Jacobus J. P. Oud: The Influence of F. L. Wright on European Architecture

Although I am convinced of the inadequacy of any evaluation concerning our contemporaries or personalities who stand very close to us in art and architecture, the figure of Frank Lloyd Wright towers so surely above its surroundings that I can confidently designate him as the greatest creator of our time, not fearing that later generations will be forced to reject my judgment.
His work amid the results of architectural art, which in its formlessness must be designated as the style of the 19th century, was such a rounded whole, such a unity of conception prevailed both in the entirety and in the details, so certain in expression and so secure in its developmental line did his creation look, that no similar case can be pointed out.
If the hallmark of this era is that even the works of the best authors always make us feel how they became what they are, in Wright's case, everything is present, and some spiritual tension of birth cannot particularly be observed. While we admire others for the talent we see gradually mastering matter, I respect F. L. Wright, because the process of the emergence of his work is completely foreign to me and remains a total mystery.
It is in no way to the detriment of this respect, which has proved to be highly justified in the alternating phases of his own development, that I do not regard Wright's influence on European architecture, certainly a significant and even considerable influence, as entirely fortunate.
This Wright's influence is similar to the emergence of a certain "Wright school" in the western United States. Wright himself once wrote about this, in a pessimistic moment, that he was crushed to see how the form in which he realized his conception in his buildings seemed to have a greater attraction than the conception itself. Because his conception sought an exit from function and not from form, he regarded this phenomenon as generally devastating for the development of architectural creation.
In this sense, I would also designate as detrimental the suggestion that Wright's rare talent had on architecture on the other side of the ocean. In the opinion chaos of European architecture in recent decades, which had to - after too great a uniformity and security of previous generations - turn everything that was not excessively confused into a nerve-racking problem, it was judged that Wright's work, when thoroughly recognized, would act as a revelation and confession. Free of all detailing that undermined the architecture of the old world, convincing despite its exotic character, captivating despite the simplicity of the motifs, Wright's work triumphed at once.
So solid in construction amidst all mobility was the composition of masses seemingly fused with the earth, so natural was the interpenetration of elements, as if running on film, so honestly did the operation unfold in spaces playfully arranged, that there was no doubt whether this system of shapes was an absolute necessity for us, and it was universally accepted that functionality and comfort were here embodied in beautiful synthesis in a way that was the only possible for our time, that the artist and creator Wright realized what the prophet Wright proclaimed - that now the long-sought ideal has been found in which universal efforts and individual successes fully coincide, in short, that finally, in this case, what was primarily individual became again a generality. To this contributed, moreover, the fact that the use of Wright's means, even where they were manipulated with less clarity than in his original case, seemingly guaranteed an altogether bearable and piquant effect - and this certainly was not entirely indifferent.
And so the avant-garde of architecture and everything that likes to be counted among it, not being too miserable, in the Netherlands, Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium, Poland, Romania, etc., has voluntarily and broadly succumbed to the influence of this remarkable talent. Projecting surfaces, far overhanging plates and cornices, often continuously developing masses, dominating horizontal solutions, all these typical signs of Wright's work, we see at a time when the spirit of Wright's creation penetrated our continent, as signs of a significant percentage of modern building production in Europe.
However, it is a mistake that critics have often committed and to which one can never stress enough (because precisely in this false interpretation lies the reason why Wright's influence on European architecture must be considered not entirely fortunate); it is a mistake that the emergence of these significant features is attributed solely to Wright. For at the same time that the adoration of Wright's works by his colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic reached its pinnacle, it was fermenting in European architectural creation itself, where cubism and purism were being born.
Cubism is assigned just as excessive and significant a role in the emergence of characteristic external forms (just like Wright's work), which in the aforementioned movement of European architecture reached expression. This movement itself - as can be inferred from this - is a consequence of the mixture of two influences: a mixture that disappoints because it always testifies again and again on both sides to a certain cult of forms in place of searching for substance; which, however, is extremely awkward because it has brought with it a weakening of that constructive tendency (cubist), which in its consequences promises to become an exceedingly significant force for the future of architectural creation. This tendency - it must still be added - which ultimately must be closer to Wright than to the reverence for the exterior, which has been imitated a thousand times.
If we refer, when determining the factors that operated as a fertilizing influence in the emergence of the previously mentioned phenomena, to the effort of constructive cubism as a complementary element alongside Wright's influence, it remains, however, an undeniable truth that the fascination that Wright's works evoked has prepared the way for this cubism to a considerable extent: the irony of fate wanted that the lyrical allure, which is inherent to this architectural Pied Piper, concurrently harmed the purity of tone that was beginning to assert itself in European architectural creation as a result of certain intentions that are evidently also inherent to Wright, although his work testified to this in a different way than his will (his will as we understand it from his writings).
