01-10-2018, por Jennifer Gray
Reading Broadacre
On April 15, 1935, in the heart of Rockefeller Center in New York, Frank Lloyd Wright mounted an exhibition featuring a radical project called Broadacre City, in which he proposed to resettle the entire population of the United States onto individual homesteads. A veritable Trojan horse that challenged the very urbanity of the space where it was exhibited, Broadacre City advanced an idea of decentralization whereby communities would be based on small-scale farming and manufacturing, local government, and property ownership.
Conceived at the height of the Great Depression, Wright never intended to build Broadacre City but rather used it as a vehicle to address pressing social, economic, and environmental issues, many of which have contemporary relevance. His vision invites us to reflect on questions of our own time, such as the role of government, social and economic equality, infrastructure and sustainability, and how to foster community.
The Broadacre City exhibition was sponsored by the National Alliance of Art and Industry, a Rockefeller-funded initiative that endeavored to educate the public about advances in American industry. Its centerpiece was a 12-foot by 12-foot model that represented 4-square miles of “typical countryside” accommodating 1,400 families. Within this radius, all elemental units of modern society were included: farms, factories, offices, schools, parks and recreational spaces, places of worship, a seat of government, and individual houses [Fig. 1 and Fig. 2]. The scale was local, as Wright emphasized: “…little farms, little homes for industry, little factories, little schools, and a little university.” Every citizen of Broadacre was a property owner—a minimum of one acre of land, or more according to need—and also owned at least one car, as transportation was primarily by automobile. Wright envisioned that the low-density community represented in the Broadacre model would be replicated across the United States, creating a network of small communities that would be connected together by highways and telecommunication systems, such as radio and telephone [Fig. 8].Accompanying the Broadacre model were smaller models of individual projects, drawings, and text panels that together told the story of Wright’s utopian vision [Fig. 3]. At the entrance, a panel introduced the overall theme of Broadacre: DECENTRALIZATION INTEGRATION. Once inside the installation, various other didactic panels outlined the main arguments. THE FUTURE IS EVERYWHERE OR NOWHERE points to the sweeping nature of Wright’s proposal. OUT OF THE GROUND INTO THE LIGHT speaks to the agrarian ideal behind Broadacre, with its tapestry of small farms and privately owned land. (Continua)
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https://franklloydwright.org/reading-broadacre/
2018-10-05
