Frank Lloyd Wright and the Concrete Slab and Column

Abstract

This paper traces the development of Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas on the place of the concrete column and slab in architecture. It deals with his first employment of the slab at Unity Temple (Oak Park, 1904) and his use of the form in residential projects during the next few years. It surveys American literature on concrete construction and briefly analyses the contribution of Claude A.P. Turner and the employment of the Turner system in two Chicago buildings that Wright would have known. It discusses his project for the San Francisco Call (1912) and the use of the Barton system in the Richland Center warehouse for A.D. German (1915). It further discusses his first probable knowledge of themore sophisticated concrete slabs of Maillart, published in 1926, and of Maillart's invention of a proto lily-pad capital. This capital is also to be seen in Wright's champagne glass designed for Leerdam (1930) and in his project for the Salem Capitol Journal of 1931. Finally it is argued that the much admired lily-pad columns at the Johnson Wax office building (Racine, 1937-39) are really a series of three-hinged bents rather than shell construction.