What Wright wanted: namely architecture that is based on the needs and possibilities of its own time, whose demands - generally economic feasibility, general social accessibility, general social-aesthetic necessity are manifested in binding, austerity, and precision of form, simplicity, and regularity; thus what Wright wanted, but from which he often and perpetually distanced himself by the enormous expansion of his great, winged visionary talent, was taken as a goal of this cubism with greater diligence.
Cubism in architecture - which needs to be clearly understood - arose completely independently, absolutely unconnected to Wright, perhaps in an analogous way as in painting and sculpture and was thus induced, through internal pressure.
Besides any superficial and external similarity, a certain distant kinship with Wright's works has also arisen - and it would be worth studying, which would lead to its discovery, and it would be advisable to examine some of Wright's reliefs in this regard - while Wright and cubism are fundamentally different, and moreover: contradictory phenomena.
There exists an apparent agreement between them in the pursuit of orthogonality, in the tendency toward three-dimensionality, in the segmentation of the building mass, and in the construction of individual parts, generally in the effort toward the composition of many small particles, which were first reached through decomposition, and this composition in its external form still reveals elements of primary analysis; common is also the use of new materials, new techniques, new constructions, and an orientation towards new demands.
What is, however, for Wright overflowing plasticity, sensory excess has become in cubism, as it initially must have been, a puritanical asceticism, a spiritual restraint. What freely developed from the fullness of life with Wright up to a certain exuberance that might correspond only to American "high life," was, of course, suppressed in Europe to a certain degree of abstraction that arose from different ideals and laid claim to everything and everyone.
If Wright proved to be a greater artist-creator in his practice than a prophet, cubism, on the other hand, actively realized what was also Wright's theory.
Since the Renaissance, the conscience of architecture has spoken - after three decades of preparation - purely once again; so sharply precise as it is characteristic of all early times, but nevertheless just as strongly.
Just as in "liberal art," so in architectural creation, it was about a transitional stage: a stage of disintegration of the old system and the construction of a new order. The concept of construction and the value of relationships were here regained and brought to another level, the essential significance of the line and almost oppressive strictness of form were re-understood and deeply examined, the notion of the importance of mass and its complement: space, was clarified and deepened anew. Above all, it led to cubism - as a logical consequence of previous renewal attempts - directly and powerfully to the expression of tension greater and more genuine vitality than in the architecture of many previous epochs, in which independent life recently and at best was limited to sweetly moving dexterity of the virtuoso compositional talent gifted, highly cultivated taste.
Thus cubism became a return and a beginning; it took on obligations, trusting in the future, while previous generations borrowed rights, usurping from the past. In the unintended romanticism of the spasmodic tension, there lay a tendency towards some new formal synthesis, towards a new, non-historical classicism.
The need for number and measure, purity and order, rules and repetition, perfection and completeness; the properties of the organs of modern life, technique, transportation, hygiene, and actually also of all social organization, economic conditions, methods of mass production, find their predecessor in this cubism.
In the fact that the development of things that Wright advocated for so long and so forcefully has suffered damage from misunderstanding his work and continues to suffer it through superficial imitation, there lies a certain tragedy, that in Wright himself the concept of the builder has outgrown the consciousness of the apostle, may be indifferent to us: indifferent for the beautiful result, indifferent because the foundation of his creation is honest, not at all spoiled by prior aesthetic premises, indifferent finally also because life, unless it plunges into stagnation, continuously escapes - and so it is good - the dogma of theory.
However, theory - and this is precisely what needs to be emphasized today - has an extraordinarily great value as a base in life. It is always important, but it is absolutely indispensable in a time that lacks any aesthetic guideline, any traditional support. New architectural creation can never be consistent enough in its efforts towards new goals: however, we will later gladly accept the necessary inconsistencies of its results - if they are truly valuable.
To Wright's disciples, as Wright himself already did, one cannot emphasize enough that continuing in Wright's work is something entirely different than what is commonly called "being inspired" by his work.
It is no more miserable to imitate something created by our contemporary than to imitate a Greek column. Quite the opposite. More harmful than the obstacles that academic architecture places in the way of emerging functional building are the products of imitators of modern predecessors, because that outward appearance, originating from a second hand with which they clothe their works, its contemporary form and seeming organic substance escapes judgment on pure architecture where academics openly and clearly present their front for attack. If there is anything detrimental for the future of new architecture, then it is this half-heartedness, which is worse than open plagiarism, which is simply a lack of character.