Prospect-refuge patterns in Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie houses: using isovist fields to examine the evidence

It has been argued that the domestic works of Frank Lloyd Wright possess an innate phenomenological appeal that is a direct result of a particular spatial and visual pattern in Wright's architecture. This argument, which is central to several architectural variants of prospect-refuge theory, suggests that a distinct spatio-visual system exists which directly shapes the way people move through and experience Wright's architecture. This paper uses a computational technique, isovist field analysis, to search for prospect-refuge related spatio-visual patterns in paths through five of Frank Lloyd Wright's canonical Prairie houses. The paper concludes that there is no clear evidence in these particular cases of the suggested pattern.