Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959) was the friend, disciple, and one-time partner of Louis Sullivan, but it was Wright who moved modern architecture toward what he thought of as an ôorganicö orientation (Hamilton, 1992). Wright rejected the conventionally symmetrical plan of rooms arranged along either side of the hall for one in which the principal rooms were placed on cross-axes extending from a central space. In both his public and private structures, Wright employed a specific philosophy of how man and his environment were two halves of the same coin, sharing a common identity and reinforcing the existence of each other (Hamilton, 1992). Wright was influenced not only by the ideas of Sullivan and other ômodernö architects of the so-called Chicago school. He was also enormously influenced by Japanese architecture. It is this influence, specifically as reflected in WrightÆs Imperial Hotel in Tokyo that will be discussed in this brief report.
Wright is known to have admired the Hoo-Den, the Japanese pavilion at the WorldÆs Fair of 1893. Japanese prints, along with Oriental sculpture and ceramics, were the only works of art which he allowed in his own home (Hamilton, 1992). The Japanese influence in WrightÆs early ôPrairieö and other houses should not therefore be surprising. According to Hamilton (1992), the Japanese influence is particularly visible in WrightÆs interiors, where he employed wall design reminiscent of the sliding screens of Japan and where the continuity of space was stressed by the cornice carried as a flat band of wood or stucco through all his rooms. His insistence on exploring and exposing the nature of his materials is said to have owed as much to his almost Oriental sensitivity to natural substances as it did to William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement (Hamilton, 1992).
Though Wright had an enormous international influence, he realized completion of only six projects outside of No...