Memorial Union lecture: Frank Lloyd Wright: Lecture, question and answer at the Memorial Union

Of the and than than. Thank you gentlemen. From the standpoint of a speaker that was an ideal introduction. Very nice. And I'm glad to be heard talking to the juvenile mind. I was afraid that we were inviting them into the company knew the other one is ones those who have developed and those who know things. I suppose you're old satisfied to be a collection of little Know Nothings so much who are. In search of wisdom. Well time unknown nothing to them. Then I had some qualms of conscience.

I'm always accused of biting the hand that feeds me but nobody has said me tonight. And I think I can say what I please just say for instance to have a thing like this to talk into when I had all the money they needed to build a house like this is past my comprehension. Why I should have to get that little thing between me and you is something to be explained. But there is no explanation. I think before we begin to talk seriously tonight and I think we should talk seriously and respectfully to the young man to the youth of our country. We should explain the meaning of the few words that I have used

perhaps unconventional there but I think truly. I should say that the word personality needs a little elucidation. You know individuality has been regarded as a form of a good but individuality is the real you. And there's talk tonight it is that thing which is essentially you and I think it would ordinarily be referred to as a soul. The individual is something within new that stands up against the roof of your mind and there's the real you now a personality a man with a cause your countenance the way you walk or shape of your body your eyes and ears and you have nothing to do with it. You are not responsible

for your personality. You inherited it you know it came a long way from times were there from the days of man. But now it's you. And it's that you in you which you have to cultivate and develop and make into an individual others. Now that's one of those. Now the next word is democracy. What is democracy. You know that it's really the highest form of aristocracy which the world has ever seen. And why. Because it is aristocracy innate and natural to receive. And it has to be fresh in every generation and it has to be maintained every hour

of life. So democracy is not the common man. Democracy is the best available. You know this is for any purpose whatsoever and only is we have as a society in which the best is available appreciated Protech did as an individual do we have a democracy. So no barking dog no. Come up are from the lower ranks. No appeal to the baser instincts of the common man which can be considered a friend of democracy. Now on that basis we might make a political speech tonight. But let's not make it. An artist has no business in politics. He was supposed to be the most politic impolitic of all

individuals. And I think he should be and I hope he is a man is seeing a little exhibition next door's okay man. I see that the usual thing is pursing are the deformation of the individual as such. And if man dreams are dreams on that basis I feel awfully sorry for him and I feel still more sorry for those people who have to look at what he did. You see the artist has lost his whole. Once you had control once he was somebody but is nobody today as you can see by studying your university curriculum. He's nobody in particular unless you can find him in the ranks of the common man. And when the university gets to

the point where it preaches mediocrity when it stands for mediocrity when it is in itself in every respect mediocre what hope for a democracy that is headed either for communism or fascism. You can take your choice. Communism is the Ma Barker sued triumph but never rising above a fixed level. So fascism is is not by a curse isn't it. So you have the two poles of mob ocracy snob ocracy but the upper middle third in between the two where no stratification mind you as it has occurred elsewhere in the world and all but the top can come down to the middle third the bottom can come up and instead of the stratification of previous civilizations we have started something

in America which is like this. Now I suppose I am here to speak about architecture even if it is so big I know so well that I hate to talk about it and you know it's been said by most people that when a man is most of that he's people and things at least. So it's very difficult for me to stick to the topic with which I am so familiar. But I'm going to do my best and tell you what architecture in the terms in which we. Speak of it as organic place organic architecture and the thought of the modern world that is of the world today and today

mind you is all there is of yesterday which you can see and all that you can envision of tomorrow isn't it. So the present and now is what concerns us most surely. And when. Well I've just been in Mexico City. Just come back from a congress of architects from all over South America every nation was represented our nation was represented by 24 architects. The only American nation not president was Canada and I don't quite know why but among them oh it was a sin. It is unfeeling for an architecture of the present. And in Mexico City just seven

hundred and ninety million dollars to build one on that basis. Mexico City produces a university. All of the prison. Not a building harks back to the past although in some of them a pest has come forward to the present and it seems to me to put everything in our nation and the way of the university to share and I doubt if in the world anywhere today there is so great a manifestation of the determination to be somebody and something today. Well if we are going to neglect the present and hark back to the past in a new direction for architecture or for anything else that we are responsible for as human beings what are really what can we call ourselves right.

