- Brooks demonstrated how Wright dissolved the corner between the rooms to permit one room to penetrate into the other. The concept behind the destruction of box can be found in a wide range of Wright’s designs (not only buildings but also furniture and interiors) In Wright’s houses, the plans were made of walls in non-traditional sense, meaning that only screen walls were used to create a more open, flowing, charged, and dynamic system. As a result, the conventional notion of “rooms” are dissolved.As Brooks wrote, “the traditional concept of room, formed by walls joined at the corners, had existed unchanged since the earliest habitations, and by the 19th century its proliferation had reached, both socially and economically,illogical bounds.” There were three steps to destruct the box: (1) to demolish the corners; (2) to dismember intermediary walls, ceilings, and even floors;and (3) to reassemble the shattered pieces into a different spatial context. Berlage was deeply influenced by Wright’s work, assuming that the sequence of spaces,opening to one another, was more a local habit of the “American” than a result of Wright’s artistic genius (Berlage, The New American Architecture)… In addition, Vincent Scully demonstrates that the free ground plan is a characteristic of the Shingle Style at the end of the 19th century. (Scully,1955: 159-60)
LIYANG DING 