A Case Study for Unity Temple By Jeff Elder

The New Edifice of Unity Church, better known as Unity Temple, was finished in the year 1908. The local Unitarian congregation built it as a place of worship in Oak Park, Illinois. To design their new Temple, they commissioned an architect well known to the Oak Park area by the name of Frank Lloyd Wright. Since Wright comes from a Unitarian background and is quite popular for his designs, he almost seems perfect for the project.

The people of the Unitarian faith would best be described as liberal. This would be imperative to the development of this building. Since they are such a liberal group, they are completely open to any new innovative ideas Wright may have. This expression of liberalism shows the Unitarians belief in having freedom from the traditional, when tradition is not supported by good reason. Along with this belief, they felt that simplicity and beauty of faith are embodied in the simple design and chaste beauty of the edifice. This is one belief that was quite apparent on the building’s exterior. Another belief they had which showed their basic outlook on religion in general was the belief that God should not be sought in the sky, but here on earth among the children of men.

For the new temple, the Unitarians wanted a building that would be ideal for the worship of God and the service of man. In hiring Wright, there were a few things that they would request. Since this would be a place for worship, social gatherings, and meetings, the building would have to be able to accommodate these needs first and foremost. The Unitarians would also request that there be a separation of worship space and meeting space. Along with this, the building would have to be a safe protected place, which would be ideal for worship. It would have to be quiet on the inside, which meant that outside noise from traffic would need to be eliminated. In the temple space, an accommodation for the congregation, choir, and other musical performances was necessary. For the exterior of the building, there would also be a few wishes. The Unitarians wanted something, which expressed the form and nature of the structure of their faith. Since the location of the building was on the corner of a highly exposed intersection in Oak Park, the building would have to be worthy of it’s surroundings. This meant that the exterior of the building, if simple, would also have to be aesthetic. Due to the rather quaint number of Unitarians in the Oak Park congregation, this would all have to be done on a very limited budget.

Frank Lloyd Wright was chosen to be the architect for this new building. He was thirty-eight years old when he was commissioned for the project. As a man who comes from a Unitarian background in Wisconsin, it was a little bit easier for Wright to understand the beliefs and ideals of the congregation. Already on the cutting edge of the architecture world, this advantage would be all Wright needed to produce yet, another high-caliber piece of architecture which would break all preconceived notions of what a place of worship should look like.

Even with Wright’s apparent advantage on the project, this building would have it’s fare share of problems for Wright to encounter. The first thing he had to do was decide how this building should be laid out. Since two very distinct types of spaces were needed, Wright had to devise a way to separate the two, yet make them one. He does this by creating two different buildings and linking them together with an entrance hall. The two spaces are known as Unity Temple, which is the actual temple where the congregation convenes to worship, and the Unity House, which is the space where social gatherings and meetings take place. The Temple is quite larger than the House in plan and elevation, which ultimately creates a sense of hierarchy. Wright viewed the Temple as a place of worship which made it a much more important place than the House, which was viewed as a place of service. He made the entrance hall a different type of space, which had a certain hollow appearance when approached from outside. It had a lower ceiling than the Temple and House, which in turn made the space less significant than the other two. The reasoning behind this move was to make the interiors of the Temple and House that much more astonishing when entered from the smaller entrance hall.

Since Wright’s brand of architecture veered so far from the norm, he had to create a way for this severely modern style to intertwine with the rather traditional setting of Oak Park. His use of planar elements throughout the facades and interior gives the building a very ordered look. The placement of broad walls and fenestrations by Wright makes the building fit quite evenly into the modest Oak Park landscape. Even without a lot of ornamentation, the building seems to create it’s own type of decoration with the many different level changes that take place in the façade. It is what Wright doesn’t add that makes this building so attractive.

When Wright designed this building, it is obvious that his thoughts on religion were revisited. Some of his ideas are expressed in the plan of the building. The plan follows the rather ancient idea of Latin cross planning, which is very prevalent in some of the world’s most revered places of worship. Another notion he puts forth is one, which can only be experienced by a visitor. The path a visitor to the Temple must take resembles that of the path similar to what one would take in their religious experience. The path is always going forward in a positive direction, one that never back tracks. This is a simple, yet complex idea that Wright gives the building, which in turn adds to the buildings character. These ideas of his are ones, which include the old and provoke new thought in temple planning.

The interior of the Temple is one of geometrical simplicity. It is perfectly symmetrical in appearance. Through use of balconies, Wright creates enough space for the congregation to worship in comfort. He also gives the visitor several distinct lines of view. With openings punched into the thick walls and a series of skylights placed above in atrium fashion, light seems to fall into the Temple from above. This thought of light from top to bottom is also an age-old idea in lots of past cathedrals and places of worship.

The next task Wright had to encounter was the limited budget given to him by the congregation. In order to build a building that would be large enough for the amount of visitors and the various functions that would take place, Wright had to propose unorthodox methods of building which, at this time, were hardly common. He also eliminated some of the more expensive pieces of a building in his design, such as the spire, tower, and an expensive roof, which were all common traits of previous buildings of worship. Another thing he had to take into account were the problems of outside noise from traffic, the aesthetic appearance of the exterior, and one other problem significant to the congregation in Oak Park. Since a previous Temple had been destroyed by fire, the only way to create a safe protected place of worship for the Oak Park congregation would be to use a material, which was less susceptible to fire. Well, Wright takes all of this into account and decides the best material for this building would be poured concrete. It is a material that is completely fire retardant, a lot less expensive than stone, and can be made smooth to create an attractive finish. Besides being the perfect material for the building, it was something that could be considered innovative, which was one of many deciding factors for a building that was very modern in design. Not only that, but the installation of concrete would use only minimal labor and would eliminate the use of a lot of different contractors. This is also an attractive quality because this meant since the same workers would be building most of the building, the work would stay a lot more consistent all the way through. Since the idea of using poured concrete for floors, walls, and ceilings was somewhat of a new idea, ways of installation had to be further developed perform the job. With this in mind, Wright came up with the idea to make the forms out of wood. This meant that forms could be used repeatedly on the building to create identical pieces. From an economical stand point, the more a single form could be used the less waste there would be. This idea would revolutionize the building industry. Wright proved that a material that is seemingly characterless could be manipulated to create something quite attractive.

Works Cited

1.  The New Edifice of Unity Church. Marshall-Jackson. 2000.

2.  http://www.unitytemple.org/ . Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Page. Sept.2000

3.  http://www.majorworks.com/wright.html . Frank Lloyd Wright: Resource and Appreciation Site. Sept. 2000.

4.  http://www.mcs.com/~tgiesler/flw_home.htm. The Frank Lloyd Wright Page. Aug. 1999.

5.  Hertz, David Michael. Frank Lloyd Wright in Word and Form. MacMillan. 1995. p. 31, 35.