If one understands the work of Frank Lloyd Wright not so
much in terms of style, but more the result of

of deeply and elaborately contrived methods for organizing
and sub-dividing space, there would seem
to be ample justification for
applying his design methods to situations where space is limited,
where every square foot must be made to contribute,  or more
precisely with respect to Wright, every cubic foot must
perform in its service to form and function while acting
in unison with, being 'integrate' to the whole.  Wright's
design methods equally emphasize creation of space with
characteristics of serenity, refuge and spaciousness, and so
in sum, seem well suited to the challenges faced in the design
of New York City apartments, whose residents must feel keenly

the need to get maximum use from  limited and very

expensive space in the midst of a frequently

hectic alienating environment. And so one

might expect New York residential architecture

to constitute a veritable laboratory in the study and application

of Wrightian design strategies.

In fact, this is not at all the case.

On the contrary one notes how New York residential architecture

roughly divides into two antithetical  style schools.

On one hand you have  a neoclassical  style, whose foremost

concern is to create a set of interior effects which convincingly

relay the message that  the residents duly  possess

upper class status. This has long been the intention

of neoclassical design, which emerged in tandem

with the nascent monarchies of Europe. These emerginng

monarchies following the Gothic period, revived Greco-Roman forms

and in particular the Imperial Roman style,  as a means of

demonstrating  both the fact of their possession of power and the

legitimacy of that possession  - as a way of casting themselves as

the rightful heirs to the rule of the Roman empire which had lain

dormant for a thousand years after the fall.  In brief monarchies

seized on the neoclassical style as a means  to

so dazzle their  subjects  that they would view their rulers

as the just and deserving wielders of power.

On the other hand you have the minimalist or neo-Meisien style

whose sparse, spare interiors originated in the lean times of Europe

after the first world  war when socialist architects sought to

create a scaled down, de-ornamented, working class architecture.

Any hint of ornament on a residence was considered

 taboo as it might suggest an attempt by its inhabitants to claim

 loftier social position and prestige.  Being home to some of the

most expensive residential real-estate on the planet

New York City seems an unlikely spot to find much in the way of

minimalist architecture, much less  find it thriving  in multi-thousand

square feet, multi-million dollar digs.  Perhaps the explanation

 is to be found in the cover  minimalism  provides multimillionaires

 and their loyal servants their architects.  By using styles and forms

normally associated with working class housing,  attention is shifted

away from the all too real fact of New York residential architects

creating residential architecture for a privileged class,

allowing its presentation to come more in terms of a

socially  responsible,   more environmentally conscious architecture.

Where one style seeks to dazzle, the other seeks only to bore.

I hasten to add I engage in this little bit of analysis

not at all with the intention so much of

mounting an attack but  as a way of scrutinizing,   of pulling the situation

out from the shadows in order to reveal clearly the heavy

burden  these sorts of really  political considerations

have put on architecture. And by political I merely mean

this inordinate concern for how something is perceived, judged,

interpreted, so on and so forth. My purpose  is to

point out that the motive

forces operating in these two style schools, or what might be

described as the dialectic of pretense and

anti-pretense, have led us down a blind alley,

have hindered accomplishment of the much more important

task of aesthetic invention and creativity that

ought to be at the forefront of architecture.

Architecture  needs now to move beyond the

present distractions of pretense and anti-pretense, or lately the hybrid

now more or less in vogue in the form of the irony and

oddity embodied in post modernism.

The time has come in which as Wright so

elegantly put it, "architecture has to be".

Architecture  has both a functional and artistic component..

What Wright simply meant was that its artistic component

should recognize that art is merely emotion for emotions sake.

It should not try to dazzle, to make us envious, make us

wish we could live in such a place - what Joyce termed pornographic art,

it should not lecture us about morality, as for instance when

Adolf Loos says onrnament is a crime - what Joyce called

didactic art - rather it should move us to have a kind of

experience not otherwise available - what Joyce called

the sublime.  I believe it is just this characteristic, this

contact with the sublime which one experiences directly,

viscerally in Wrights best spaces, that accounts for the

extraordinary popularity  of his buildings, the near

sacred way in which they are revered, in which

they call forth their legions of pilgrims.

Wrights design methods are imminently suited

to planning New York apartments, from the smallest studio to

the grandest townhouse.  As a case in point I have put together

a before and after design for a typical NYC two bedroom.  Ive

deliberately chosen digs somewhat smaller than

what customarily gets the attention of  architects, a

two bedroom listed for sale off Central Park West,

just to show how much Wrightian design techniques could do

for the less affluent - to show what a kind of Usonian equivalent

for apartments might look like.