 Okay, we're back for a live. It's 11 11 a.m It's on a given Tuesday and we have Kevin newt from the school of architecture at UH Manoa very important school Very important professor there. Hi Kevin. Welcome to the show. Let's talk Morning day. Nice to be back Well, I'm here to talk about your country and kind of my country's best known architect Frank Lloyd Wright and I would argue justifiably the the best known American architect He's been dead for more than well over 50 years now, but Nobody really has come close to his reputation and I spent a large chunk of my career looking at his particular relationship with Japan and Specifically what he learned from Japan It was a source of speculation for for many decades Because he spent time there and collected Japanese prints, but nobody really Look seriously at what exactly did he learn and how did it relate to his work? In in the US, so that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Um, he's for those who don't know He's the designer of icons like falling water the Cookin High Museum in New York You know buildings that even if you don't know the architect you probably know that building and hundreds of others and prodigiously productive, so If we could bring up the the first image This is the first building that I believe that right would have first Japanese building that right would have experienced It's the one of the bottom Which was built by the Japanese government in South Chicago in Jepsen Park and remain there for 50 years So right had An example on his doorstep for half a century This was 25 years before he ever set foot in Japan for the first time in 1905 and if we go to the next image we can see on the left the plan of the Phoenix Hall the building that was built in Chicago and below it is the plan of Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and You can see that well, they're different but one could be extruded from the other now there's no way to prove this but this was an Imperial building and Right would have been smart to base that plan on a classical Japanese example on the right We see An ordinary Japanese house published in a well-known book Japanese homes and their surroundings and right appears in the 1930s to have based a model house on that plan But in in a way that had different spatial relationships, which I'll talk about in a moment most Strikingly right visited a well-known tourist spot about a hundred miles north of Tokyo in 1905 and he looked at the The Toshogu, which is the the famous building there, but also if we look at the next image the the building top left is the Nikotayu in and He came back Wright comes back in 1905 To Oak Park and the Oak Park Unitarian Church gets hit by lightning that summer Wright's replacement Looks very different externally, but if you look at the plans of the two They're almost identical. That's the three-part plan In this case in Wright's case. He makes the entrance in the middle So there are these direct formal relationships not so much in the three-dimensional Appearance of these buildings, but at a deeper level of the underlying plan If we go to the next couple of images, well, I can just finish up on Some examples where there appears to be a family resemblance, but it that way Bottom left is a gashow. She's Japanese or praying type of Japanese farmhouse and on the bottom right is Wright's Unitarian Church in Madison, Wisconsin and If you look at the angles, you know, the angle of prayer in Japan is more vertical and in the West as you know Not quite the same But there are some parallels and one wonders if there was a direct relationship that Wright would have known of what that word gashow meant Last slide in this sequence looks at a range of images on the left an obscure little temple that projects out into Lake Biwa in central Western Japan and an unbuilt wedding chapel that Wright built for the Claremont Hotel Probably a good thing that he didn't build it in this case the Claremont for anyone who knows it is is In Oakland or on the border of Oakland and a beautiful structure I'm not sure this would have added to it, but then an example on the right This is how you would top right is how you would have traditionally entered the Heian Kaku a building which is now in the grounds of Higashi Honganji temple in in Kyoto and this is the way that well you don't enter falling water this way But falling water has this extraordinary staircase that goes nowhere. It just goes down to the to the brook to the stream and Clay Lancaster a scholar who wrote the book on Japanese influence in America quite literally he first brought up this parallel So as you can see there are some direct kind of formal relationships And that was I think something that wasn't as clear before people thought the that there was a quotes Japanese feel or aesthetic to Wright's work and one of the things that came out of that early work was well, you know, there are actually some direct plan Influences there the big part of what came out of that work though was was less to do with specific buildings coming from Japan Although that was interesting and particularly in the way that right borrowed those In a way that didn't produce something that looked in anything in any way Japanese and yet the sources in some cases are quite clear And I think there's a lot to be learned in the conversation about cultural appropriation or the difference between that and