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Functional Versus Purposive in the Organic Forms of Louis Sullivan and Frank
Lloyd Wright

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·~ 'c:_ _s:::,

The Four primary characteristics of biological

order illustrated in a plant form (adapted
from Rupert Riedl, Order in Living
Organisms, 1978, courtesy of Rupert Riedl).
TWO INTERPRETATIONS OF ORGANIC FORM:
FUNCTIONAL AND PURPOSIVE

KEVIN NUTE, BA ARCH & ENV. DESIGN, B. ARCH, PH. D.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON

ABSTRACT
The philosophical basis of Frank Lloyd Wright’s notion of 'organic architecture' has often
been attributed to the influence of his early employer Louis Sullivan. It is argued here,
however, that the two differed fundamentally in their interpretations of organic form.
Evidence is presented that Wright designed each phase of his work—from the plan, to the
rendering and decorative detail—to be appreciated first and foremost visually, as a formally
purposive whole in which the parts were both differentiated yet also clearly mutually
interdependent. It is suggested that Wright's concentration on recreating these purely formal
characteristics of the organism set him apart from Sullivan, who in contrast had attempted
to replicate the adaptation of its parts to specific functions.
1. THE FITNESS AND WHOLENESS OF ORGANIC FORMS
Analogies between man-made artifacts and living organisms have been a persistent theme in
Western thought since antiquity (Rousseau, 1972).i Historically these analogies have taken
two primary forms: (1) a rational appreciation of the ‘fitness’ of living organisms for
specific purposes,ii and (2) an aesthetic appreciation of their purely formal quality of
‘wholeness’ or coherence.iii Herein would appear to lie the origin of what was to be an
essential difference between Louis Sullivan’s interpretation of organic form and that of his
erstwhile assistant, Frank Lloyd Wright.
2. LOUIS SULLIVAN AND THE RATIONAL APPRECIATION OF FUNCTIONAL
ADAPTATION
In the case of Sullivan and Wright, the essential difference between their particular
interpretations of organic form is more immediately traceable to the writings of the British
sociologist Herbert Spencer and the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Sullivan’s
understanding of the organic form was strongly influenced by Herbert Spencer’s
explanation of its practical causes—essentially progressive adaptation to specialized
functions.iv Spencer had argued that as the various parts of a living organism take on
specialized functions the form grows increasingly differentiated (Spencer 1876).v
The central notion of functional adaptation underlying Spencer's view of both organic
growth and evolution was summed up in his declaration: “A FUNCTION to each organ and
each organ to its own function, is the law of all organization. To do its work well, an
apparatus must possess special fitness for that work; and this implies unfitness for any other
work." (Spencer 1892).vi

