June 8 will mark the 150th. birthday of Frank Lloyd Wright a celebrated American Architect.
Born Frank Lincoln Wright, why he dropped his middle name of Lincoln for Lloyd we probably will never know. He was quite a maverick in his day and from a number of accounts was a self-involved ego-maniac with a flair for the expensive. One account blamed his poor upbringing as a minister's child for his thirst for finery and elegance. Nonetheless he was a self-made professional. From early fist fights in the drafting room at his first job, he rose to become an icon in the architectural industry before his death in 1959.
And his work leaves me cold. I mean most of them look like houses, ok? But I fail to see anything spectacular or earth-shattering about the design. I'm reminded of a quote I read from one his long-term employees concerning a trait of all his works; "They were all way over budget and the roofs leaked". And that is just my personal opinion. I wish in no way to detract from or muddy the way those that honor him look at his accomplishments. I mean, I'm a just a surveyor and what in the hell would I know about architecture anyway? Which leads us to the point of my post....
At least once in his career Wright felt himself capable of designing land development. I believe it was a residential area and called "Parkwyn" located in Kalamazoo, MI. From what I've read (which is not near enough) Wright platted the area with circular lots surrounded by open spaces. This bolsters my personal surveyor's opinion of not only Wright, but architects in general. Reportedly the area has since been replatted (thank God).
It would be interesting to see a copy of the original Parkwyn Plat. Maybe there is someone here that is familiar with Kalamazoo and could come up with a copy so we all may be enlightened by his design genius.
I can't think of a better way for a bunch of surveyors to honor a dead architect....;)
paden cash, post: 430929, member: 20 wrote: June 8 will mark the 150th. birthday of Frank Lloyd Wright a celebrated American Architect.
Born Frank Lincoln Wright, why he dropped his middle name of Lincoln for Lloyd we probably will never know. He was quite a maverick in his day and from a number of accounts was a self-involved ego-maniac with a flair for the expensive. One account blamed his poor upbringing as a minister's child for his thirst for finery and elegance. Nonetheless he was a self-made professional. From early fist fights in the drafting room at his first job, he rose to become an icon in the architectural industry before his death in 1959.
I suppose that if a person has no sense of history, they won't find Wright's work both distinctively American and interesting in the context of American Modernism. Wright didn't arrive fully formed. His mentor was Louis Sullivan in whose Chicago office he worked. Sullivan is commonly cited as one of the most influential early Modernists in practice in the US and the argument can be made that Sullivan's aesthetic was the point of departure for Wright in his early career, using geometric decoration in lieu of a pastiche of pseudo-historical forms.
Here's a link to a paper about Wright's early career in Sullivan's office and afterwards:
http://chicagopatterns.com/louis-sullivan-frank-lloyd-wright-charnley-house/
Kent McMillan, post: 430934, member: 3 wrote: I suppose that if a person has no sense of history, they won't find Wright's work both distinctively American and interesting in the context of American Modernism...
I never said Wright's work wasn't distinctively American or wasn't interesting in the context of your "American Modernism". All I said was that I fail to be impressed by his works. I'm merely being honest. I'm sure in your opinion my failure to admire Wright's work has something to do with IQ, genetics or something.
'American Modernism' is the reason all the Motel 6 and Waffle Houses look the same at the Interstate exits; cookie cutter buildings. It's the reason all the government buildings look like penal institutions. American Modernism was probably fueled more by low-bidder mentality than anything else.
paden cash, post: 430940, member: 20 wrote: I never said Wright's work wasn't distinctively American or wasn't interesting in the context of your "American Modernism". All I said was that I fail to be impressed by his works. I'm merely being honest. I'm sure in your opinion my failure to admire Wright's work has something to do with IQ, genetics or something.
i admit I'm a connoisseur who is interested in anything that captured the spirit of its age. To say "I don't like it" to me is equivalent to saying I Hate America or I Hate Cars or I Hate the Great Plains since all of those shaped Wright's aesthetics. Wright even coined the term "Usonian" to describe his effort to find a design aesthetic that was a unique response to the United States, the "US" of "Usonian".
