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Prospect-refuge patterns in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie houses: Using isovist fields to examine the evidence

2013; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

2044-7507

Michael J. Ostwald, Michael J. Dawes,

Urban Planning and Landscape Design

It has been argued that the domestic works of Frank Lloyd Wright possess an innate phenomenological appeal that is a direct result of a particular spatial and visual pattern in Wright’s architecture. This argument, which is central to several architectural variants of prospect-refuge theory, suggests that a distinct spatio-visual system exists which directly shapes the way people move through and experience Wright’s architecture. This paper uses a computational technique, isovist field analysis, to search for prospect-refuge related spatio-visual patterns in paths through five of Frank Lloyd Wright’s canonical Prairie houses. The paper concludes that there is no clear evidence in these particular cases of the suggested pattern.