Plan For Greater Baghdad - Commission and History

Commission and History

In the 1950s, Iraq was awash with new oil money. The deal negotiated in the first years of the decade with the Western-controlled Iraq Petroleum Company, which held a monopoly on oil exploration and development, increased the government's share of revenues substantially. Some of this money was dedicated to the construction of new public buildings in Baghdad. As the government, headed by King Faisal II, developed a general scheme for the capital, it determined to call upon world-famous architects—mostly Westerners—to participate in the modernization of the city. The decision was a break with the city's long-established traditional forms, as the architects selected were among the titans of modern architecture and were intended to build within that aesthetic.

Numerous prominent Western architects were invited to Iraq on government commission, including Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer, and Wright. Wright received a commission for an opera house in January 1957 and accepted it before the end of the month. He visited the city in May. Originally, the commission called for the opera house to be built on a site in the center of the city. On his visit, Wright instead selected an island in the middle of the Tigris as his site; the area was at the time undeveloped as only recent flood-control measures had made it suitable for construction. With this larger site available to him, Wright was free to develop a plan for not simply an opera house but a full cultural center. After returning to his studio at Taliesin, he developed a concept for a university on the left bank of the Tigris. (Ultimately, the university plan used was one by Gropius, which exists today.)

In July 1958, the Hashemite monarchy collapsed, King Faisal II was killed, and a new government led by Abd al-Karim Qasim took over the country. At first the new government indicated that it intended to continue working with Wright, but they soon objected to the scale and extravagance of Wright's ideas; they declared, in the words of Robert Twombly, "that the people needed food, clothing and shelter more than floating gardens, gold fountains, and a mammoth zoo." Wright's work on the project stopped and it was never built; Wright would die less than a year later. Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium at Arizona State University is a simplified version of Wright's opera house design.