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Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 2
Apparently inspired by this essentially functional explanation of the causes of organic
development, in his own Kindergarten Chats Louis Sullivan later suggested:
If we call a building a form, then there should be a function, a purpose, a reason for each building, a
definite explainable relation between the form, the development of each building, and the causes
that bring it into that particular shape; and . . . the building, to be good architecture, must, first of all,
clearly correspond with its function. . . . (Sullivan 1924).vii
Sullivan’s view of the organic form was thus essentially—although by no means entirely—
mechanistic. That is say, each of its parts was seen as the ‘effect’ of a different functional
‘cause,’ an idea which Sullivan encapsulated in his much-abused motto “form follows
function.”
Crucially, however, functional adaptation only constituted half of Herbert Spencer's
explanation of organic development. He had explained that at the same time as the various
parts of the organism take on different functions, not only does the form become
progressively differentiated as each part adapts to it specialized role, but in the process, the
parts also become increasingly dependent on one another to perform those operations which
each has given up in order to concentrate on its specific job.
Unfortunately, although Sullivan himself seems to have been well aware of this
interdependence of parts underlying the organic whole (Sullivan 1924),viii his explanations
of it tended to emphasize the differentiation of its parts due to functional adaptation, leading
many who followed to the false conclusion that the appeal of the organic form stemmed
from an appreciation of the fitness of its various parts for different specific purposes.
As Immanuel Kant pointed out two centuries earlier in his Critique of Judgement, however,
our appreciation of objects is by no means always based on an understanding of what they
are for. It can just as easily be purely aesthetic. Kant suggested that as long as a form
appears generally 'purposive,' that is, ordered and apparently deliberately 'designed,' it is not
necessary to know its purpose to appreciate it as a form in its own right. Kant explained that
the organic form was uniquely appealing in this respect, because its interdependent parts
effectively exist for the purpose of sustaining each other and the whole, not only
functionally but also formally, making it inherently ‘purposive’ and visually pleasing,
irrespective of any knowledge of its actual functions.ix
While Sullivan himself was almost certainly appreciating the organic form primarily
aesthetically, however, he explained its appeal as deriving primarily from a rational
understanding of the adaptation of its parts to specific functions, suggesting that the
functions of buildings could be made directly 'legible' in the same way:
. . . if a building is properly designed, one should be able with a little attention, to read through that
building to the reason for that building. . . .
. . . . Consequently each part must clearly express its function that the function can be read through
the part (Sullivan 1924).x
In fact, even if perfect adaptation to function were practically achievable in a building—
which is highly doubtful, given that no building design program can even be fully stated—it

————————————————————————————————————————————————
Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 3
would almost certainly not be widely appreciated, since this would require a detailed
knowledge of the internal functions of buildings unavailable to most observers (Figure 1).

1. Louis Sullivan, Guaranty Building, Buffalo, New York, 1896. Three distinct zones
reflecting changes of internal function are clearly expressed in the facade, though the
fitness of these forms is difficult to judge without knowing the precise nature of those
functions.
To be fair to Sullivan, on other occasions he merely suggested that it was appropriate that
the various parts of a built form should vary according to their differing functions, without
insisting that specific functions be 'legible' (Sullivan 1896).xi Indeed, he actually warned
against the danger of relying on such a purely logical approach to design (Sullivan 1924).xii
Unfortunately this did not prevent others from subsequently pursuing his famous motto into
the dead-end of functional determinism. A notable exception to this, however, was his
closest philosophical ally, Wright.
3. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND THE AESTHETIC APPRECIATION OF
FORMAL PURPOSIVENESS
While Wright would have been well aware of Sullivan's explanation of the functional causes
of organic whole, early on he seems to have made a conscious decision to concentrate
instead on recreating its formal qualities, characterized by an apparent purposiveness based

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Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 4
on a balance of differentiation and interdependence of parts.
For Wright, the initial means of bringing this quality into his own work may it seems have
come in the form of a series of two-dimensional interlocking patterns illustrated in a turn-
of-the-century design textbook written by Arthur Dow (1857-1922). Dow’s book,
Composition (Dow 1899)xiii was a graphic interpretation of the theories of his former
colleague at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Ernest Fenollosa (1853-1908), best known
for his role in championing Japan’s traditional arts in the face of Westernization at the close
of the 19th century. In return, Japanese art had provided Fenollosa with the basis of a
radical approach to art education in general, based upon the aesthetic organization of lines,
tones, and colors into mutually interdependent 'organic' wholes. When this theory was
illustrated graphically by Arthur Dow in Composition, it appears to have had a direct impact
on Wright, who by the time of the book's appearance was already an admirer of Fenollosa's
ideas (Nute 1991).xiv
In his Introduction to Composition Dow described how he was using primarily Japanese
examples to illustrate what he and Fenollosa considered to be universal aesthetic principles
(Dow 1899).xv From his studies of Japanese art, Fenollosa had come to the conclusion that
the quality of organic wholeness was essential to all the arts. Dow took this up as a central
theme in Composition, where he illustrated the concept in the form of a series of simple
two-dimensional patterns, or 'organic line-ideas,’ which, while having no obvious practical
purpose, displayed an aesthetically pleasing balance of differentiation and interdependence
of parts characteristic of the organic whole (Figures 2, 3).

