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QUESTION: How does Griffin fit into the story of American architecture? PAUL KRUTY: Griffin was completely dedicated to the idea of creating a modern architecture that was functional and aesthetically perfect. He tried many ways to do this through his career, through methods of working with a module, through using new material. He certainly came up with a personal aesthetic of architecture unmistakably personal and yet is universal and is in some sense an American architecture. QUESTION: What was the irony in the timing of Griffin's death? PAUL KRUTY: When Griffin died in 1937 in India he was just beginning one of the most inventive and creative phases of his career. He had been fully reinvigorated by the move to India. Marion had joined him and her career had been reinvigorated. She was producing some of the most beautiful drawings that she ever produced after having been silent with her pen for a decade before that. And, he died young. He was barely 60 years old. When Frank Lloyd Wright was 60 he had a full 30 years of his career. Most of the buildings that Wright is famous for were not designed at that point. There would be no Falling Water if Wright had died when Griffin died.There would be no Guggenheim Museum. There would be no Marin County Courthouse. Frank Lloyd Wright's great second career all took place after his 60th birthday. If Griffin had had a mere 10 more years he certainly would have developed the third phase of his career - the Indian phase into a series of buildings of international significance. We can only assume that this would have been the case. He was moving in this direction and so in a final sense his career was tragically cut short and pales in comparison with that of his great rival through most of his career Frank Lloyd Wright. QUESTION: Could you speculate on what would have happened to Griffin had he not gone to Australia? PAUL KRUTY: Of course it's impossible to speculate on something that didn't happen but it seems clear that if Griffin hadn't gone to Australia, his American career would have continued at least through the end of W.W.I and its spectacular rise as it had come. And, there is every indication that he would have made some difference in the ultimate decline of the Prairie School that took place after W.W.I with Wright out of the picture and the Griffin's in Australia. Certainly he would have had as successful a career as any of his colleagues among the Chicago/Midwestern Prairie School architects. QUESTION: Can you comment on the Ralph Griffin house? PAUL KRUTY: The Ralph Griffin house is a perfect expression of Griffin's first mature phase - his first Prairie Style. It's vocabulary of form, its great overhanging roofs, its casement windows, its stucco exterior - these are based on Frank Lloyd Wright's first Prairie Style with such buildings as the Bradley house in Kankakee, the Ward Willis house of 1900, 1902. But, at the same time the Ralph Griffin house shows Griffin's own personality, his own personal interpretation of this new kind of architecture in the Chicago area. For one thing it's a perfectly symmetrical house, it's a much more formal house, it's a much more monumental house than Wright would do. It's roof end in upturned gables rather than the great hovering hip groove of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie houses. It also has a remarkable change of level inside. It has a great story and a half living room which is set above the billiard room that is below it and part of the basement and below the dining room and the den which down onto it. And, this kind of complex relationship vertically between the rooms is something that is entirely Griffin's own. Frank Lloyd Wright simply never did this type of interlocking vertical space. The decoration of the windows, the diamond form, the expression of the decoration in wooden muttons that divide the glass instead of colored stained glass - this goes along with the heavy scaling of the building and very much expresses Griffin's personal expression of Frank Lloyd Wright's early modern architecture. QUESTION: Was there a really low point in Griffin's career? PAUL KRUTY: It's hard to know exactly what might be the low point of Griffin's career because he never expressed disappointment. In fact, the degree to which he seemed to suppress his anger actually seemed unnatural to Marion. She actually wrote "It's not natural for someone not to get angry" and she wished at some point he would just get angry at her. But, we do know that the exasperation of trying to get the Canberra plan into operation and his eventual dismissal and quitting at the end of seven hard years of work was one of the greatest disappointments of his life. The fact that he turned to architecture in Australia entirely must have seemed to be a great letdown. compared to the satisfaction that he was looking forward to seeing the great capital city constructed according to his designs. |
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