Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City as a manifestation of American values of freedom and democracy
Emilia Stankiewicz
University of BiałystokAbstract
Architecture of a particular country is one of the most visible manifestations of its cultural heritage. When approaching this subject matter in reference to United States of America, mentioning Frank Lloyd Wright is inevitable, as he is often referred to as “the greatest American architect of all time”. Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of Broadacre City was a project that consumed the greater part of the architect’s life. The article investigates the technical, structural and ideological aspects of the Broadacre City concept. The main objective of this article is to establish whether Broadacre City was designed in the spirit of the most fundamental American values of freedom and democracy and how those values were manifested in the project itself.
Keywords:
Frank Lloyd Wright, Broadacre City, American values, freedom, democracyReferences
Aguar, C.E., Aguar, B. 2002. Wrightscapes: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Landscape Designs. New York: McGraw Hill Professional.
Brown, Zara A. 2007. Broadacre City, 1932-1959. Baton Rouge: Master’s Thesis at Louisiana State University.
Cruz, Cesar A. 2012. Wright’s Organic Architecture: From ‘Form Follows Function’ to ‘Form and Function are One’. Cloud – Cuckoo- Land Journal. Vol. 17 Issue 30: 27 -36.
Dehaene, Michiel. 2002. Broadacre City: The City in the Eye of the Beholder. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research. Vol. 19, No. 2: 91-109.
Fishman, Robert. 1982. Urban utopias in the twentieth century; New York: MIT Press.
Johnson, Donald Leslie. 1990. Frank Lloyd Wright Versus America: The 1930s. New York: MIT Press.
Kazin, M., Edwards, R. & Rothman, A. 2011. The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History; New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Krohe Jr., James. 2000. Return to Broadacre City. Illinois Issues. Vol. 26, No. 4: 27-29.
March, Lionel. 1981. An Architect in Search of Democracy: Broadacre City (1970). Writings on Wright: Selected Comment on Frank Lloyd Wright, Ed. Allen H. Brooks, New York: MIT Press.
McPike, Elizabeth, et al. 2003. Education for Democracy; Washington DC: Albert Shanker Institute.
Nelson, Arthur C.1995. The Planning of Exurban America: Lessons from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City. Journal of Architectural and Planning Research. Vol. 12, No. 4: 337-356.
Özpek, Burak Bilgehan. 2006. Ayn Rand, Objectivism and Architecture. Ankara: Master’s Thesis at Middle East Technical University.
Renck, Ashley Wood. 2002. The Agrarian Myth; How Has it Affected Agricultural Policy?. Long Beach: Report Presented at Western Agricultural Economics Association Annual Meeting.
Weesjes, Elke. 2011. Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 -1959). United Academics Journal of Social Sciences, Architecture and Environmental Psychology, 2011, Vol. 1 Issue 5: 1-10.
Wright, Frank Lloyd. 1932. The Disappearing City. New York: Stratford Press.
Wright, Frank Lloyd. 1935. Broadacre City: a New Community Plan. Architectural Record. Vol. 77, Issue 4: 345-349.
Wright, Frank Lloyd. 1958. The Living City. New York: Horizon Press.
Brewster, Mike. Frank Lloyd Wright: America’s Architect. Business Week (The McGraw-Hill Companies). Online: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jul2004/nf2004 0728_3153_ db078.htm, Retrieved 20.02.2015
Sdoutz, Frank. Broadacre City model 1934 – 35. Online: http://www.media architecture.at/architekturtheorie/broadacre_city/2011_ broadacr e_city_en.shtml, Retrieved 4.05.2015.
Kats, Anna and Tan, Dion. What Might Have Been: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Strange Urban Vision at MoMA. Online: http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story /1006695/what-might-have-beenfrank-lloyd-wrights-strange-urban-vision#, BLOUINARTINFO, Retrieved 12.04.2015.
