FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND TALIESIN WEST.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT...ARCHITECTURE: ORGANIC EXPRESSION OF THE NATURE OF ARCHITECTURE AND THOU, AMERICA

Thou too surroundest all

Embracing carrying welcoming all. Thou too

By pathways broad and new approach the Ideal

The measured faiths of other lands

The grandeurs of the past are not for Thee But grandeurs of Thine own Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, comprehending all

All in all to all

Give me O God to sing that thought Give me give him or her I love this quenchless faith in Thee

Whatever else withheld, withhold not from us

Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in time and space What Is Nature? Nature is fate.

Fate has a countenance. That countenance, in Arizona as elsewhere, is the great countenance of principle. Sun, earth, sky and star; snow, moon and flower; storms; the forest, mountain, desert and streams; birds, fishes, and the animals; all are but expressions of the great Nature Countenance we see from the outside.

If we wish to go within to understand the nature of these expressions of the great countenance we call on the Astronomer with his telescope, the Alchemist with his knowledge of potent essences or we go to school to the Scientist with his microscope. And we should get a little nearer Nature with our Architect.

But only out of or into our own hearts the great Artist Philosopher and Poet must come to go deeper than Science can yet go if we are to know the profound significance to man of the great Nature Countenance as Architecture. And it is the Art, Philosophy, and Poetry of this an organic architecture that goes deepest into structure to discover the working of Principle in the building of the great building we call a civilization.

Reality is ever and always the nature of Nature but, to distinguish ourselves, we continue to assume and refer to a Human Nature because in such civilization, as we have knowncivilization, fails precisely because it has not been made integral with, nor even natural to, Nature. Our civilization itself therefore, it still, in the affair of culture antagonistic assumption?

Have all attempts to build the fruitful life of a society failed because of such antagonism? Yes.

All have ended in eventual downfall, as History and monumental ruins scattered over the face of the globe serve to prove. Appearing again and again in different guise under different names but essential thought unchanged, civilizations have followed one another to the universal tomb.

Democracy was a real first change in civilized thought. Therefore democracy became a challenge to the monarchic past or communist present that our stateism today feels it must meet and defeat. The old order is always afraid of the new. But the new has no occasion to be afraid of the old.

Our attempt to build a democracy in order that Democracy may build, should result in a free and independent civilization, able no matter how afraid to hold together from within. The time has come when, if we are ever to have Peace in which to develop and cherish what the human heart now holds most dear the sovereignty of the individual it is only the true nature of the human ego, living, strong and noble, that will be the safe basis for our civilization. As Architects or Statesmen we must go nearer to fundamental Nature to learn principle and draw more simple, because more fundamental, designs. We should realize by now that peace has never been won and can never be won by violence. Force has never organized anything but eventual defeat. We should know that constant recourse and continual reference to the principles of Nature, making them manifest to man, is for us the only true education - the only safe way to take in any attempt at civilization is the organic way. Especially so now when mechanism, more and more commercialized, renders our lives standardized, so more vicarious. Force is again, as always, able to organize nothing, but may destroy everything.

Man sees deeper into Nature not only by hindsight, but chiefly by mind-sight the inner-eye we call the curiosity of imagination. So seeing men learn that heated iron may be safely hammered, but no stick of dynamite. Only by so seeing into Nature can men discover that trying to win Peace by War is like hammering dynamite-if nature means Nature. But seeing with the inner-eye is rare seeing even yet. Napoleon admitted the military mind is a dead mind. Militocracy really sees nothing but itself and now equalitarianism in America is a kind of militocracy in itself to which we are now only too liable. The inner Vision of the Creative Artist it is still that strips away what lies abundant (and redundant) upon the surface of all things: sees the obvious realisms everywhere exhuberant, instead of seeing profound realities. Behind the characteristic outpouring of "effects" the creative-mind must seek the basic patterns of construction in the FORM of whatever is. There but within lie the patterns of being which he uses by abstraction. Such abstractions are architecture. Organic architecture is not only symphonic but is synthesis inevitable to any culture of any civilization. We may, therefore, now learn to so build that all abstractions are patterns true to organic (or innate) structure. If we do not discover and demand this safe foundation for our lives as well as for our buildings, destruction will continue to be the ultimate of any attempt we may make to establish a happy civilization no matter how sophisticated and "powerful" we become by way of more and more material riches.

CONQUEST OF THE DESERT: TALIESIN WEST UPON THE RIM OF THE WORLD

When Rome was at perihelion how many Romans could (or would) see that because of what was happening by way Principle is the universal pulse the ever-moving, basicinner-rhythm of all being. To the creative architect this working of principle is Nature manifest is Cosmic Law. Man then sees universal law giving sequence, validity and consequence to the immediate or consequent patterns of all life whether mineral, vegetable, animal or human; and principle it is that gives true countenance to either a man, a building or a civilization. We already have a word for this deeper penetration. We call it vision. Vision alone is prophetic. Vision grasps and unmasks, reveals by way of man's abstraction the interior realities behind exterior appearances. It is by this search for the integral character in all things that the man may discern, perhaps discovers, the poetry of innate order and declares order to be "Heaven's first law". No, not the classic-order of obvious symmetry with its fixation of major and minor axis, a militarosis which has imprisoned man as a mere thing, so long lost, but the more natural order which lies in the reflex (in the great "in-between") and gives the great, great nature its countenance and significance. Everywhere, as in Democracy, the true expressions of that inner countenance, however gracious or perhaps terrifying, are always humanly significant. All man-made FORM whether Architecture, Music, Poetry, Painting, or any of the many of

