Materials and Methods in Usonian Automatic House System of Frank Lloyd Wright

This study is to investigate the meaning and value of Usonian Automatic House System(UAHS) of Frank Lloyd Wright in his later period, focused on materials, methods, and his thoughts. The results of this study are follows. UAHS was the outcome of moderate cost and prefab house which Wright had successively attempted after the early Prairie period. The construction was simple and comparatively cheap, but subsequent automatics were difficult and expensive to build. Nevertheless, it was sufficiently flexible to support a rather wide range of house designs. Concrete was the inert mass and a plastic material. Wright saw a kind of weaving coming out of it. He also saw a kind of concrete masonry, steel for warp and masonry units for woof in the automatic concrete block. The reinforced bars in hollowed joints of concrete block increased the safety factor and affected the expression of the construction through the stabilization they provided. But they did not give concrete block the capability of structural span. Standardization as the soul of the machine might be seen in UAHS. The concrete blocks were more cheap, lighter, and larger hollowed plain than textile blocks in 1920s. But the variety of pattern and different block types in the UAHS were achieved at some sacrifice of standardization. The repetitive nature of production was compromised for artistic goals. The sense of compromise was not maximized, however, because the units as installed looked far more repetitive than they actually were.

라이트의 유소니언 오토매틱 주택 시스템에 나타난 재료 및 공법에 관한 연구