Saturday, January 31, 2009

PRECEDENT: Frank Lloyd Wright- Broadacre City



Broadacre is a continuous metropolitan region of low density. Areas designated to serve similar purposes are allocated functionally (parallel along traffic systems of more than regional importance like monorail and motorway): trade, entertainment, industry, agriculture, housing etc.. Arrangements are selective - idealized - but not exclusive.

The city starts with the single family house. Due to Broadacre's economical logic it is being built by oneself (in a DIY network). Using standardized elements and partly prefabricated building modules it is fairly extendable (in Wright's terms "organic"). But first of all it is affordable, although money has almost no relevance in Broadacre.

The notion of an aircraft in everyone's front yard is a convincing image. Total mobility is inevitable.

The road is a symbol of individual freedom. Cars aren't simply contemporary or modern, they represent democracy itself. The technology to cross and to communicate long distance facilitates:

air, light, and freedom of movement.

Wright designed interchanges within the context of Broadacre City designs, and like most interchanges, his designs provided continuous movement through grade separations. Wright's interchange was a monolithic landscaped structure, however, bermed into the ground by its underpass and designed to include a partially covered walkway so that it provided its own spatial enclosures rather than merely a crossing between two highways.

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