RESEARCH: A Flower Among the Weeds

In Racine, Wis. last week S. C. Johnson & Son Inc. (Johnson’s Wax) dedicated a building with little visible means of support. A 156-ft. glass & brick tower, it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright as the latest thing in laboratories. The building has no foundation directly under its outside walls. Instead, the foundation is a central core of concrete embedded 54 ft. into the ground. The core, which contains elevators, heating pipes, etc., supports the 15 floors in cantilever fashion, thus allows maximum daylight illumination on all sides. Said Wright: “Up in the air is the natural place for a laboratory . . . Our industrial system has believed so much in science and so little in art that it has produced chiefly weeds. But now I see a flower among those weeds.”