2. Visually purposive organic ‘line-ideas’ 3. Organic line-ideas: Arthur Dow,

based on interlocking rectangles: Arthur Composition, 1899.
Dow, Composition, 1899.
Dow explained:

————————————————————————————————————————————————
Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 5
Every part of a work of art has something to say. If one part is made so prominent that others have
no reason for being there, the art is gone. So in this case; if one line asserts itself to the detriment of
the others, there is discord. There may be many or few lines, but each must have its part in the
whole. In a word, wholeness is essential to beauty; it distinguishes Music from Noise (Dow
1899).xvi
In accordance with Fenollosa’s ideas, Dow described all the visual arts, including painting,
as ‘space-arts,’ concerned primarily with the aesthetic division of space—irrespective of the
rational content which they might or might not also convey. To this effect he declared:
“The picture, the plan, and the pattern are alike in the sense that each is a group of
synthetically related spaces (Dow 1899).xvii
Wright appears to have taken a very similar approach to these elements in his own work.xviii
He treated the plan drawing, for example, as an aesthetically pleasing organic whole in its
own right, irrespective of its practical implications. As he confirmed when he explained,
“There is more beauty in a fine ground plan than in almost any of its ultimate consequences.
In itself it will have the rhythms, masses and proportions of a good decoration if it is the
organic plan for an organic building with individual style. . . ." (Wright 1928).xix Such an
approach would certainly help to explain the unusual aesthetic appeal of Wright’s plan
drawings, which was noted by his Chicago contemporary Thomas Tallmadge as early as the
1920s, when he observed that “Many of his plans, like those for the Imperial Hotel in
Tokyo, even when entirely divorced from their practical significance, are exquisite pictures
in themselves (Tallmadge 1928).xx
The appeal of Wright’s plan drawings is clearly connected with their underlying structure,
although, as the British architect Richard MacCormac correctly sensed, it stems from
something more subtle than a regular grid. MacCormac’s suggestion that Wright may have
used irregular or ‘tartan’ grids as the basis for several of his early plans was a perceptive
one (MacCormac 1968).xxi However, initially at least, rather than employing such grids
directly, it seems that Wright may have begun by making use of some of Arthur Dow’s
organic ‘line-ideas,’ which were themselves based on this kind of unevenly spaced grid
(Figure 4).

II ~mra:TI
II
llilBII
II IIUIUCHI
~mHQQ 4. The tartan grids underlying Dow's
organic line-ideas. in Figure 2.

————————————————————————————————————————————————
Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 6
Dow had actually made a point of illustrating the rich variety of aesthetically pleasing
patterns which could be generated from such irregularly spaced grid lines, having
demonstrated how, as one gradually removed lines from a uniform grid, the degree of
choice—and with it the creative possibilities—progressively increased (illustrations 1—3,
Figure 2). The symmetrical patterns illustrated by Dow were all based on two basic
configurations, consisting of four or five interlocking rectangles, and significantly both
were to appear in Wright's plan designs in the years immediately following the publication
of Composition.
In 1902, for example, Wright completed the Charles Ross house in Wisconsin. Essentially
a cruciform of four overlapping rectangles, the core of this plan is essentially similar to
Dow’s line-idea 'A' based as it is on four interlocking rectangles (Figures 3, 5).

