| The dissertation examines the hallmark of Wright's later architecture--his highly innovative development of non-rectangular geometry and the transcendental ideals which inspired it. Wright's life-long striving after a psychological, spiritual and symbolic language of 'pure form'--identified by him with elemental geometric shapes predominantly non-rectangular--was the expression of a deeply personal faith in abstract, universal principles of order defining man's relation to nature and 'God' instilled from childhood.; Wright's earliest use of non-rectangular geometry in the 1890s explores complex spatial and psychological dimensions inherent in conventional design elements, though often his plans allude to symbolic or anthropomorphic meaning. Soon after 1900, with the mature Prairie house and a burgeoning machine aesthetic, the non-rectangular form is expunged and a mechanistic fallacy surrounding rectangular geometry and his art glass windows emerges as the mark of modernity.; Not until the 1920s did Wright return to non-rectangular forms in his buildings. Perhaps inspired by parallel developments in 'pure form' in Europe, Wright developed an expressionist language of non-rectangularity heightened by a technological innovativeness. The triangulation distinctive of his desert architecture underscored a deep physical and spiritual synthesis manifest in an "occult symmetry" with nature and 'God' through the resolution of opposing building types and their material construction. This profound interpretation of geometry is mitigated in the 1930s by biotechnical "reflex" angles where ideally "form and function are one," further integrating formal and technical systems and culminating in the emergence of circular plans.; Wright's relentless striving after transcendent design values and innovative programmatic and formal solutions, particularly encouraged by non-rectangular geometry, clearly emerges in the Guggenheim Museum. Although its formal properties finally outstripped its practical and ideal realization, it may belong to a broader trend in American modernism in the 1940s-50s--organic expressionism. Wright's last designs continue to pay homage to the human spirit, ensconcing man as the measure of his own universe through the symbolic language of geometry. |
