Jon Lipman, AIA
Institute for Vedic Architecture, Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa
jon@jlipman.com
Keywords: spirituality, sacred space, culture, architecture, church, transcendence
Unity Temple (Oak Park, Illinois, 1905) reflects a specific cultural identity and approach to spirituality. Wright was the secretary (i.e., president) of the Chicago Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, and strongly embraced the Emersonian concept of Transcendentalism. He proposed that “the Unitarian abstract is the modern essence,” from which we infer that the transcendent, if it were to be made accessible to the subject via abstraction, was central to what he desired that a Unitarian worshipper might attain.
From the largest scale to its small details, the physical structure of Unity Temple (Oak Park, Illinois, 1904) is an expression of this particular spiritual point of view, that of Unitarian Universalism as it was specifically interpreted by Frank Lloyd Wright, and significantly informed by the Transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Wright translated this architectural/spiritual point of view into built form of the building on multiple scales.
Figure 1: Unity Temple, Interior of the auditorium, facing the pulpit. © Jtesla16 at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Partly through dialogue, but mainly through direct perception of the room, participants can come to discover on their own, and have the intimate experience, of how the orchestrated design of this room can bring one’s perception and mind from the level of the surface to a level of abstraction, which may lead to spiritual growth.
This building is almost universally considered one of the great works of modern architecture, and I myself find this room to be a source of constant inspiration. What is it about this room, a room that is missing all of the traditional cues of a religious building, that nonetheless imbues it with the ability to enliven a spiritual experience? I am of the opinion that Wright orchestrated the design of this room so as to pry the worshippers’ frame of mind loose from the quotidian thoughts that would have filled them as they were entering, and to awaken in them the transcendence, the abstraction, of the Unitarian ideal.
Rather than give you my opinions regarding what he may have done with this room to achieve this, I am going to give you some ammunition primarily by Emerson, by Wright’s client, and by Wright himself, and then to encourage us to have an inquiry into this hypothesis.
What was Emerson’s central insight? What idea more than others stands as equivalent and synonym for ‘Emerson’?…First and last, he beheld UNITY – UNITY as few have seen it.
“Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE.”
“Nature is transcendental, exists primarily, necessarily….”
“The Unitarian abstract is the modern essence.”
“If Wright, after Emerson, saw unity as the fundamental principle of nature, then its most visible manifestation in architecture was a continuity of material or a plasticity of form, wherein all parts appear to flow into each other to be geometrically interrelated.”
“…With Unity Temple…there were not walls of any kind, only features; and the features were screens grouped about interior space.”
“…The simplicity of the room – the noble ROOM – in the service of MAN for the worship of GOD.”