5. Line-idea 'A' (from Figure 3) and the 6. Line-idea 'C' (from Figure 3) and the
plan of Wright’s Charles Ross house, plan of Wright’s Unity Temple, Oak
Lake Delavan, Wisconsin, 1902. Park, Illinois, 1906.
In its original form this pattern would clearly not have been practical as an architectural
plan, since its internal spaces were not spatially connected. Wright’s stroke of genius seems
to have been simply to remove the lines where the rectangles overlapped. Likewise, the
interlocking plan of the main hall of Unity Temple could well it seems have been inspired
by Dow’s line-idea ‘C’, in this case based on five interlocking squares (Figures 2, 6).
In Dow’s interlocking line-ideas, then, it seems that Wright may have found the basis for

————————————————————————————————————————————————
Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 7
several of his first genuinely ‘organic’ architectural plans, and in the process possibly the
inspiration for the interpenetrating spaces which came to characterize his mature work
(Figures 7, 8).

7. Interlocking spaces in Wright's Life 8. Interstitial space formed by the

House project, 1938. implied interpenetration of two
incomplete forms.
The rectilinear nature of much of Wright's work has led many to question how it could be
considered 'organic' or life-like. For Fenollosa, Dow and Wright, however, it was not any
particular geometry which made a form organic, but rather a mutually interdependent
relationship between differentiated parts. Indeed, if Dow's line ideas are analyzed according
to modern scientific criteria, they are found to exhibit all four major characteristics of
biological order (Figure 9).

r{p
l Traditive inheritance
(trad ition)

~---.-.
Interdependence

9. The four primary characteristics of

H ierarchy
biological order reflected in one of Arthur
Dow's organic line-ideas (Illustrations on the
<::, D D
left are from Rupert Riedl, Order in Living
<::,
<::,
D D
<::, Organisms, 1978, courtesy of Rupert Riedl).
As wellStandard
aspartplan forms, Dow’s line-ideas and their underlying grids also seem to have

————————————————————————————————————————————————
Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 8
inspired a number of Wright’s ‘organic’ decorative designs, including several of the leaded
windows in the Prairie houses and some of the patterns used on the California 'Textile
Block' houses (Figures 10, 11).

10. The asymmetrical tartan grid 11. The apparent combination of Dow
underlying Wright's decorative window line-ideas 'D' and 'E' (Figure 3)
design for the Ward Willits house, underlying the decorative design used in
Highland Park, Illinois, 1902. Wright’s Storer house, Pasadena,
California, 1923.
The central theme of Composition echoed Ernest Fenollosa’s belief in the essential unity of
abstract design and pictorial art. As Dow elaborated:
The designer and picture-painter start in the same way. Each has before him a blank space on which
he sketches out the main lines of his composition. This may be called his Line-idea, and on it hinges
the excellence of the whole. . . . A picture, then, may be said to be in its beginning actually a pattern
of lines (Dow 1899).xxii
Dow cited the work of the woodblock print artist Ando Hiroshige as a perfect example of
this use of simple ‘line-ideas’ as underlying aesthetic frameworks for pictorial
compositions, even suggesting that in this respect Hiroshige shared something in common
with the best architects (Dow 1899).xxiii Significantly, Wright described the woodblock print
in virtually identical terms—as an abstract composition in its own right, irrespective of its
content—having suggested: “. . . these prints are designs, patterns, in themselves beautiful
as such; and, what other meanings they may have are merely incidental, interesting or
curious by-products (Wright 1912).xxiv
Dow also illustrated the use of geometric structures as the basis for pictorial compositions
with several examples of simple landscapes of his own design, each based upon a few
irregularly spaced grid-lines (Figure 12); of which he wrote:
Returning now to our premise that the picture and the abstract design may show the same structural
beauty, let us see how the simple idea of combining straight lines, as so far considered, may be
illustrated by Landscape. Looking out from a grove we have trees as vertical straight lines, cutting
lines horizontal or nearly so. Leaving small forms out of account we have in these main lines an
arrangement of rectangular spaces much like the gingham and other simple patterns (Dow 1899).xxv

————————————————————————————————————————————————
Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 9
12. Arthur Dow: landscape composition 13. The spatial structure
based on an underlying spatial underlying Wright’s Wasmuth
framework, Composition. rendering of the Como Orchard
project, Darby, Montana, 1909.

