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of Louis
Sullivan and began to reorient his work toward the midwestern ideal of a progressive architecture based on nature. However, his version of organic architecture reflected different social and cultural values than those of Sullivan or Bragdon's contemporary Frank Lloyd Wright. Whereas for Sullivan and Wright a building was most organic when it expressed the individual character of its creator, Bragdon saw individualism as a hindrance to the formation of a consensual democratic culture. Accordingly, he promoted regular geometry and musical proportion as ways for architects to harmonize buildings with one another and with their urban context. From 1900 until he closed his architectural practice during World War I, Bragdon applied these principles to his buildings, and he continued to use them through the 1920s in both graphic designs and the theatrical sets he created during a second career as a New York stage designer.
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new ornamental vocabulary he called “projective ornament.” Projective ornament was a system for generating geometric patterns that could be adapted for use in architecture, the fine and decorative arts, and graphic design. Basing ornament on mathematical patterns abstracted from nature, Bragdon created a universal form-language to replace the variety of historical and national styles, which provided designers and clients with a vocabulary for articulating differences of class, culture, gender, nationality, and religion. By showing how his repertory of patterns could be adapted to any kind of design problem, Bragdon aimed to integrate not only architecture, art, and design, but also his divided society.
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Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, and New York. These nocturnal community chorus festivals incorporated ornamental lamps and decorations into massive public events that drew tens of thousands of spectator-participants. Through its role in both civic architecture and print media, projective ornament began to integrate these distinct realms into a single public sphere visually unified by geometric pattern.
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While
Bragdon's early work reflected the revival of Renaissance architecture associated with the City Beautiful, he soon became a leading participant in the arts and crafts movement, working with Harvey Ellis, Gustav Stickley, and other arts and crafts artists. Around 1900, Bragdon embraced the ideas
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Bragdon was well regarded for his ink rendering talent, his many very successful designs for both residential and institutional buildings, and his inventive geometric ornament. His most important contribution to both architectural modernism and progressive reform came in 1915 with his creation of a
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and other regional movements, these architects developed new approaches to the planning, design, and ornamentation of buildings that embraced industrial techniques and building types while reaffirming democratic traditions threatened by the rise of urban mass society. In numerous essays and books,
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Bragdon's ornament appeared in the
Rochester Chamber of Commerce (1915–17), as well as in the design of magazines, posters, and books. It spread throughout the region through its use in a series of Festivals of Song and Light that Bragdon staged with community music reformers from 1915 to 1918 in
252:(Frankel), an eighteen-year-old American studying in Paris and Berlin, Bragdon took her to Stieglitz to show her art. Bragdon and Lefranc remained friends for the remainder of his life while his influences rounded out her education. In his books on architectural theory,
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140:(1915–17), as well as many other public buildings and private residences, Bragdon enjoyed a national reputation as an architect working in the progressive tradition associated with
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Christina
Malathouni, "Architecture is the pattern of human mind in space: Claude F. Bragdon and the spatial concept of architecture", Journal of Architecture (2013)
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in 1923 and became a stage designer, and remained in New York until his death in 1946. In 1925, knowing Alfred
Stieglitz and having been introduced to
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Bragdon argued that only an “organic architecture” based on nature could foster a democratic community in an industrial capitalist society.
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style (which he thought of as reflective of the natural order) over the "arranged" Beaux-Arts architecture of the classical revival.
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He had yet another overlapping career as an author of books on spiritual topics, including
Eastern religions. These books include
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Bragdon’s work fell out of favor in the 1930s as
American architects and clients embraced
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Organic
Architecture and Direct Democracy: Claude Bragdon's Festivals of Song and Light
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125:(August 1, 1866 – 1946) was an American architect, writer, and stage designer based in
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264:(1932), he advocated a theosophical approach to building design, urging an "organic"
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modernism. But it left an ongoing legacy as younger architects—in particular
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Crystal and Arabesque: Claude Bragdon, Ornament, and Modern Architecture
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New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation
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In 1920, he helped translate and publish P.D. Ouspensky's
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practice waned. He incorporated his own design of the
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at daileyrarebooks.com Bibliography of Claude Bragdon
491:(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009)
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228:In 1917, after a dispute with photography magnate
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646:New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
331:A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension)
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244:in the structure of the building. He moved to
134:Rochester’s New York Central Railroad terminal
517:Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension
403:"Cultural Resource Information System (CRIS)"
644:, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division,
165:The First Universalist Church in Rochester
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642:Claude Bragdon scenic designs, 1923-1938
577:Works by or about Claude Fayette Bragdon
304:introduction to the English translation.
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373:Livingston County Courthouse (New York)
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519:, p. 2, Dover Publications Inc., 1977
430:Virginia L. Bartos (December 2013).
696:Architects from Rochester, New York
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195:Rochester First Universalist Church
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209:. He designed an addition to the
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291:(1933). His autobiography
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310:International Style
293:More Lives Than One
262:The Frozen Fountain
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389:References
44:1866-08-01
625:Biography
596:at RIT's
242:hypercube
213:in 1914.
183:Dansville
175:Watertown
157:Biography
87:1890–1946
606:Archived
590:Archived
367:See also
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283:(1931),
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