me. Mm. Well, that was quite an observation, because I think much has been demonstrated to prove his observation. But now let's go from the Prairie house with its long streamline to the skyscraper. And would

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the first best illustration be the locking company office building, which, after all, not only well, not as a skyscraper would. I'm thinking of an office building it. It was an office building, though, that encompassed such things as air conditioning. The had nearly everything. Office furniture, metal

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office files and metal glass bound doors, glass doors and wall hung water closets. And were you the originator? Yes. On Benedict. All of these things that you're saying we're in the locks. And, you know, an architect within this reputation for aesthetic should have. God is living

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out of inventing a wall water club, don't you think? Yes, indeed. Too. Well, now I was They call it poetic justice. Quite so. I was thinking in terms now the Robie House, which was prairie architecture. The, uh, lock and building, which was applied designed to industry.

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Yes, a great simplicity. And it was the first great Protestant. The Larkin Building shook its fist at the ornament taste station everywhere around which had gone to excess and introduced a great powerful simplicity according to the nature of materials. No, underneath it. Underneath that publication of

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that building was the statement concerning the machine. Uh, I imagine you're gonna bring up well, I hope to because I was intrigued by your lecture last evening and the emphasis you made upon the, uh, machine age and the relationship of the architect to it. I'd like

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to go back to this question of the skyscraper. Uh, I learned that you were designed for the Spreckels of state. A skyscraper that would be located at third and market streets here in San Francisco. Would you tell us something about that? I still like it. You

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still like it? I think it's the forerunner of all. The pier and apron buildings are now being built. This is Pierre and apron apron building. Would you say a little more about that? Well, there is the effect of it. You'll see it in the news building

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in New York. You'll see it in the Rockefeller Center, Buildings said in the U. N. Building. I was going to mention the ongoing What about that? This building of yours that was designed but never executed here in San Francisco seems to be quite the forerunner of

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that slab of the UN building. But you see, this had real integrity, and as they work it out, it looks more like a wicker basket. I see. Uh, this comes back again to unity, organic unity, nature, nature, of material building. You know, it's a concrete concrete

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building. Have you noticed the evolution, incidentally, of the Claus Spreckels building in San Francisco? The one that they did build was simply a column with a dome on it. And then some years later, they tried to come back almost to your original plan. By this modification

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that we now call the central tower. Uh, well, it's the building that was built, and the building that has been remodeled all seems to come back to the original thought that you had the original principles that we've practiced. Sort of, that I've began to practice out

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there on the prairie seemed to have never been understood thoroughly. But the effects were appreciated and continued, and to this day were pounding away at getting those principles understood by young architects. Or would you be pounding away in this place is so difficult, brother. Look, when

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you get a principle into effect, they'll take the effect. You'll see the face of the thing. They like it and that's it. And I never asked how it got that way. This is Imitation isn't well, it's Uhh. That's a good name for, but I think it's

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harder deserves even that man you don't think it deserves. That may. Well, I didn't I want to call it emulation because an invasion, huh? Of the difficulty in thinking. I guess they don't like to think it's the hardest thing anyone does. Don't you agree? I think

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it was good. Yet who said that no man could do more than seven minutes over today? I hadn't heard that, but I'm quite in agreement with Well, this was the challenge that you gave 19 1904 when you were addressing the Daughters of American Revolution in Chicago

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and the challenge you gave last night. It's your meeting here in Santa suspected that last night. May I just quote it for you. In this day and generation, we must recognize that this transforming force whose outward sign and symbol is the thing of brass and steel

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we call a machine is now grown to the point that the artist must take it up. No longer to protest, genius must dominate the work of the contrivance it has created. This plane beauty is relentlessly marked out for the artists in this machine age he cannot

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set aside, although there is involved an adjustment to cherish God's perplexing and painful in the extreme. And though the fires of long honored ideal shall go down to ashes, they will reappear. Phoenix, like with this new life and purposes, might have written it last night. Yes,

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but it's exactly as I feel now. I think we have let our they're and generation down by ignoring the changes which were so inevitable, and we're taking place when I was a young man in architecture. Now, this was a 1904 statement that I read you reiterated

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last evening. Do you think there's really being acceptance of this idea now in a superficial way, they have now the facade, which is the tribute to the machine. I believe they're calling it now, the machine style I see. But that's what they would do and see.

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They've taken the surface of the thing, made a picture of it and a cliche, and they've plastered on everything. Is this in the area of industrial design? Also that, well, industrial design? I suppose there could be such a thing. But design as design and what we

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get is architecture now largely comes from the little boys in the backroom, working for the plan factory for the planned factory man. Fact, That's what you call an architect's office and architects office today. If it's really successful, is naturally a planned factory. Otherwise it isn't big.

