Ellen Gates Starr and Frank Lloyd Wright at Hull House: The Machine as the 'Will of Life'

摘要

Frank Lloyd Wright's address 'The Art and Craft of the Machine' is widely remembered as an early manifesto for the modern movement and machine-made simplicity. However, Wright's concept of the 'Machine' was influenced by Louis Sullivan's organic theories of architecture, which combined Victorian science and idealism. An acknowledgement that Wright's Machine was also metaphysical, the 'Will of Life', resituates his characterization of the arts and crafts movement as anachronistic and elitist. Furthermore, Wright delivered his speech at Hull House and directed much of his criticism at the social settlement workers and indirectly at their neighbours, many of whom participated in craft activities after working on machines all day long. Ellen Gates Starr, bookbinder and co-founder of Hull House, responded to Wright's address and agreed that handwork and social work are not synonymous. She also made it clear that neither she, nor other members of the Chicago Arts and Crafts Society were against the machine. Starr's insight drew upon the conditions of contemporary industrial society, while Wright's conception was based on the power of individual genius. This complicates a persistent narrative that the arts and crafts movement failed because its practitioners made expensive, hand-crafted items and refused to embrace standardization.