Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House and its Textile-Block System
No045 #500fllwproject • Mabel & Charles Ennis House (1923) • Los Angeles, California
One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s notable innovations was the textile-block system, perfected in 1924.
He devised a method to cast concrete blocks on-site, utilizing local sand and aggregate. Each block featured a built-in geometric pattern, creating a rhythmic texture across the entire building when repeated. Wright incorporated slots and grooves to allow steel reinforcing bars to join the blocks horizontally and vertically.
Wright talks about this fabrication process in his first essay of “In the Cause of Architecture (1927) series for Architectural Record:
“A building for the first time in the world may be lightly fabricated, complete, of mono-material — literally woven into a pattern or design as was the oriental rug ... fabrication as infinite in color, texture, and variety as in that rug. A certain simple technique larger in organization but no more complex in execution than that or the rug-weaving, builds the building.”
This system was employed in four houses in Southern California, the Ennis house (pictured here) was the last of those four. Wright continued to explore and utilize it in subsequent decades.
Ennis House is No045 on the timeline for the #500fllwproject to photograph all remaining Wright designs around the world.
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