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You don't have a three or 400 draftsman. Hmm. The architect himself has to be a little creative. Well, now this evidence of your creative geniuses almost everywhere, not only in America but throughout the world. But suppose we hark back a minute to bear run and the

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Kauffman house there. How do you think? Uh, that particular creation is the same as this Prairie House area house will save the Robie House. Except it there. I had an for the first time, I was given steel and concrete reinforced concrete to build a building with.

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And of course, I had to have a grammar that belongs to the process. This was the drummer of the Kauffman House. That was the first reinforced concrete drama. So here you have concrete reinforced with steel and glass. There's hardly Kennedy that came into play and where

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glass took its place according to her modern opportunity. You see, when glass and steel came to us, the whole body of our modern world had to change and did. But I thought, and our acts didn't change with it. And now when the motor comes in the

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car and inter communication as we have it, that's another change when you stop to think of the industrial revolution. And then now then the revolution of steel, concrete class, the motor, notably on the basis of the industrial Revolution. Those things were there, and so far as

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we've got with the revolution, is not very far where architecture is concerned. That's what I complaint last night. Mm hmm. I don't think architects have lived up to their duty as well as their privilege. Well, I'd like to develop that particular thought of yours. But I'm

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going to postpone that for just a moment and ask you just to comment on, uh, two very, uh, popular trademarks. Uh, one would be, uh, Sally s and East and the other Taliesin West, where you live and where you work. Since I understand you always work

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where you live. I prefer to. And that's how I get my work done. I don't think I could work in the city. How does anybody do it? So you're not an office man, Not an office? No, they will be. Time should come now where we can

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give you a moment to rest. And while you're arresting, we'll have a very interesting message. You need more arrests than I know. I don't at all. We'll have an interesting message from Virginia Arnold who is going to tell us about a very important Bay Area institution,

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Good and spaces. The institution, of course, is our own San Francisco Museum of Arts thing. We're interested today, and it's not well, we're selling the institute today. We're selling the institute and memberships. I'm hearing us on the episode in Washington where I was on with the

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kind of being. This building looks just the same today as it did yesterday. It will look the same tomorrow. It does not grow and change with the times. But inside, on the fourth floor there is growth and change, for this is the home of the San

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Francisco Museum of Art. You're living museum. Let's look and see how the museum has changed since it's you. In the beginning, the galleries look like this. Paintings and ornate frames like this one were shown and statues like this with the passing of time the museum changed.

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Today, the galleries in the San Francisco Museum of Art, clean and Uncluttered, show the art of today such statues as this one by Adaline Kent or paintings like this by Paul Claire shown not only the style of painting has changed, but also the frame. The many

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exhibitions at the museum will give you a chance to see what the artist of today is doing locally, nationally and internationally. And tomorrow what will it bring? What will this blank canvas or this mound of clay become, which artists will of today will become tomorrow's master?

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That is up to you to determine the San Francisco Museum of Art provides through as many exhibitions a chance for you to see what is being done so that you will know what is being exhibited. Send us a card and we will send you the monthly

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calendar of events at the San Francisco Museum of Art. We will send us to you free for the next six months. And don't forget to send a card to the San Francisco Museum of Art Civic Center, San Francisco, California. Okay, Mr Right. We've been hearing a

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great deal in the San Francisco Bay area about a second crossing another bridge to span our bay to the east. And I understand that a few weeks ago you were in San Francisco and, uh, met with the officials who would be concerned and proposed to them,

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uh, this suggested design of yours for the second crossing. Would you tell us something about it? How you named it and what it's, uh, features are here. You see the kind of liver at work again, and the reinforced concrete construction goes with the cantilever that you

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saw in the, uh, house in Pittsburgh over the waterfall. So we had to hear the Spanish great. It could be greater. The construction is extremely light because pre stressed steel and pre stressed concrete developing about five times the ordinary strength of those materials. So it would

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be even stronger than a bridge of steel alone. That much so because it requires no upkeep, it's there forever and with regard. Imagine no depreciation whatever a bridge like that in terms of these piers and its height and the general flurry Spanish double stand, that's why

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it's made wide goes in wet in order to counterbalance the tendency to overturn. So this is what gives you this park up here in the air so we would have a green park in the sky. This, then, is not just a part of aesthetics. This is

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part of function structure, structural design. They might have made the bridge up the bay there, so the wind wouldn't blow it from side to side if they had thought of something of this kind. I see so that this would give you then protection against that type

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of stress. And in terms of the I see no reason why a span constructed in that way split, Enter This ovo couldn't be twice this with as a matter of fact, uh, there's almost no limit to this could carry it. I see a principal at work

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again, you see, and and according to the new materials of our age, the old steel bridges have to be maintained. It cost to maintain this bridge and steal a million dollars a year. True, you produce that maintenance cost in this type of construction. Imagine there would

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be any. There's no need to paint it. There's no need to do anything in that account. It's a natural service, and in terms of its ability to withstand the weather, it has all of those qualities. And you see, there's a curve in this extension here, resisting