misappropriation from those examples But if you go to the next image, this is how I believe that right learned or interpreted the meaning of the term organic, I won't go into the background but Organic in the late part of the 19th century was interpreted by people like Emmanuel Kant and many Western other Western philosophers as meaning Something that was split into parts that were interdependent. So, you know, all of our organs are Interdependent and we can't really lose many of them without the whole dying off basically so so that's the basic meaning and Right, I believe he refers to the image on the left by Katsusika Hokusai a print artist And you can see how a natural form is being produced by geometrical shapes And right does something very similar in both his plans and his decorative designs where there are these overlap Lapping interlocking forms which he described as organic and many people especially when he was using Rectilinear geometry, we're very confused by that sort of how could squares and triangles possibly be organic and the answer is Well, it wasn't so much the geometry as their interdependent relationship. So if you go to the next image We see a traditional interlocking square pattern that you would see on Japanese Shoji, for example And then here's the the life house that we saw earlier and this shows how the interior space is actually interlock He's removed the the walls where the rooms would Of overlapped and you get a very different kind of spatial Signature and this interpenetrating space became rights kind of architectural signature then but he was seeing that as organic in the meaning or in the sense of Interdependent so interdependence gets interpreted as interlocking or overlapping. So just look at the last three images This is an example of Hokusai again breaking the conventional picture frame suggesting that space Represented or made space and real space then are not this continuous that the frame You know, it's just an arbitrary separation right does almost exactly the same thing in his renderings where he sets up a Strong frame only to break it to send a message that space is continuous and then if we go to the next image year then We see the same thing in rights renderings where the frame is starting to get eroded And what he's saying is that the space the pictorial space and the space that we're in as viewers is one and the same That we're actually in in the frame in the view With the building and if we go to the final image then that gets translated from picture frame at the top picture frame and conventional architectural plan to a broken picture frame where things come in and out of the frame that don't normally Get to do that and then finally in rights mature architectural plans is your sony and houses then There are objects that aren't usually found inside buildings treat tree trunks and Building parts that aren't usually found outside like walls and columns And he starts to blur he breaks that architectural box then something who is very proud of Again sending the message that the maid and the natural are Continuous that there that it's a false separation when we draw a line and say well, this is culture and this is nature so That's kind of why I think he's important that relationship has become Between human beings and the natural environment obviously in the last two decades sustainability has become a massive issue And at least formally and to some extent ecologically Right was already hinting at that in the 1930s, which was way ahead of the curve That we are Intimately inevitably connected with the natural environment and he was trying to get his buildings to send that message The other big lesson I think as I touched upon was How does one borrow how does one learn from another culture without Running foul or being accused of this dreadful thing that's emerged in the last 20 years cultural appropriation which really this Today's talk is is or discussion is is really the precursor to another one that will look at that issue specifically So that's what I made of right in Japan or what I think that right made of the lesson of Japan Is Japan and everything he did not everything but I think The relationship or the debt to his interpretation of The notion of organic was in everything. So to that extent Jay, I'd say Yes, in a way because the organic applied to everything to the point where that word is has become I mean, I I don't like hearing that word because I've spent 30 years At least in architecture Looking at its meaning and it has dozens literally of different meanings, but rights was was fairly clear interdependence so Pretty big, you know Right himself said that if you took Japanese prints away from his education He doesn't know what his career would have looked like and I would I wouldn't differ from that He would have been a well-known architect whether he would have been the same. I just don't know but I'd like to think Maybe not. I think that this was he was a magpie as architects are they learn from everything But I would argue that Japan was much bigger than many the other influences that The right was was subjective What was this exposure and how long did he live there and what did he study? Yeah? well, he never studied for formally but He made multiple trips. He would have spent about three and a half years in total but that's about five or six different trips Jay and The longest time was