I know you to be a student of history, so cast your mind back to the 1930s and 40s. The automobile was rapidly changing patterns of urbanization to the extent that some American cities were in essence being designed around the automobile. If you were planning cites in 1930, what would you predict would be the future in which what you designed would exist?
This is the same time period when Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car was one response:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_car
'American Modernism' is the reason all the Motel 6 and Waffle Houses look the same at the Interstate exits; cookie cutter buildings. It's the reason all the government buildings look like penal institutions. American Modernism was probably fueled more by low-bidder mentality than anything else.
No, I don't think you can lay the design of Motel 6s and Waffle Houses on Modernism. Neither are very thoughtful products of a Modernist sensibility any more than a 1976 Buick Regal is. All three are mostly just industrial kitsch, things made to resemble something else instead of finding an elegant form to solve some actual relevant problem.
I remember seeing a Dymaxion car in the Harrah Collection back in the 70s. I believe that it's still in the National Automotive Museum in Reno.
Pretty wild set of wheels.
Loyal
Loyal, post: 430946, member: 228 wrote: I remember seeing a Dymaxion car in the Harrah Collection back in the 70s. I believe that it's still in the National Automotive Museum in Reno.
Pretty wild set of wheels.
The 1930s was a period when the future was being invented in the United States. The Century of Progress Exposition in 1933 kicked things off and that carried through to the 1939 World's Fair. Nobody knew for sure what the future would look like, but some things had changed so much, so quickly that there really wasn't a ceiling on speculation about what would follow.
Name a FLW building that is still standing that hasn't been refurbished or practically rebuilt for millions of dollars.
Not only did the roofs leak, they were mostly structurally deficient.
Dave Lindell, post: 430948, member: 55 wrote: Name a FLW building that is still standing that hasn't been refurbished or practically rebuilt for millions of dollars.
Not only did the roofs leak, they were mostly structurally deficient.
I think the point is that some of Wright's buildings, such as the S.C. Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin, and the Kaufmann House, Falling Water, are such remarkable things that they do get maintained and, if needed, restored.
In case some aren't very familiar with the history of architecture, here's another iconic modern building, the Villa Savoye, designed by the Swiss architects, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. Note that the building is so revered as an important work that it has also been restored to correct various engineering flaws in the original.
I like Wrights work and designs.
Sometimes when you are an innovator, not everything goes right.
I have been to his work around the country and have been to designs by his followers. You can go to Bartlesville and stay at one of his hi-rise designs.
Dave Lindell, post: 430948, member: 55 wrote: Name a FLW building that is still standing that hasn't been refurbished or practically rebuilt for millions of dollars.
Not only did the roofs leak, they were mostly structurally deficient.
Kent McMillan, post: 430945, member: 3 wrote: ....No, I don't think you can lay the design of Motel 6s and Waffle Houses on Modernism. Neither are very thoughtful products of a Modernist sensibility any more than a 1976 Buick Regal is. All three are mostly just industrial kitsch, things made to resemble something else instead of finding an elegant form to solve some actual relevant problem.
Modernism, in itself (and btw separate from Art Deco) in my opinion was not a bad concept. There are plenty of examples of beautiful designs considered to be Moderne that are unique, innovative and aesthetic. But it seems as though (architecturally speaking) the world stopped in the '70s, threw away all the blueprints of anything that wasn't 'American Modernism' and then proliferated the cold shoe-box and heartless designs we see on every corner nowadays.
I'm not saying there wasn't innovation in the original Modern movement in architecture (although I still reserve the right to say I don't like a lot of it), what I am saying is that the present day forms are perverse later generations of the original concepts. Exactly the same as the '76 Buick Regal you noted that somehow morphed its way into existence from some wonderful and beautiful concept vehicles from years past.
paden cash, post: 430952, member: 20 wrote: Modernism, in itself (and btw separate from Art Deco) in my opinion was not a bad concept. There are plenty of examples of beautiful designs considered to be Moderne that are unique, innovative and aesthetic. But it seems as though (architecturally speaking) the world stopped in the '70s, threw away all the blueprints of anything that wasn't 'American Modernism' and then proliferated the cold shoe-box and heartless designs we see on every corner nowadays.
