Frank Lloyd Wright: Broadacre City Project
By (Author) Juliet Kinchin
Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
30th September 2024
30th June 2024
United States
General
Non Fiction
720.92
Paperback
48
Width 180mm, Height 230mm
200g
This latest volume in the MoMA One on One series focuses on Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City Project (1934-1935). Frank Lloyd Wright's proposal for Broadacre City (1929-35) put forth a remarkable claim-that the metropolis was obsolete. In its place, Broadacre was to be a "Usonian" synthesis, an unprecedented landscape unsullied by convention or history, consisting simply of "architecture and acreage." With its low-density carpet of small plots, predominantly one- and two-story buildings, and seemingly infinite territory, the ruralized landscape of Broadacre would sustain new levels of individuality and freedom, far more democratic than a traditional metropolis could ever support. Yet the 4-square-mile (10.4-squarekilometer) area of the Broadacre City model would give home to only 1,400 families, making the population density not quite urban or rural or suburban, but somehow their hybrid, with a social and spatial structure that eludes clear definition.
Juliet Kinchin is a former Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.