building the Imperial Hotel But the earliest trip was 1905 and he left finally just before the great counter earthquake in 1922 23 so Like I say three and a half years He never really learned the language And you he actually describes in his writings how in Japan Unlike in Chicago where he hated all the neon signs where they wore him out on the out and In Japan he contrasts that and says it was a it was a blessing not to know the alphabet that he could enjoy all these wonderful paper lanterns with their Chinese characters on As pure form because he didn't understand, you know He wasn't burdened with meaning and he described this as being eye-minded and that's really the way he looked at Japanese culture or not through the lens of a scholar or somebody who really understood it. He understood it in his own way But he never described himself as as as a scholar, you know, he was a he was an artist and And a pretty good one. Well, when did he get famous? Was it in this period or a long after? Oh, he was he was becoming known Around 1900 but he had been Initially employed in Chicago by a fairly Respected but not particularly well-known architect called Joseph Sillsby who actually played a key role in connecting right to Japan Joseph Sillsby's cousin was the then leading Western expert on Japanese art Ernestino Loza So even though he may not have learned much architecturally boy, that was an important connection Then he works right for Louis Sullivan and gets fired for doing private houses on on the quiet Which there's a long tradition of that in architecture and probably in lots of other professions, you know Don't steal your boss's clients. Otherwise expect consequences So, you know right is is out on his own and the one thing he had that Sullivan didn't have Among many things was this connection to Japan. I think it really did Enable him to come out from under Louis Sullivan's big shadow and So the early part of the 20th century right when Right makes his first trip to Japan 1905 is when he starts right after that. He starts to get this The Oak Park studio and the Prairie style houses really become a thing And then he ruins it all and becomes famous for all the wrong reasons by running off with a client's wife You know, unfortunately, that's all that some people want to know about him But But you know, I I've talked about rights debt to Japan and I'll have people come up the end and say oh so he wasn't original after all which kind of drove me crazy because my the lesson that I get from all this is the real meaning of originality is is Connecting things that already existed in a unique way in a way that's never existed You know, there really is nothing new under the Sun, but it's everything is is new combinations So I don't I I regard this is is incredibly creative and original But artists don't often talk about their sources for precisely that reason because they get misinterpreted as like unoriginal and copying and and None of what I've shown you I would regard in is a God it is incredibly sophisticated to take a plan and put it But one that works one that is related Into that plan alter it strategically to make it work And that by the time right was finished these were Even even the Japanese would be hard-pressed to On the Japanese Japanese they appreciate him while he was there did they appreciate him after it did they see themselves in his work Did they see his work as an as an influence on the architecture in Japan? Do you see? Frank Lloyd Wright design in Japan today the simple answer to the last one is no That you know the conclusion seems to be that the right was a kind of one-off and it was hard to He had this unique style. He didn't really leave any any Prodigy here, you know that who could many disciples, but nobody who really rivaled his His ability or or his vision as for whether what was he appreciated? Yes, very much so he got a lot of flak from on the design of the Imperial Hotel for example because it's Decoration was very abstract and he's criticized for example by Anton and Raymond one of the people who work for him for this apparently meaningless Decoration which was a complete misunderstanding of the meaning of rights organic decoration was, you know When we appreciate Symphony or a flower we don't go well. That's very nice, but what does it mean? it's a purely aesthetic judgment and and Wright says in his autobiography and I believe him that you know American architects it was a sport to criticize right because he wasn't the most modest individual well But Wright said actually I believe it was a Japanese He said yeah, we appreciated the imperial and a pure hotel And we understood it which was a bit of a put down for you know The the critics on the other side of the Pacific who were who were putting it down. So he was appreciated but not really Influential in the sense of it stops with him. He had one important Japanese kind of assistant Arato Endo Who continued as an architect and but really Wright's work His style was so personal that it was very difficult. Although I would argue that The principles that he was interested in this notion of incompleteness actually is a very old Japanese ascetic principle goes back to the tea room and There are contemporary Japanese architects like Kengo kuma The guy who designed the new Olympic Stadium for example, he has a notion of anti-object where buildings shouldn't be separate independent