Well we could say we're generous. We could admit that we are a parasite. We certainly could not process a culture. The difference between education and culture is what I thought we might concern ourselves with tonight and it's a very important difference. Because education is on the level now of information indoctrination and all the other stations that you can imagine. And I do not think that the individual by way of our modern systems of education is cultured. I don't think the man is developed in the young

person or the woman either. Remember the crack about the old professor who every time he spoke of Mansoul you spoke of men embracing women. Well that isn't the case you see. If the individual person as such is to be developed by way of what we call his education you can't teach him much. You can't indoctrinate him. You can inform him only of those things that are not so important. If you are going to culture him it's a matter of atmosphere and matter of action a matter of doing and learning by the doing. And you cannot get it from books.

The only thing you can do with books is to read them and throw them away. And that applies to all of the books. Now a great exception rises in your mind. That would be the Bible wouldn't it. The Bible read it. Throw it away. What I would say yes as it is ordinarily read. But if you read it for the words of Jesus himself he will find there is and if you lost a lot of organic architecture. Stated the case for our going to go protector when he said The Kingdom of God is where then you. Did you ever think what that means to you.

If you ever think that no education which neglects that as a basis upon which to build what it does for you can be called a culture. Culture began without appeal and assistance to you as yourself. You is an individual. Nothing outside of you which is applied to you can do you any good. I can only make a few parrots and monkeys such as we have in our culture of the world everywhere. Our whole art has descended to the level of parrot and monkey business. Very little of it comes from within outward like the old architecture that came over here. It's a question then of taking a thing

that you like. Here there everywhere and sticking it out. Well organic architecture has arisen as a protest and a denial of that. That architecture still proceeds from within according to the nature of the thing and finds an expression germ may need to materialize to purpose to circumstance. But it's so simple a basis upon which to think and upon which to proceed. That it should seem strange if there ever was any capitulation to this thing we called it. Now as you all must know taste is simply a matter of ignorance. Taste is always a matter of ignorance. You don't know so you taste it. You see as the old lady said once you because the card was all a matter of taste

and that's about what it is. You cannot substitute taste for knowledge. And the soul may feel. But if the soul does not know the soul without that knowledge is not good. That's an old Welsh proverb. I'm giving a good song the fireplace there that really is and still my relatives put it there. Now organic architecture therefore is part of the man for the man out of the soul of the individual for the individual. Now that cannot be said of anything which is merely a matter of taste. It can be said of nothing which is not an experience. Now you know you can see the painting. You

can see it with your eyes you can hear music with your ears. You can do neither with a verse of architecture or architecture you must experience an origin and know it. And you will see all sorts of things in class in architectural class in architectural schools today. Looking through the photographs and the illustrations in the books to get something. And nothing can be got that way. You can only experience a building. Now what experience comes to you when you do see a building. How many of you know what's happening to you. How many of you feel the atmosphere of truth the majesty of simplicity. Quality is the word isn't it. While it is what we look for and what we want to feel

in everything we come in contact with to do. We can and in architecture most of all because architecture is the basis of the foundation of your culture. Now when education does something to you independent of architecture when you are sent to a collection of old buildings that look like the family wash out on the line you know without any semblance of dignity beauty or character and you become imbued by that of the host for a word. But then for your life long you're imbued with a sense of what income goody in significance a whole Larry or worse than a whole a bad smell or a real sense of beauty should live.

Now it seems to me the difference between our what we call education and what we should call culture and. Culture is in the nature of experience and education is really nature of information concerning something or other. Now how to get it really. Culture is the problem in democracy today and without architecture and the principles of architecture and without a sense of what constitutes a good building. You have no culture worth talking about. Now this is not it's said that a dentist sues everything through the teeth and and various other professions see everything according to their occupation. But architecture is not merely an occupation architecture is not a profession. Architecture is a great principle of life

and it works ceaselessly and all that you see of architecture is been thrown up on the shores and sands of time by time and piracy. And today it is the great record the means you have and the only means of knowing the quality of that civilization which is now in the grave. And it will be the same with us. We do have a clean slate. We had a great well I was going to say and heard that we didn't inherit it we took it and we killed off the inhabitants when we arrived. For what. For the thing that we represent Now if civilization were to be ended today at this present stage I was developed and I think we'd all agree that the Indians ought to come and take it back because we haven't done very much

except invent machinery series. Now in this matter of architecture the machine is important. The machine is something that must come to us if we are to have a culture and not be merely satisfied by educational processes. It must come into the hand of the creative artist who can use it. Now the machine without that control is a menace. You will have your parking problems you will have the whole set up destroyed. You have your own sense of live demoralised. Just because you can go from here to there so fast and get back safe. Maybe. You got to face this thing we call the machine facility. You know architecture. Now it has destroyed the architecture of the purse. That's very thing we call that machine.