This it seems may have given Wright the idea of composing his own, architectural, pictures
on the same kind of aesthetic framework, as for example his rendering of the Como Orchard
project, which appears to have been based on a similar underlying grid (Figure 13). The
presence of such a hidden structure would certainly explain the strong sense of order
apparent in Wright’s renderings, which Arthur Drexler perceptively noted when he
described how "the eye travels across these pictures in a rhythm established by vertical lines
made by features of the architecture" (Drexler 1962).xxvi
These two-dimensional 'organic' line-ideas seem to have provided Wright with the initial
means of going beyond Louis Sullivan's built expression of organic form. While formal
differentiation of parts based on adaptation to differing functions was a characteristic of
Sullivan's work, for example, it lacked the explicit expression of the interdependence of
those parts manifested in Dow's interlocking patterns and Wright's interpenetrating spaces
(Figure 14).

————————————————————————————————————————————————
Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 10
 14 A, B. Differentiation and interdependence of parts expressed in the interlocking
spaces of Wright's Edgar Kaufmann House, Bear Run, PA, 1936; a visually
'purposive' form which can be appreciated aesthetically irrespective of any knowledge
of the appropriateness of its parts to specific functions.

4. CONCLUSION
In designing each phase of his work to be appreciated visually, as a formally purposive
whole composed of clearly differentiated yet mutually interdependent parts, Frank Lloyd
Wright's built interpretation of organic form differed critically from that of Louis Sullivan,
who in contrast had attempted to replicate the adaptation of its parts to specific functions.

NOTES
i. G. S. Rousseau, ed., Organic Form: The Life of an Idea (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1972).
ii. Edward De Zurko, Origins of Functionalist Theory (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1957). Socrates, for example, interpreted the beauty of living creatures in clearly
functional terms, having suggested: “It is in relation to the same things that men’s bodies
look beautiful and good, namely in relation to those things for which they are useful.” E. C.
Marchant, trans., Xenophon, Memorabilia and Oeconomicus (London: Heinemann, 1923)
III, 5-6.
iii. Plato was one of the first to describe the purely formal quality of organic ‘wholeness’,
when he argued: “You will allow that every discourse ought to be constructed like a living
organism having its own body and head and feet: it must have a middle and extremities
which are framed in a manner agreeable to one another and to the whole.” (The Phaedrus).
S. H. Butcher, trans., Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art (London: Macmillan, 1895),
177.
iv. Sullivan expressly admired Herbert Spencer’s explanation of the practical causes
underlying the development of organic form: “In Darwin he [Sullivan] found much food for
thought. The Theory of Evolution seemed stupendous. Spencer’s definition implying a
progression from unorganized simple, through stages of growth and differentiation to a
highly organized complex, seemed to fit his own case. . . .” Louis H. Sullivan, The
Autobiography of an Idea (1924), reprinted edition (New York: Dover Publications, 1956),
254-5.
v. Spencer explained that “As it [the organism] grows, its parts become unlike: it exhibits
increase of structure. The unlike parts simultaneously assume activities of unlike kinds.
These activities are not simply different, but their differences are so related as to make one
another possible. The reciprocal aid thus given causes mutual dependence of the parts. And
the mutually-dependent parts, living by and for one another, form an aggregate constituted
on the same general principle as in the individual organism.” Herbert Spencer, Principles of
Sociology (1876-96), ed. Stanislav Andreski (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1969), 21-22.

