Considering Right and Wrong in the Land of Wright

"Saguaro" stained glass window at the Arizona Biltmore Resort.

Sickness often has a strange effect on me, one in which the world seems to move in slow motion. My senses are heightened, if only in the sense that perceptions seem deeper and more meaningful. Time slows down and I see more than usual.

Last week when I was suffering from a sore throat and severe cold, I spent part of the time reading a book from cover to cover, not able to do much else, and the words and ideas resonated. It reminded me of reading James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man when I had the flu many years ago. The work made an impression that has stayed with me to this day. Over the weekend, feeling slightly better, Andy and I stayed in Scottsdale with our friends Dennis and Eliza. At their home, I worked on a puzzle in progress of a Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass window, called “Saguaro.” The intricacies of the colors and tiny squares were somewhat maddening, but now and again I could just see the pieces and where they fit without even trying. It gave me a new perspective on Wright, and the mind he had for symmetry and shape and color. His designs were incredibly bold, yet disciplined at the same time.

Now that Andy and I are in the process of looking at homes, I think of Wright and how he must have been aghast at much of the useless features of many houses. A few days ago, we saw a bank-owned house in an upscale area that was the ugly child of the neighborhood. The house was clearly designed by the owner, who had no clue of what he or she was doing. It combined a faux stone skirt on the bottom of the house with vinyl siding, modern architectural flourishes in the high ceilings with Art Deco light fixtures that clashed with the stone facing work. When I described it to a builder I met in the neighborhood, along with the leaky roof and structural flaws, he said it was the kind of house he’d torn down several times. He called it “Jethro Bodean meets Frank Lloyd Wright architecture.”

I learned much of what I know about Wright through a PBS biography program and through touring Taliesin West, the school and home Wright built on the outskirts of what’s now Scottsdale. It happens to be just a few miles from where our friends live. Taliesin demonstrates Wright’s adherence to a philosophy that architecture should blend with the location and environment in which it is located. His construction was “green” long before the term existed, taking advantage of water recycling, cool stone, sunken structures and low buildings with high ceilings to draw away the heat. Some of the buildings had tent-like roof buildings that allowed the air to enter and circulate.

A play about Wright that Andy and I saw in New York, called “Frank’s Home,” gave a perspective on his life in the West as he re-established himself after losing everything and having his reputation marred by cost overruns and a disastrous home construction in a Phoenix-area valley, in which the house was filled with mud when a flash flood brought a raging river through it. The defining moment in the play is when the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which Wright designed to be earthquake-proof, withstands the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, which flattened everything else in the city.

Though greatly flawed as a person in many ways, and no fan of religion, Wright did have a moral compass when it came to design. He stood his ground and would not be swayed when he knew something was wrong in what a person wanted in a design. Sometimes our flaws, even our sicknesses, can bring out something within us that is rare and precious and though we may not necessarily have sought it, it defines us and improves us. While I completely disagree with the Ayn Rand school of selfishness being good, I do believe there is value in purity of thought, which is what I think Wright possessed when it came to his special gift.

Wright demonstrated a passionate love of form, a love of structure, and a love of nature that comes through in his work. He may not have built houses with roofs that were always leak-proof, nor would he always build economically or even always judiciously (what is practical about the Guggenheim?) but he did build with love.

Some people may consider Jesus a namby-pamby figure for promoting loving each other, and even our enemies. But like Wright, it takes a lot more guts to maintain love in the face of hatred or bigotry or criticism or violence than it does to surrender to hate. To love others, you must love yourself, and in that sense Rand had something right. It may sound selfish, but self-love is a commandment, as we all are a part of God, carrying His spirit within. Some may view religion and spirituality as a weakness, but standing up against a materialistic world with so many people falling into a moral abyss, and loving them in spite of that, can be the bravest thing you can do.