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the curve from that. So it's all in stress. It's a natural for pre stressed concrete, and it's a natural for steel intention. It's only when you throw steel in detention that you really have a great economy of steel when you cut it up into little pieces,

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but and try to make a strut cutting. But you lose, its values have no very great economy. So in this way you never have to contend that it's all right angle it's all stressed and you call this the Butterfly Bridge. Call it the Butterfly Bridge because

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from the piers it goes out with wings. That's very light, extremely light construction. And it also seems to undulate, doesn't it? As the sea would Yes. Well, it's intimate with the water. The reflection is needed to complete the beauty of the bridge so that you had

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that also in mind with you. Oh, actually, and I've also wanted to ask you or first of all, express my appreciation for the V C. Morris building here in San Francisco on Maiden Lane. So it has just said in print somewhere that it was the noblest

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thing we have done to date. Well, I would certainly be want to subscribe to that description of the building, particularly the inviting facade, the idea of going into a treasure trove. Uh, am I expressing it the invitation correctly that you may have had in mind because

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this side piling everything up on the sidewalk and asking people to come in is something like Barker at the circus. It isn't very dignified, and it may even defeat its purpose sometimes, yes. So then, when you come into VC Morris building your building there on maiden

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Lane. And then this tremendous expanse of space and the circular staircase all seems to be a marvelous use of wall space for exhibiting, uh, material Charming. Uh huh. So the race showman staircase A good Shuman. Well, I think there's perfect showmanship in that building. I agree

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that there is. I never thought of it by a connection with architecture before quite so dramatic architecture. The first house I built became showmanship for the housewife. Mhm. She was liberated from the kitchen as the kitchen mechanic, and she was made of hostess and she dressed

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prettily. And you saw her operation in her kitchen and table in the dining room. All became one unit one pre unit. And she was a queen of the nage, not a scullery maid. But we were talking about something new and something old just now in terms

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of the bridge and also in terms of the B. C Morris building. But what else is new, as they say, What are you working on now that we perhaps haven't heard too much about to share with us today? The skyscraper has escaped from the city through

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the skyscraper in the city is like a tree where there are too many of them in the forest. It can't develop its character. But here we have the skyscraper where I've advocated and putting it for a great many years out in the country. It's an economic

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form of structure, and we're building now in Bartlesville for held price pipeline construction company. A true skyscraper, a real one quadruple developed all around casts its shadow on its own ground. And the price company are beholden to no one for their supremacy. They're up top. They

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own the whole top of the building. I mean, they occupy it and their friends below public service on the ground and that no one else expense except their own very interesting. With this with the Johnson building had been a forerunner of this building that you're speaking

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out. I was most interested when I visited the Johnson building because I'm quite concerned. Yes, I'm quite concerned in human relations. So just instance of that company. Yes, the company is why I was there when I went there. Employees, when I saw also how your design

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fitted into that whole policy of the company you must have had that in mind. The idea of sharing with the employee for a car T became Johnson Institution after that building was built. True enough, and so home they came earlier. Change a country club atmosphere about

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them. Do you think that's one of the things to that you'll be able to exploit in green? The skyscraper, too, the sub urban areas. So, Oh, yes, I'm sure it will happen in the same thing Now people come to see that building from all over the

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world all the time and have all these years at Constant Company has made estimates in their advertising department. The building cost him nothing. Is that right? It's paid them in space. They couldn't even buy and pay for choice advertising space nearly 10 times what it cost

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then. The whole great state of Texas, for example, is probably going to be a brand new laboratory for you to Oklahoma. Oklahoma, I think very good. Now as one last word to round out our discussion here today, would you comment again in line with the, uh,

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quotation on the machine age? Very briefly. What you believe is the responsibility of the 20th century architect in mid 20th century. Well, if an architect, if our architects are not the form givers and the way shows in building. And of course, building is basic to a

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culture, we'll never have a culture of our own, and we haven't won. Now we have a way of life, which we call a civilization. The culture begins when you try to make that wave blood beautiful my way. Haven't begun on that. We are poles and wires.

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We have ugly buildings that have no meaning. We, I saw denied short time ago that buildings had any significance, politically or otherwise, or they have any significance. They have political significance. Do we want to do it quickly? Because now, Uhh the demand for the significance, which

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is genuine, which is organic, and we'll have all these streamlined effects. We'll have the straight line, the flat plan. We'll have an atmosphere to live. It has beauty and integrity. And if the boys we call architects get the thing into their system because nobody else is

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going to do it, Yeah, for most interesting afternoon in the area of American architecture and culture, Thank you and join us next week Mm. Discovery has been brought to you by Station KPI X and the San Francisco Museum of Art. Mhm. Next week, Discovery will present

00:29:28.950 - 00:29:39.170

Jazz. The 20th century contribution to Music. George Lewis and his New Orleans Dixieland band will be featured, Yeah.