The FLW Building Conservancy’s 2008 Conference will be held in Western Pennsylvania, September 17-21. The conference theme is “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Roots of Sustainability”, and it is clear that they are hoping for a sophisticated and nuanced view of Wright’s attitude towards, and legacy in the various issues today lumped under the term “sustainability”.
From the Call for Papers:
Wright frequently arrived at solutions of a sustainable nature that seem remarkably prescient today. Such innovations as nature-based site planning, interior day lighting, radiant and passive solar heating, natural evaporative air cooling, interior plantscaping, lumber-saving “frameless” construction, earth-sheltered construction, “sun traps” to illuminate basements, and semi-subterranean designs for the Arizona desert are just some of his many solutions to problems that today are identified as “sustainable.” Thus Wright’s nature-based architecture is powerfully relevant to current sustainability concerns on both innovative and symbolic levels.
Despite these achievements, Wright was also deeply attached to principles that foreshadowed suburban sprawl and run directly counter to the goals of today’s sustainability movement including his promotion of the automobile and the single-family house, and a vision of the United States as a vast landscape of Usonian communities.
In truth, Wright was too interested in ideas, pure artistry and the possibilities of new materials and technologies, to be preoccupied with the narrow confines of sustainable design, yet, his achievements in the realm of a “green architecture” are remarkable. All of which provokes us to ask – just what is Frank Lloyd Wright’s relationship to sustainability?
It’s early yet, and the schedule of events has not been set, but clear your calendar.
The full text of the Call for Papers lies below the jump.
From the Call for Papers:
Wright frequently arrived at solutions of a sustainable nature that seem remarkably prescient today. Such innovations as nature-based site planning, interior day lighting, radiant and passive solar heating, natural evaporative air cooling, interior plantscaping, lumber-saving “frameless” construction, earth-sheltered construction, “sun traps” to illuminate basements, and semi-subterranean designs for the Arizona desert are just some of his many solutions to problems that today are identified as “sustainable.” Thus Wright’s nature-based architecture is powerfully relevant to current sustainability concerns on both innovative and symbolic levels.
Despite these achievements, Wright was also deeply attached to principles that foreshadowed suburban sprawl and run directly counter to the goals of today’s sustainability movement including his promotion of the automobile and the single-family house, and a vision of the United States as a vast landscape of Usonian communities.
In truth, Wright was too interested in ideas, pure artistry and the possibilities of new materials and technologies, to be preoccupied with the narrow confines of sustainable design, yet, his achievements in the realm of a “green architecture” are remarkable. All of which provokes us to ask – just what is Frank Lloyd Wright’s relationship to sustainability?
It’s early yet, and the schedule of events has not been set, but clear your calendar.