On a hot summer day in southwest Wisconsin, I discovered modern architecture. Or I realized it had always been around me, and now saw it for the first time. Taliesin was the beginning of sorts, which connected me to my first house. So one of the first things I did upon arriving in San Francisco three years ago was look up every Frank Lloyd Wright building in the Bay Area.
The Marin Civic Center was built after Frank Lloyd Wright’s death. Construction was overseen by Aaron Green, Wright's lead architect in California. Wright emulated the rolling hills of Marin in his design, two bridges linked at a large dome in the middle of the buildings, each bridge formed from a fractal-like repetition of arches.
Upon entering one of the long halls that run the full length of each building, I was struck by the highly polished floor, and sparse detailing, unusual for Wright (and perhaps a reflection that he wasn't around to add detail in response to the demands of construction).
The skylight flooded the hall with light, and for much of the length of the hall, a central planter burst with trees and plants of all sizes, to the point where it almost felt as if I was in a tropical conservatory.
You could feel the humidity increase due to the plants, and it was quite nice.
The two bridges form long halls of three levels each, with a central skylight and atrium running the length of both buildings. Each level opened to the central hall, and each level was slightly stepped back from the level below it, creating a forced perspective that increased the sense of the height.
Wright used this same idea in the Guggenheim museum in New York (although he added the controversial circular ramp in the Guggenheim):
The upper levels of the Civic Center are filled with city municipal offices. Here, two employees discussed an issue overlooking the atrium.
The end of the long hall featured another small planter, a circular leather seating area ringed in light, and a final opening that suggested a continuation of the shape beyond the greenery.
We ate lunch at the cafe on the third level, and stepped outside to the terrace, in which a small pond was surrounded by a garden. A tall and slender golden triangular spire, with strong asian influences, emerged from the terrace, at the intersection of the two bridges.
It was painted in golden reflective paint.
I am not partial to Wright’s experiments with circular forms near the end of his career, but this building grew on me. Wright often placed notches or blocks along the eaves of his houses, like Japanese architecture, which I find quite affecting for their simplicity yet intricate woodworking, and rhythm. The repeated parallel lines are pleasing to the eye. But when simply converted to spheres, the repeating parallel lines are lost, and they resemble lights on a old movie theater sign, or a carnival-esque atmosphere.
The color scheme also reflected the early 1960’s more than I cared for (pink, light blue, yellow gold), and the building as a whole lacked the carefully placed details Wright is known for, but I still had affection for the arching forms by the time we left.
It’s likely a good thing Wright did not live to see what emerged not much more than 15 years after his death — post modernism’s ahistorical mashup of styles and forms exaggerated to the point of parody. As infuriating as Wright found Mies and Corbusier (he once described them as two flies buzzing around his head — perhaps more apt a description of the size of his head than anything else) they had a lot more in common with him than he cared to admit.
The Marin Civic Center was also a reminder of how quickly Wright’s command over the field of American architecture fell by the wayside when his practice was left to his proteges, such as Aaron Green. This is not necessarily an indictment of Green — several of his houses show novel experimentation with form, and an extension of Wright’s style. Perhaps Wright’s best draftsman, John Howe, also brought true vision to Wright’s ideas, especially in his masterpiece, Sankaku, in Burnsville, Minnesota. But even the best often appeared to be mere iterations, and a decade after Wright’s death, they largely fell silent in the national conversation over what form would predominate next.
Perhaps this is a testimony to the towering genius of Wright, and his ease of creating unending new designs, of pushing beyond all prior restraints. One wonders how Wright would have fared today, with a revival of interest in all things mid-century, organic architecture, and hand crafted forms. One also wonders how Wright would have soared with modern engineering and computer aided design. But, of course, my favorite of his buildings are his houses. He may have worked best on the most intimate of scales. I’ll post next about the Hanna House on the Stanford campus.
All pictures, except for Google Earth view and roof notch detail, are by the author.