Having developed solutions to the problems of organisation and manufacture, the 1930s saw American companies becoming interested in more efficient working environments and buildings that could express their corporate image.

Wright extended his idea of the company as an organic social entity with the construction of the Johnson Wax building in 1939. As with the Larkin building, workers were isolated from the unsympathetic industrial surroundings within a great space supported by slender mushroom columns and lit from above. The great work room, with its rich spaces, warm, radiant materials and forms were intended to compensate for the lack of view and contact with the outside world. The St Louis Dispatch reported in 1937 during construction:

“The 250 workers will occupy a single great room, only those machines which are noisy being segregated, and cork ceilings will absorb the sound rising from the heated rubber floor, blend it into a placid hum.”

The Johnson Wax building created a sensation when it opened and the building is still in use by the same company today, admired as one of the masterpieces of 1930s architecture.

The organisation of this cleaning materials company was again based on Taylorist principles and a clear and rigid hierarchy. Orders would be processed across the main work floor with managers overlooking from the mezzanine. Company executives were in their own offices on the roof of the building with a bridge connection to the research laboratories.

Within the hierarchical structure of the company the paternalistic nature of the company is manifest in the facilities for its unionised workers such as a theatre. The success of the building was proved by the extra time that employees chose to spend in the building.

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