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Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 11
vi. Herbert Spencer, Social Statics (1892), abridged and revised; together with The Man
Against the State (New York: Appleton, 1893), 121.
vii. Louis H. Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings (1947), reprinted ed. (New
York: Dover Publications, 1979), 46.
viii.As apparently confirmed, for example, by Sullivan’s statement that “. . . if the work is to
be organic the function of the part must have the same quality as the function of the whole;
and the parts, of themselves and by themselves, must have the quality of the mass; must
partake of its identity." Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats, 47.
ix. See J. H. Bernard. trans., Kant's Kritik of Judgement (London: Macmillan & Co., 1892),
277, 280.
x. Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats, 47.
xi. As for example in his famous exposition on the newest building type of his generation,
the tall office building:
" ... form ever follows function. This is the law.
.... It is really then, a very marvelous thing, or is it rather so commonplace, so everyday, so
near a thing to us, that we cannot perceive that the shape, form, outward expression, design,
or whatever we may choose, of the tall office building should in the very nature of things
follow the functions of the building, and that where the function does not change, the form
is not to change?" Louis H. Sullivan, The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.
Lippincott's Magazine, March 1896.
xii. Sullivan went as far as to declare: “. . . I wish to warn you that a man might follow the
program you have laid down, to the very last detail of details, and yet have, if that were his
make-up, a very dry, a very pedantic, a very prosaic result. He might produce a completely
logical result, so-called, and yet an utterly repellent one—a cold, vacuous negation of living
architecture—a veritable pessimism. . . . ” Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats, 48.
xiii.Arthur Wesley Dow, Composition, A Series of Exercises Selected from a New System of
Art Education (Boston: J.M. Bowles, 1899).
xiv. Ernest Fenollosa was the cousin of Wright’s first employer in Chicago, Joseph Lyman
Silsbee, and on several occasions Wright wrote approvingly of Fenollosa’s efforts to protect
the teaching of traditional Japanese art in Japan. See Kevin Nute, “Frank Lloyd Wright and
Japanese Art: Ernest Fenollosa the Missing Link.“ Architectural History: Journal of The
Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 34, (1991): 224-38.
xv. Dow explained: “He [Fenollosa] had had exceptional opportunities for a critical
knowledge of both Eastern and Western art, and as a result of his research and comparisons,
guided by a brilliant mind’s clear grasp of fundamental ideas, had gained a new conception
of art itself. He believed Music to be, in a sense, the key to the other fine arts, since its
essence is pure beauty; that space-art may be called ‘visual music,’ and may be criticised
and studied from this point of view. Following this new conception, he had constructed an
art-educational system radically different from those whose corner-stone is Realism. Its
leading thought is the expression of Beauty, not Representation. I at once felt the truth and
reasonableness of his position, and after much preparation in adapting these new methods to
practical use, I began teaching a class in Boston, with Professor Fenollosa’s co-operation.
Here for the first time in this country, Japanese art materials were used for educational

————————————————————————————————————————————————
Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 12
purposes.” Dow, Composition (1899), 5.
xvi. Ibid., p. 38. Fenollosa had earlier made the same point: that it was the aesthetic quality
of wholeness which differentiated music from mere noise. See Ernest Fenollosa, “The
Lessons of Japanese Art,” manuscript, Nov. 1891, bMS Am 1759.2 (54), 15, Compositions
by Ernest Francisco Fenollosa 1853-1908, the Ernest G. Stillman Papers, by permission of
the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
xvii. Dow, Composition (1899), 24. More specifically, in relation to painting Dow
suggested: “Painting is a space art. It is concerned with the breaking up of a space into parts
which vary in shape, depth of tone and color.” Ibid., 16.
xviii. In this respect it may be significant that Dow, like Fenollosa, classified architecture
as a “non-representational” art. See Dow, Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art
Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, rev. and enl. 7th ed. (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, Page and Co., 1913), 49.
xix. Frank Lloyd Wright, “In the Cause of Architecture, I: The Logic of the Plan.”
Architectural Record 63 (1928), reprinted in Frederick Gutheim, ed., In the Cause of
Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: Architectural Record/McGraw-Hill, 1969),
153.
xx. Thomas Tallmadge, The Story of Architecture in America (London: Allen and Unwin,
1928), 228.
xxi. Richard MacCormac, "The Anatomy of Wright’s Aesthetic,” Architectural Review 143,
no. 852, (1968): 143-46.
xxii. Dow, Composition (1899), 24.
xxiii. Dow suggested: “Great architects and designers were not the only ones to use this
simple line-idea—the masters of pictorial art have based upon it some of their best work. . . .
Hiroshige, the best of the later Japanese landscape composers, a man of inexhaustible
inventive power, often uses the rectangular idea. . . . None of these examples [works by
Hiroshige, Piero della Francesca, Giotto, and Whistler] need further explanation. They are
beautiful, even when divested of color and dark-and-light, because they are built upon a few
straight lines, finely related, and a few delicately proportioned areas.” Ibid., 27.
xxiv. Frank Lloyd Wright, The Japanese Print: An Interpretation (Chicago: Ralph
Fletcher-Seymour, 1912), 12.
xxv. Dow, Composition (1899), 25.
xxvi. Arthur Drexler, The Drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: Horizon, 1962),
12.
REFERENCES
Bernard. J. H. trans. (1892). Kant's Kritik of Judgement. London: Macmillan & Co.
Butcher, S. H. trans. (1895). Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art. London: Macmillan
& Co.
De Zurko, Edward. (1957). Origins of Functionalist Theory. New York: Columbia
University Press.

