A Combined Plan Graph and Massing Grammar Approach to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie Architecture

Abstract

In 1981 Koning and Eizenberg famously developed a shape grammar for Wright’s Prairie architecture that appeared capable of capturing its complex formal properties. However, since then, multiple researchers have argued that the underlying social and functional properties of Wright’s architecture—which were excluded from Koning’s and Eizenberg’s analysis—are actually more significant. This paper revisits Wright’s Prairie architecture using a computational and mathematical approach to examine both grammatical and syntactical aspects of the style. Through this analysis the paper identifies dominant patterns in Wright’s design strategies and a design permutation which most closely captures its linguistic characteristics. A significant part in this process is that it considers both the formal and functional properties of Wright’s architecture. To do this, the paper expands an existing computational method (JPG Grammar) to include a new component, a massing grammar.