Frank Lloyd Wright and the Vertical Dimension. The Virtual Reconstruction of the Rogers Lacy Hotel in Dallas

Abstract

This essay presents a work that Frank Lloyd Wright did not realized: Rogers Lacy Hotel project in Dallas. This reconstruction starts from the historical and geometric references of the project, retracing the cultural and architectural influences of the American architect during his career. The aim is to arrive at a virtual reconstruction suitable for specific analytical purposes. The proposed initial process, I mean the contextualization of the historical influences and the role played by the Kindergarten training (MacCormac in Environ. Plann. B. Plann. Des. 1:78–88, 1974) in the geometric composition of the building, is necessary to fully understand what role the skyscraper played in Wright’s thoughts. Indeed, this kind of building, which develops entirely in a vertical direction, caused contrasting emotions in the American architect. Wright considered the skyscraper both a symbol of technological progress as well as the main cause of the inexorable degradation of urban space. Starting from the original drawings (plans, elevations, and sections) it is possible to give a virtual life to the Rogers Lacy hotel and experiment with Wright’s technological vision, focusing our attention on the external façades, which are composed by revolutionary glass walls filled by a fiberglass insulation. In practice, basing on the construction technologies and building materials of the time, a lighting engineering evaluation of the performance of the glass panels has been performed, in order to analyze the well-being conditions inside the hotel (Salvatore in Renew. Sustain. Energy Rev. 47:1016–1033, 2015), using the parameters that refer to the American LEED certification.