Road Trip

Both Monticello and Falling Water’s design concepts stayed true to their roots and strived to define an American style.  Jefferson designed true to his idol, Palladio’s concepts, and intertwined his inspiration from France.  Frank Lloyd Wright stayed true to Falling Waters’ roots; the land; quite literally.  He pulled the outside in and emulated and celebrated the nature surrounding Falling Water using boulders inside, endless glass and of course the tranquil sound of the water rushing below.  Wright materiality stemmed strongly from this inspiration of nature.  The hearth is the boulder continued from outside.  The floor was stone and often polish to emulate the look of wet stone.  He developed his concept of an illusion of the separation of interior and exterior. Wright studied Japanese houses and that style became the roots to part of his concept. He had low ceiling that compressed houseguests for many reasons.  He defined public and private spaces by compression and release.  He also used low ceiling heights to push you out of the house essentially and out into nature.  The many terraces and walls of windows also draw you outside. “Wright was the master of interweaving connected spaces, creating what has been described as fluid or flowing spaces….In these houses there is no isolation of the living and dining room or the library alcove; all are loosely defined as component areas of a larger space.” Roth 59  The great room had the highest ceilings because it was the most public space; a gathering space.  The bedrooms had very low ceilings that expressed the privacy of the space.  The private spaces were also darker making the room seem more compressed.  Even throughout the hallways you were compressed when entering and room and released vertically when exiting into hallways. Roth 58 “Architectural space is a powerful determinant of behavior”  The use of compression and releasing helped define these spaces therefore altering behaviors.

 Monticello was similar and different. When first entering the house you are released and introduced to the space with tall ceilings and materials that were congruent with Jefferson’s design concept.  From the great room you are lead into more compressed and private rooms though they were only separated by one wall.  The concept of compression and release has a lot to do with space.  There are many kinds of space that were depicted on our trip. Wright believed “space was the essence of architecture” Roth 55

     There is physical space which can be though of as the “volume of air bounded by the walls, floor and ceiling of a room.” Roth 55 Along with perspective space which is “the space that can be perceived or seen” Roth 55. For example the glass walls of windows in Falling Water opens to the outside and expands your surroundings.

Conceptual space which can be defined as “the mental map we carry around in our heads the plan stored in our memory” Roth 55.The hidden spaces for storage in Monticello would not necessarily come to mind when you think of Monticello’s conceptual space but it would be an example of behavioral space or, “the space we can actually move through and use.” Roth 55

The materials used were true to Jefferson’s style, inspiration and resources.  Many of the materials were more local at Monticello and Falling Water because of the technology at the time of development as well as the complication of transportation that came along with their location.  Monticello was on a mountaintop, which made it hard to lug materials to the site.  Monticello clears off the top of the mountain and become the focus of this mountaintop, standing out.  Falling Water, although it stands out, emulated it’s surrounding and celebrates the land more than the structure itself because it draws its concept from the surroundings.  This also affected the materials used within the space.  In history we have been discussing the innovation of machine versus handcraft. “Architects also were presented with new building materials, cast and wrought iron as well as glass, in quantities never available  before, thanks to improvements in mass production.” Roth 471 The craft of man versus machine was contriversal and made big changes in the design and production world. “The most important change in industry was the use of machines in place of skilled labor to make other machines. …With the application of simple machine to perform repetitive tasks, mass production of consumer goods began.  The result was a dramatic increase in production and a lowering of production costs, meaning that goods formerly available to the aristocracy became available to the growing middle class and even eventually to the workers themselves.” Roth 471 “…The increased manufacture of consumer good was dependent on the production of less expensive component materials, and of theses, the most important was iron.” Roth 462