Frank Lloyd Wright, Myat Aung Main Menu

City Planning

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Although renowned for designing residences and public buildings, Frank Lloyd Wright also had a vision of creating planned communities and cities. He envisioned the revolution of existing cities, a few of which include Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Baghdad, Iraq. Pittsburgh was a 19th century industrial city that was built on various rivers. Wright planned to build a civic center in the current Point Park in downtown Pittsburgh. His plan was to create a communal recreation center with civilians doing various forms of activities in the same place since he believed in the community coming together as a whole. Had this plan were to be manifested, it would have become a place comparable to a post-apocalyptic miniature city. Wright also planned to recreate the architecture of Baghdad in Iraq. He had created plans for an opera house and a parking lot inspired by the gardens of Babylon. The buildings have circular openings, horizontal museums, and grand spherical bazaars comparable to his visions for the Pittsburgh Point Park Civic Center. On the other hand, he introduced his own ideas of what an ideal city should be in the 20th century America. His visions were never brought to life, but his ideas on revolutionizing American cities were rather exorbitant. His designs were in fact influenced by systematic grid patterns in American cities, such as Oak Park, IL, where he built his early home and studio. Roads in cities during the early 1900s were built in grid iron patterns, dividing up the lands using latitude and longitude lines.

Wright called his vision the Broadacre City. The plans for the Broadacre City were made during 1932, but the drawings and model were reproduced later at an exhibition in 1935. A few components of his city include apartments, market areas, multiple transportation per family, skyscrapers, gas stations, and unique features, such as the Sugar Loaf Mountain. In Wright’s mind, this city promised its residents autonomy and self-reliance with segregated communities, placed away from major industrial zones while drones are patrolling the city in the air. Being designed assuming that public transportation would be a commodity in the future, Frank Lloyd Wright’s plan for the Broadacre City does not allow a proper pedestrian life, but on intricately designed highways for faster transportation. The city is completely dependent on automobiles, trains, and flying mobiles that are all designed by Wright himself.

In general, as with many other 20th century urbanism, his concept of the Broadacre City is to isolate the residential areas to unite his concept of a home to nature, separated from the stressful lives of work and industry with the idea in mind that cities would continue to be decentralized. However, what Wright did not consider was the potential failure of his idea of dispersing the density of a city. By spreading out the commercial areas away from the residences, Wright mistakenly gives the city an opposite effect overpopulated the society in one area, making it more difficult to  .

Wright’s other plan was to reunite and reform America without foreign influences, and thus, he coined the term Usonia. Usonia was Frank Lloyd Wright’s vision of the revolutionized American urban setting that is free of any foreign architectural influence. Usonian homes are typically small L shaped plans that are accessible for the middle class citizens. This ideology was more successful than his former visions for the Broadacre City as the plans came to life for the most part after taking surveys that would result in cooperative houses and plans. Some of the Usonian homes were built, with some variations on the plans. A Usonian environment was actualized in Pleasantville, a small town in New York. The city, according to Wright, would have been filled with centralized circular plots with Usonian homes in each land.


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