value it eventually has, or ever really had. To cherish as FORM the good, the true, the beautiful, this should be civilization. To the degree that principle is inviolate in the forms we may distinguish the Beautiful from the merely Curious. To the degree that Principle is so violated we have ugliness or a mere curiosity. When principle is confused with expediency we may have the curious but never will have the beautiful. That is why if true Democracy is to arrive and survive as "American," we must learn to draw with surer hand the line between the merely Curious and the truly Beautiful. A Scientist cannot be expected to draw that line. Beyond the mere mathematics of "classic" or obvious-symmetry only the artist can make sure work of placing that line where it belongs for Humanity. Then only, do we have the useful interpretation of dynamic life, which we have the right to call the culture of a safe and sane Civilization. Without such inner vision made FORM by their own choice and will, the people perish. Without this vision the more successful Science becomes, it can only hasten destruction the more. Even Religion is powerless to inspire a people

without the Image! That is to say without recourse to great Art and Architecture. Constant reference to the principles of Nature is the only sure basis of the true Image whether in Arizona, Africa or the South-Sea Isles. Right or wrong, ethics in line with the principles of Nature never do go wrong. Morality often does go wrong because morality is only some approximation of ethics which is changing as customs change. There are fashions in morality, too. There are none in ethics: none in Nature.

Upon the innate validity of the Nature-pattern of Principle which we are here calling the "abstraction," whether seen in human thought, conduct or in our works of Art has from time immemorial depended whatever integrity of FORM has ever existed, or may ever exist in any civilization past, present or to come. The validity, ability and excellence of the creative artist as prophetic of his own people continues to depend upon the profound concordant simples to which, in his work, he may refer and by his knowledge of them, resolve these confusing externalities of man, strip all appearances of specious realisms in order to express this abundant reality simply, in terms of innate organic character. The greater artist is he who enables us to see most clearly the infinite rhythms of the cosmic order as a clean integrity in the terms of whatever he does for our everyday life.

This inner sense is the integrity of Individuality, of which our forefathers dreamed, that is the Character of Art and Architecture.

Then "Character is Fate" and Fate is but principle at work as individuality.

SPACIOUS DESERT-DWELLING FOR MR. AND MRS. HAROLD C. PRICE

The buildings here pictured represent Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's recent contribution to the civilization of Arizona. Beginning with the construction of the Biltmore by the McArthur brothers in 1927 and the subsequent planning of the "Desert-resort-for-tired millionaires" for Dr. Alexander Chandler near Chandler, Arizona, came the building of the architect's camp on the Maricopa Mesa about 26 miles from Phoenix, 1938. The Pauson House, now a picturesque ruin, was built about 1939. Then came the little Ray Carlson dwelling in 1949. Plans for a dwelling for Doctor Paul Palmer were not executed nor were the plans for Dr. Canary's Southwest Christian Seminary. The citrus orchard concrete-block dwelling for David Wright came in 1951. The Usonian block system enclosed a concrete-block cottage for Benjamin Adelman in 1953 and the mountain cottage for Jorgine Boomer was built of desert materials the same year. The fireproof mountain rendezvous for Mr. and Mrs. Harold Price high up on the new golf-course at Camelback was finished last year. In preparation are mountain dwellings for Robert Herberger on a hill at the base of the McDowell range and for Thomas Kelland on Mummy Mountain as well as many other projects varied in nature located around about Phoenix.

The views seen here were selected from among hundreds of excellent photographs but all fail more or less to render the natural charm of these natural buildings. All belong in the category of original modern architecture begun by Frank Lloyd Wright as early as 1893 on Midwest Prairie, now known worldwide as originals of American architecture. This early "Organic Architecture" is the basis of most "modern" archictecture as seen in the world today.

The amount of work done by Mr. Wright during the past sixty years seems endless, some six hundred and seventy structures are already from his own hand. Presented are a few of this great series of designs widely representing nearly every phase of modern building.

Organic architecture has a direct relationship to the site. Whatever the site may be, organic architecture recognizes its nature. All buildings designed by this same hand would not fail to add a freshness and practibility, a dignity to the beauty of our state for whatever purpose they might be designed. This

Appropriate character is a Wrightian feature of every one of the more than 670 buildings this architect has contributed to the culture of his nation a contribution now known as Americanarchitecture around the world and awarded highest honors by official East or West. Thorough practicability combined with such unique but consistent effects as are seen in this limited group of buildings is what has made them all enduring examples of good building practice throughout this country. Many youngaspirants in Architecture now flock to Taliesin West (the winter home and workshop on the Maricopa Mesa near Phoenix) to become familiar with the practice and principles that made these buildings what they are now-leaders in the architectural thought of the world. Contrary to a prevailing impression these buildings are not difficult to build nor extravagant in cost. They compare favorably in cost with those buildings now standing around about them.

COTTAGE FOR THE BENJAMIN ADELMANS: USONIAN-AUTOMATIC TYPE INTERIOR VIEW OF DINING AREA AND WORKSPACE

STONE AND REDWOOD MOUNTAIN COTTAGE FOR JORGINE BOOMER THE RAYMOND CARLSON DWELLING

DAVID WRIGHT PATIOHOUSE IN CITRUS GROVE AT THE FOOT OF CAMELBACK MOUNTAIN