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Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 13
Dow, A. W. (1899). Composition, A Series of Exercises Selected from a New System of Art
Education. Boston: J. M. Bowles.
Dow, A. W. (1913). Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of
Students and Teachers, rev. and enl. 7th ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page and
Co.
Drexler, A. (1962). The Drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Horizon Press.
Fenollosa, E. F. (1891). The Lessons of Japanese Art. manuscript, bMS Am 1759.2 (54), 15,
Compositions by Ernest Francisco Fenollosa 1853-1908, the Ernest G. Stillman
Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University.
MacCormac, R. (1968). The Anatomy of Wright’s Aesthetic. Architectural Review 143
(852): 143-146. London: Architectural Review.
Marchant, E. C. trans. (1923). Xenophon, Memorabilia and Oeconomicus. London:
Heinemann.
Nute, K. (1991). Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese Art: Ernest Fenollosa the Missing Link.
Architectural History: Journal of The Society of Architectural Historians of Great
Britain 34: 224-230. London: Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain.
Riedl, R. (1978). Order in Living Organisms: A Systems Analysis of Evolution. Trans. R. P.
S. Jefferies. Chichester, Wiley-Interscience.
Rousseau, G. S., ed. (1972). Organic Form: The Life of an Idea. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
Spencer, H. (1876-96). Principles of Sociology. Ed. S. Andreski. (1969) Hamden, CT:
Archon.
Spencer, H. Social Statics. (1892). Abridged and revised together with The Man Against the
State. (1893). New York: Appleton.
Sullivan, L. H. (1896). The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered. Lippincott's
Magazine. New York: Lippincott's.
Sullivan, L. H. (1924). The Autobiography of an Idea. Reprinted edition. (1956). New York:
Dover Publications.
Sullivan, L. H. (1947). Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings, reprinted ed. (1979). New
York: Dover Publications.
Tallmadge, T. (1928). The Story of Architecture in America. London: Allen and Unwin.
Wright, F. L. (1912). The Japanese Print: An Interpretation. Chicago: Ralph Fletcher-
Seymour.
Wright, F. L. (1928). In the Cause of Architecture, I: The Logic of the Plan. Architectural
Record 63, reprinted in Frederick Gutheim, ed. (1969). In the Cause of

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Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 14
 Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright. New York: Architectural Record/McGraw-Hill.

Kevin Nute is an Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Oregon. He

trained at Nottingham and Cambridge Universities in the United Kingdom and practiced in
London, Hong Kong and Singapore before teaching in Japan and the United States. He is the
author of Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (Chapman & Hall, 1993/2000), and Place, Time
and Being in Japanese Architecture (Routledge 2004).

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Two Interpretations of Organic Form: Functional and Purposive 15

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