entities, but should show some sort of Interdependence with their surroundings and if you think about that that's really pretty close to what Wright was arguing So not in a stylistic way J, but philosophically I would say that they are You know in a kind of they do have a close relationship that this notion that it's the same in Japanese society You know, we think of it the individual First and foremost as a separate independent entity. Well, it's well known. It's true in Japan Japanese term for Self is jibbon that literally translates as my part and it implies that the sense of the individual Yes, you recognize as a unique individual, but it's also your unique in contribution to a larger whole So that kind of underlying sort of philosophy J. I think there is a there is a clear relationship So, you know, I'm wondering how somebody like Frank Lloyd Wright gets to be famous I Suppose controversy is good for you. I suppose appreciation by the up-and-coming generations of architects It's good for you and and art that the people into art much less architecture if they like your work or if they Have controversy around your work. You're gonna become famous and then so over the heat What did it we he died a long time ago to say 50 years ago? Right. No, that's a that's a long time. That's in the and I suppose he was not productive at the end anyway but but I guess my question is how do you get famous in America? Let's say America. Although it's really a global question as an architect like this Is it because the the art community the architecture community likes you? Or cares about you or is it because Joe Schmoe Stands in front of one of your buildings and says I can't say why but I really like this on some Visceral level. How does that work? It's the second one, you know, you had me quite worried J We're the first one. I was like, I really hope it's not the first one You know that you have to write walls for his day. He fairly, you know ahead of his time He wrote for women's magazines, you know He knew who who helped the purse strings and you know, who cared about houses and So he would have been you know, he would have had a web page and a Twitter account and all that stuff today But it's the second one day that you can his work resonates it crosses boundaries and This is so important that you didn't have to be an architect You didn't have to know about anything to do with architecture to stand in front as you very eloquently described Of one of these buildings and go, I don't have a clue who did this or I know nothing about architecture But this talks to me somehow this person understood something about me and yet we never met and All those millions of people who used to go to Kyoto and I will again They're not experts on Japanese culture and yet they look at those temples and it resonates it crosses hundreds of years Thousands of miles and a massive cultural difference and that's so important for architects You know, I used to bleed as an architectural student. Oh, why can't the public know more about architecture? It's sort of the most Idiot kind of thing like you could possibly say The truth of course is it's the other way around that we as architects need to understand or remember what it's like to be just a regular person and and And if your buildings resonate and can speak without a long explanation, then you really are You're relevant otherwise, you know, we're in a ghetto and and Talking to ourselves. So rights work resonates and you know Japanese will come and look at his work in the States and now today all experts on organic Yeah, now today they come on. Yeah And I suppose American architects Emulate his work. Do they is there an active school so to speak? Well, there's literally a school tally s and And they they are an accredited school now I don't know the degree to which they tried it. I mean, I'm sure they I know that they try to Continue his principles without necessarily mimicking Um outside of that j. No, I a similar story. Um, you know, right style was was was inimitable and and Um, you know, you can learn at the level of principle You know emulate but not imitate But there is there is a school For one of a better term of organic architecture. Um, and they've produced Stunning work very different in many cases from rights work um But the but this weasel term organic Does tend to get interpreted in in a myriad different ways. So But it's I think it's a philosophical Notion of of incompleteness and interdependence that I regard as The one thing of of rights legacy that that continues to be relevant and more so on a daily basis that We're all that we're all connected Um, you know, he was trying to say that he would definitely very difficult medium of buildings Yeah, and the incompleteness and the framing slide that you showed us where the Things came from outside the frame things were inside the frame not customarily inside the frame Uh, there's a certain what do you want to call it discomfort? Is that the right word? It's breaking things and breaking icons And so the viewers It's it's you know, it's like bill gay with a bill gay snow zuckerberg Oh, he says, uh, you got to break things that means break the old icons break the old conventions And and he visibly does that doesn't he? Yeah, absolutely He's he's he's doing it for you know, for a reason of course, uh to to suggest this This connectedness this interdependence of of everything, you