Sunday, March 08, 2009

pattern language

Frank Lloyd Wright's mark, expressed on the placard
outside his Oak Park studio and again, later, in the
sconces at the Robie House (1909) in Hyde Park.

A square enclosing a circle intersected by a cross.

Posting by cameraphone.

5 comments:

  1. I'm a novice - what does this mean? Is there a certain significance to these forms as they are together? Or did he just think it looked nice?

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  2. my goodness -- you certainly had quite a weekend! well spent.

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  3. not in an esoteric masonic way or anything ;) -- FLW's architecture is saturated with explicit geometries -- I can't cite Wright on the mark that he made for himself, but I suspect it had something to do with the fundamental strength of these simple forms -- the circle, the square and the cross hairs -- that appealed to him.

    his hallmark urn is a volumetric expression of these same three »

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  4. If you hadn't identified it as FLW's mark, I would have understandably assumed that this was a form of the sun cross or sun wheel, which has been found in marks dating well back into prehistory.

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  5. super cool.

    I don't doubt that FLW was familiar with the sun cross.

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