CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/9/2017

Place as Spectacle in 'Frank Lloyd Wright: Unpacking the Archive'

Neither a mid-century rendering of a one-day space settlement, nor a sci-fi city on the future Planet Earth, this shimmering night perspective was produced in 1955 by Frank Lloyd Wright to depict his vision for the Madison Civic Center (Monona Terrace) in Madison, Wisconsin, which he began work on in 1938 and continued to revise until his death in 1959. Realized posthumously in much-altered form, the original plan called for a mega-structure partially cantilevered over Lake Monona. “By placing the main programmatic elements, including automobile access and parking, under a semicircular street-level terrace echoing the auditorium shape within, the civic center became a public forum,” Neil Levine writes in Frank Lloyd Wright: Unpacking the Archive. “With the lake as backdrop and the city as foreground, Wright pictured the theaterlike outdoor space as a place of spectacle.”