Unity Temple may thus be seen as the decisive formal and conceptual synthesis of Wright’s development as an architect, fusing his philosophical search for the moral meaning of geometry, his struggle to define a generative relationship with architectural history, his endeavours to develop an appropriate American monumentality, and his own sequential design process in which each design is conceived as a variation on an evolving ideal.
Robert McCarter
Essay coming. . . .
She takes our breath even as she lifts our spirits, Winged Victory, Niké of Samothrace, once a votive offering from a now defunct religion, a memorial, perhaps, to a naval battle won long ago, long since forgotten. Or rather not all of her, not the full statue, but the assembled fragments we know and have known for well over a century, who still inspires us to think of flight, our imaginations, our spirit propelled by her incompletion, by how she might be made whole, by what might yet lie before her, might yet exist above, beyond.
ASPIRATION
TRUTH
NOBILITY
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building, completed 1906, solid and firmly anchored yet energetic in its interlocking masses, takes us back a century ago to past enterprise, to values of another time, to maxims voiced to fortify our character and raise our spirits. It lifts us in a different way, engages us in, releases us from its ponderous and self-pondering mass, also encourages us to look forward, look up.
SIMPLICITY
TENACITY
STABILITY
But this corner pier of the surrounding wall is all that remains of the building today, and it had to be rebuilt.
ADVERSITY
REFINEMENT
SYMPATHY