How is it destroyed by giving us such great facilities that the old architecture is merely an impediment to make believe and some kind of shore which really has no valid use today. When steel came in and you see that it was the spiders spinning and the space became easy to expand to any direction height width or anything else. And then we got a glare which could protect us in space and all the architectures of the world by where those two facilities became inutile invalid and merely a pretense. You know the Greeks were all great. Good bad they didn't have those two things if they had them we wouldn't have to do any thinking. Never been a great blessing to us because we're not accustomed to thinking.

But if they'd heard it would they have put up columns here spaced as far apart as a stone they could get in there. I don't think so. They would have immediately where the culture they had and they were a cultured period in history they would have seen the significance of these modern materials they would have built that word and astonishes today as compared with their partner now and the limitations without glass and steel which tied them down. Well it's only an obvious feature. That's only something anybody can see in connection with this thing we're talking about building architecture. But it applies as well to all the other facilities of life which civilization should have brought to us. But you know another thing that I neglected to state in the beginning was the difference

between a culture and a civilization. You see a civilization is merely a way of life and a way of life. A culture is the way to make that way of life beautiful and I wish you'd remember that because it's quite confusing when you come to read about it. Read on this subject. You know the difference between those two things. Now where did we lose this common sense. What has become of this facility this ability to grasp the nature of things and what other thing is really worth study except the nature of the thing. Now I suppose I should have explained too that when I speak of the nature of the thing I don't mean nature in the sense of out of duress was the

nature of this microphone. What's the nature of this hand. What's the nature of this thing around my neck. That nature in philosophic senses what I mean nature with a capital then the study of nature in that sense would save us from our lives. Follow that education represents today. All you young people here in quest of something seriously. Something that's going to profit you and stand you in good stead in later life. And what could it be except the study of years somos. Now it's architecture to him and the man and woman is where architecture lives now. In the ideal of an organic architecture we have brought architecture back to the soul of man.

We brought it back to where he lives and now he can live more of truly and more richly because. All over the world today they recognize the fact that here in America architecture has had a new birth architecture has moved forward in the first place. As the condition of a culture. I happen to be doing a gold medalists today and doing this that and the other with quite some distinction of road because they've looked over here and seen that the declaration of freedom which we've made is really a possible aid really. Inevitably directly producing the first bases of a culture which is integral and indigenous.

And that is where learning how to build ourselves for ourselves with the hominid dignity and even Majesty. Well that is culture. And I cannot see how you are going to proceed into the future by way of what is and how. And achieve a democracy. We've had ample evidence that Wisconsin has lost its grip on whatever it was that then the direction of culture earners and not only by way of its university glorifying the mediocre but by way of its politics exulting more of our pursuit. Of them.

Of the known to you boys and girls or ask yourself why this happened what it is that you're responsible for this slump will say in the character and quality of the human being as such. What would you attribute it to. I've thought about it frequently cause I've tried to put my finger on what it is that happened to it. And I think it's something for you to think about. But you're not going to arrive at a problem no are possible and so until you become acquainted with the fact that architecture is the foundation and as center of a culture we're all familiar with that oh so I have used to many turn around.

I think it was a Frenchman who originated it and we were the only great nation to pursue directly from barbarism to degeneracy with no culture of our own and between. You know the pity and the tragedy of that statement is true. We are. We pride ourselves on much. We are no of sacrificing hundreds of thousands of our young men to demonstrate something or other over in the Orient. Where regarded as the worst element in all of human life and society and proving it too. Now what is it. Do your professors in their armchairs who were put there by the same

processes that they're putting you there if you want to go later on. Can they tell you boy why don't you ask them. Why don't you ask them why. Now there's only one good simple question to ask at this time concerning anything and that is why. If you begin to make yourself as obnoxious and troublesome by that question repeated. Under proper circumstances at most inopportune times you'll be getting an education maybe. And I don't think an education on present terms is essential to culture. I think you can get culture and skipped education as it is. So in the 30 years in fellowship we believe that you can learn

about life by way of practicing what you preach. Seeing it happen. Being a doer in it and if possible to get alongside of somebody that has fought and suffered in its behalf and considers himself pretty well able to do something along that line. Now of course that applies to other things in architecture but as I told you architecture is primitive first. And if you don't know good architecture you haven't learned to differentiate and drawn out a line between what is curious merely And what is beautiful. And in future I believe there is only one line that will mark.