know people Of buildings and their environments You name it the parts in an organism Um, it all works together and and we're not violence, you know We can be unique, but we're also at the same time Interdependent and that you know, that's a great description of american democracy. I don't know who said it, but you know, it's kind of You get to express your your Uniqueness right up to the point where it starts to impinge on the other person's uniqueness, you know And and there are limits, right? And you have to kind of give way to that person We're learning about that. There's a boundary now Yeah Um, there there's a this notion of a sort of an interlock Where you know, the two things are are recognizably separate, but there's a a shared Um part. Yeah, absolutely, you know, um Uh, the current crisis is is um is making us realize that that um, yeah, I I'm an introvert So I don't mind spending a large amount of time on my own, but even I have limits, you know I need to talk to people. I need to you know, um We're all Interlocked interdependent and different times call for different appreciation of art and architecture It's all dynamic. Uh, maybe that's the reason why, you know, frank Lloyd Wright had a period of time In which he was the most influential of all architects, uh, but that that ends and it sort of um It embeds itself into this the string the stream of culture going forward I wanted to ask you two more things about two more slides before we close though First the first slide the very first slide Can we see the first slide for a minute with the two temples? Yeah, the one on the top really appeals to me and it's not just the quality of the drawing and the colors and all that And the reason I say that is it seems to me to be organically connected to the water There's a there's a certain balance and harmony about it. It's uh, it's embedded in the water It's part of the water the water is part of it So I say to myself, this is harmonious Um, and this is organic in my perception of the word organic. Am I right about that? I mean, how do you feel about those two drawings those two buildings? uh, yeah Appears it's an extremely famous move appears on the 10 yen coin which is on that slide That's just going to be a joke about frank Lloyd's Japanese dead, but it never happened. Um, but the I had not uh, to be honest appreciated what you what you were just saying I mean that reflection is very deliberate and and I'd not thought about it that the pool And the building are absolutely interdependent, right? If you take that pool away, it's not So I think you're right that particular building the whole door Is unusual in the sense that it's um, Elatorally symmetrical. So it's actually based on a Chinese kind of model and then eventually the Japanese Start to uh, the Japanese again, they interpreted as a way of solving Incompleteness so they would have looked at the whole den or the whole dough as rather too complete. Um, you know that it doesn't leave room for Um Right the pool But the pool of course you know And the wind, um that reflection is changing all the time. So it is, uh, you know, you're not wrong in the sense of That the building is connected to its natural environment through the pool Let me ask about that one of the slides that you had and this is the slide of the stairway Um the stairway. Can we can we call that slide for a moment? Yeah, the one the bottom right on these these slides I don't know what it is. This is this is the uninitiated non-trained person just an ordinary fellow Looking at that stairway and not particularly recognizing that it goes nowhere That's that's actually a point of discomfort to find out that it goes nowhere Um, but that's that in a in a private home That is really something that is so inviting It's almost uh Freudian. It is so inviting. It is so luscious To walk down that stairway. I mean to me that would be a a central feature in any private home Um, I'm not sure why I like it so much But as soon as I saw it when you sent those slides in I said this is a really special element in any home. Am I right? Yeah, I it as like From um because of clay lancet the dots there, you know and in the You go you approach over a upon by boat and that's how you get in Well, that's not the case. Uh, the the street There's no way you could get a boat let alone even a canoe Um onto that, you know, um, so there's no way you're coming into and fro so you're absolutely right It's it's purely to go visit with the stream to go engage with the water, which is beautiful, right? You know, it has no practical motive now. You could argue and many people would Um, who has got enough money for that kind of, you know, um indulgence Well, Edgar Kaufman, the owner of the department store in Pittsburgh would be the guy but but you're right You know the notion that you would build a staircase just to engage With the natural element Is is is wonderful with no motive of like I'm going down there because I don't have mains water and I'm gonna, you know They had mains water. It was not for practical purposes at all Um pure poetry. Yeah Kevin. It's been so nice visiting with you. I hope we can do this again I know we will do it again soon. I really enjoy your analysis and um, I I warm to it Anyway, we'll do it again kevin newts of the school of architecture at UH minoa Enriching our lives with an understanding of the world around us. Thank you so much