I'm not saying there wasn't innovation in the original Modern movement in architecture (although I still reserve the right to say I don't like a lot of it), what I am saying is that the present day forms are perverse later generations of the original concepts. Exactly the same as the '76 Buick Regal you noted that somehow morphed its way into existence from some wonderful and beautiful concept vehicles from years past.
The essence of Modern architecture is a way of designing a building that:
- serves the functions that the building is intended to,
- expresses the way in which the building is constructed in its design,
- expresses the materials used in the building straightforwardly,
- makes interesting spaces without overt historical references.
Of the early generation of modern architects, my own opinion is that the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto was probably the greatest.
Anyone with a birthday coming up anytime soon, do not mention it to Paden. 🙂
This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by [Charlie] Parker, Pound, or Picasso: it helps us neither to enjoy nor endure. It will divert as long as we are prepared to be mystified or outraged, but maintains its hold only by being more mystifying or more outrageous: it has no lasting power.
-Philip Larkin
That said, Wright is one of those individuals from the early modern period that remained rooted somewhat in the traditional and humanistic rather than the avant-garde. He avoids the dehumanizing nihilism of industrialism with his emphasis on the organic, on place, and (especially early on) natural materials. Think Cezanne rather than Picasso, T.S. Eliot rather than Virginia Woolf. Plus a lot of what people criticize as modernism is really late-modernism and post-modernism
You can still see the influence of Ruskin and Morris in something like Falling Waters that is totally absent from other moderns (although that may be an anglophone/Germanic thing, the further an artist stayed away from Weimar the better). Comparing a Usonian house like the Rosenbaum House to, for example, Meis van der Rohe's sterile intentional style atrocity, the Farnsworth House is, well, no comparison. One is a place for humans, the other for machines.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenbaum_House
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth_House
But other than that, there is something uniquely American about the Usonian house that one doesn't see in its continental counterpart. Wright was trying to bring the aesthetic of the elite to the common man (a la Ruskin and Morrris) rather than a leveling of the design playing field of the Europeans. It's aesthetic democracy rather than aesthetic totalitarianism.
gschrock, post: 430964, member: 556 wrote: And you can pick up this beauty for only $1,395,000... Several others are also on the market.
Looking at that lean-to or shed roof and wondering how hard it must be to mow under that. You'd think that for $1,395,000 they would have thought of that little detail. 🙂
[USER=20]@paden cash[/USER]
Some people like Opera and the rest like Guns N' Roses. 😉
James Fleming, post: 430966, member: 136 wrote: This is my essential criticism of modernism, whether perpetrated by [Charlie] Parker, Pound, or Picasso: it helps us neither to enjoy nor endure. It will divert as long as we are prepared to be mystified or outraged, but maintains its hold only by being more mystifying or more outrageous: it has no lasting power.
-Philip Larkin
That is an exceptionally dim criticism by a poet who himself was a modernist. While I find Ezra Pound to be tiresome and ultimately unreadable, dismissing modern jazz as devoid of a profound grace and beauty can only be the opinion of a deaf person.
FL/GA PLS., post: 430968, member: 379 wrote: [USER=20]@paden cash[/USER]
Some people like Opera and the rest like Guns N' Roses. 😉
My oldest son was stuck on Axl's stuff. Me not so much. While he was jammin' to GNR I was listening to the Wilburys....still do even though half of them are dead (Nelson & Lefty).
[MEDIA=youtube]UMVjToYOjbM[/MEDIA]
Anybody of the FLW naysayers ilk would like to offer any other architect (excluding Saarinen) that would be placed in the American pantheon of architecture. anyone? Anyone from experience?
The idea that Modern architecture is inherently sterile doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Here, for example is a link to modernism at work in the rural South.