An man or a woman culture and that is the ability to draw that line between what is curious merely And what is beautiful. Now you must of learned and your sojourn here in this great university to draw that. But if you drew it you wouldn't be here. And that's why I'm here talking to you. I think perhaps I could be of some help. I thought so. They had a Congress of American architects in New York two or three months ago. And the day our. Our national organization of architects invited me to

address the Congress and I said no too far gone you know. Then they said Well young people have been writing to us the junior of which there's 22. Twenty two thousand but a great many members have written. KING If you could be persuaded to come and talk to them. When I said there's a different course outcome and I did I went and they made a recording of the talking is being sold over the country. I don't know that it would do any good. Again it was on the subject of what constitutes an organic architecture and as much as it was a technical audience. I had a better chance to make clear what I'd like to say. Young architects can now understand why. The box has represented architecture down the ages why all the

old architecture is the box with columns stuck in it and holes cut in it and it's gone the limit and even in modern architecture today it's the same set up on little stilts little Pynchon with the blocks and I explained to them what are going to go architecture had done to the box and got it I think some of them I don't think or you know it's ever gets anything at all but they get something and I think they got it. And that's the war organic architecture is waging on the box because freedom entering in to the idea of a building cannot sever the box. It must make it so one without side one of the ends. It must all come together and be a perfect blessing to the ground on which it stands and recognize it

as its own home and become likewise. Speaking of the ground itself that's only the external aspect of it interiorly it must to be to be organic must be obvious and not on it. And to illustrate the nature of the architecture of work we're doing now and what we consider to be its nature. You know they were there used to be opposed and something on the post-election nights used to be built like this. Or it was like This is one partition hit another. This petition would hit that one and then to get strength where you would fasten something to this to pull you to fasten something to that the other way.

And of course it was easy. As in the earthquake and carrier hotel and all the rest of that if it was built that way to let it go. It could be easily torn apart it could fall down. Well organic architecture has discovered principles now of construction like the kind of lever and continuity which makes architecture like this issue. That's organic architecture as against this of course you're not an architect you're not young architecture and that perhaps may not show you much but it puts it into a fist sort of speak if not a natural. Do you get it do you understand the significance of that thing. No we're not talking about a matter of taste and they speak of architectural terms. We were talking of a new period. We're talking of a

new line of knowledge which may be acquired not only acquired but which must be a practice. And you don't get it by education. You get it by doing architecture can be an colocated convenience and architecture is the greatest of all the arts is the mother. That's what you don't know. When you speak of our universities they think of painting. They think of sculpture. They think of all the things except the vital things which they themselves have neglected in the old relics they maintain for what purpose God knows. When you go down to Mexico and see a marvelous expression by the people that we know about as inferior and wake up to find that there are. Well I don't know how many years

dozens perhaps 50 years ahead of us now and maybe a hundred. We've got to wake up someday and find that the neighbor is pretty well worth paying attention to. So we were to talk tonight about the difference between education and culture and I could say some very unpleasant nasty things on the subject. But I don't think it's necessary. I think I've said enough to waken your minds to the fact that the two aren't on speaking terms at the present time and they are nowhere in this notion of his education doing a job that needs to be done if we're to have a democracy because a democracy is the highest form of aristocracy this world has ever seen because it is aristocracy and

hired and finest kind of morality. Thank you of the. Mr. Wright has consented to come back and answer any questions which the audience would like to raise at this time concerning a subject. Which. I. Was.

There's a question down there in the center. I'm doing my best to then do your education right. Oh. Well that's rather leading not leading but a little passé question. Because I think about how I was passed away quite a number of years ago about how this was born in Germany. Some 20 years after my work appeared in Germany in 1910 and the house where the German reaction more or less what was contained in that publication I know its effect. Might as well face it. It is in the line of this talk on

culture versus education that we hear in this country that that culture comes from abroad isn't it. We have never had any other attitude in the province and I think not so in education either. So when this side of an architecture and the way of building got to Germany and Germany became enthusiastic about it and came over here expecting to find it characteristically American and found that it was only the work of an individual. When our people all turned to him and thought it came from what is characteristic of other things it isn't architecture alone. Frankly it was one of the great German. I don't like to call it an aesthete but he was a professor of the statics at Harvard.

You heard of this work out on the pearls and he came to investigate for himself and came just a few hours and stayed three days and he was delighted and he endeavored to persuade me to go to Germany. He said My people are ready for you your people will not know you for your lifetime. Well of course I don't want to go to Germany and I didn't go but shortly after I got a proposition from Wasilla the biggest publishing house in the world to go and superintend my work and make it known to the parents that while I went and they really did a wonderful publication and they did a great work in Germany in the Bauhaus was practically founded upon. Well that's a secret. Now another one.

When the Japanese wanted to build the Imperial Hotel they sent a commission around the world to find an architect. And it was headed run through Germany got to Germany and heard my name. And recommendations from Germans to look me up that I was their man well when they came to America they came out of the park and I saw the work they said and I think Japanese about it but would look well in Japan and hired me to build the building. Now if they had come here the other way around they never would have found me. Well that's what I mean when I say that culture. You see we have always had the idea and we still have it in our universe is in a cell in the books they feed you to read comes from abroad.

And that isn't all of it that isn't the worst or the worst of it is that culture comes from the past. From the Greeks from the lands from anywhere except right where you are. Well now that's a long answer. And it's answered a good many questions at once I hope. But come along who wants to know what. There should be a good many buyers here and I must I think. Thank the poor Brazilians of course. Then the imitator is a bad imitation. Of a bad imitator. Or words to that effect. And I think they realize it

now. And that is true of Mexican University. There's too much of that. That imitation of a bad imitator they're also not enough that is good enough that is upstanding by way of three or four architects and Diego Rivera to save the show for the future. So they're very brave in having done this thing as they have done it and it's going to have tremendous repercussions in civilization and it puts Mexico up where we can well look up and down. Well anything else really. You know I think the United Nations building as its bellwether architect leading architect to slip is the thing you see.

Well of course there isn't a graveyard in the nation and if it could talk wouldn't say amen to that in the worth of the. To me chorus the United Nations building is a confession of failure because it is a fascist symbol. It is the box up on stilts as a slave. And if you notice the end is the glory of the New York party rode on today here in the U.N. building or it is the perfect symbol of division. Now old buildings means something. And that's what this one means. And out of it therefore I don't see what you could expect except what we've got which is the war in Korea.

Yes Mr. Wright is right. Can you suggest any way that we said this it was can't get published read like signed by you. It's a morning person no question. But I think the answer would be no. Because were buildings or property in major part of Wisconsin. Very rarely do they send into the realm of what we call culture yet. Someday it will and the lack of culture of the day is going to be marked by what the buildings are now on. But if culture is to enter into building an organic architecture is to characterize a building you won't see much of it.

The universities you won't see much of it by way of the state you won't see any of it by way of government. Now you know a Democrat is born to hate government. That's the reason why. And we could go into it a little further and explain many of the things which we we have to suffer on the road to a coach or because of government. He wants to know. Where news Candide bucks or whatever it is. But this thing down the center. You know how they hypnotizing him in the. Nick. They draw a chart lying on the floor straight and put their hand on it and he sees it and I

was there but it doesn't affect me that way. I'm not going to stay here just because that's the. Nowness poor building was designed by Boeing and I think he was twenty six or seven or something. And then it was furthered by a. Theatrical architect you know a theater critic I think you're probably like now he's going to have it going it should be one of these. But it's no worse than the other buildings on the campus. And. You see the university never went out for architecture even in its better days. And know that it is a glorification of the mediocre. What can you expect from a letter.

If we're going to have 40 feet of water. You know that's a very good question and probably. Ninety nine times out of 100 correct but. Remember this this is saying that it always continues that the pesto always hangs to the future and by a thread. And you're going to go with the picture and the thought behind it and if you lost me it represents he's going to be that thread. I'm sure you know you don't know any law.