Open thread 1/19/23
I lived in a house for twenty years that also had St. Charles steel cabinets. They were great. That’s the only similarity that house had to anything Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Interesting, but not my thing.
DON’T move the furniture!!!
🙂
Those in the know, know why I said this…
So, your roof didn’t leak constantly, you could access all your floor space and the walkways could accommodate normal people? 🙂
But did it disturb any wetlands or navigable waters of the United States?
IIRC they have had to do considerable civil, structural work to keep Falling Waters from becoming Fallen House.
artfldgr:
Wasn’t that a rule of Wright’s when you bought one of his houses? It came furnished, and you had to agree to leave everything in place?
Oligonicella:
Our roof did leak sometimes, come to think of it.
I grew up in an area of Chicago called “South Shore.” At the time it was a very nice area and there were a number of early Wright houses. I dated a girl who lived in one of them. Sadly, it is now a violent nogo zone.
I actually prefer Green and Green houses in Los Angeles. At one time I owned a Green and Green house. They were somewhat similar to Wright’s ideas. They had furnishings that were designed for the house.
Frank lloyd wright was ayn rands unrequited crush see howard roarke and hank reardon
Almost everything I know about architecture I learned from reading Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House but I took the Falling Waters tour a few years ago and was actually quite impressed. It really is a beautiful house.
Wright himself was comparatively short, so he often designed his spaces without considering larger people. His technical idea — constricting a passage space, to enable a sudden “Whoa!” as you enter a larger actual living space — is actually quite good. But his implementation left much to be desired when it came to a typical person.
There was a comic book in the 1980s, “The Badger”, about a multipersonality guy one of whose personalities was “The Badger”. It was a silly, whimsical book, but it took place in Madison, Wisconsin, where a lot of FLW’s work is … One storyline involved a mad architect who was going around wrecking the works screaming, “Tear the Roof Off The Sucker!!”, because he was a large man and hated the buildings. Yeah, it was silly and whimsical.
https://readallcomics.com/the-badger-v1-01/
Wright was also like many established architects, more interested in the picture than the engineering. As a result, many of his “bright ideas” look great in paper, and even nominally great in the moment, but result in long-term issues when in actual, Real World practice — his windows, for example, have major issues with seals, and, as the video notes but kind of washes past, those cantilevered slabs were at the very limit of structural techniques at the time. Much more doable today, but still not remotely cheap to create.
Another place you can see a lot of late work from FLW is Florida Southern College, in Lakeland, FL (near to Tampa along I-4). One of his last major works, he designed the entire campus as-it-was back in the 1930s(?). It shows a lot of his techniques. Much less spectacular than something like Falling Waters, but it is interesting, and includes a single “faculty house” that was recently completed but was designed by him and intended to be a model house for many of the faculty to live in. Tours are available.
https://www.flsouthern.edu/frank-lloyd-wright/home.aspx
I visited Falling Water Years ago. While the building itself was quite impressive, I didn’t like the furniture. My grandfather, whom we lived with, made beautiful pieces of walnut tables, corner cupboards, and end tables, and we always had softer sofas and chairs with rounded arms. I still dislike the white and cocoa colored flat-arm sofas you see everywhere today.
Random question after seeing some of the news from the Davos WEF conference:
What sort of mental illness causes 80+ year olds to cling to power, and set about destroying everything?? I’m thinking here of John Kerry (80), Dr. Evil himself Klaus Schwab (84), Soros, McConnell, Pelosi, etc etc. I’m 70, and know I’m on my way out a lot sooner than when I was 50. I want to spend my final years being happy, being with my family, generally enjoying life. What causes such monsters in their final years to act they way they do?? I’ve never had any real insight into human behavior…probably why I did physics and not psych.
I don’t know physicsguy, yet venture the thought that in some cases (see Xenophon’s Heiro) the tyrant, aged or not aged, knows his bad acts are final with regard to his fate: letting go the reins of power is for him a sentence of death. Nominally this is always so, which in turn points to something of the nature of right.
For the sake of ease: Heiro — http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0210:text=Hiero
Sorry, nothing beats an early 20th c row house, provided it has cross-ventilation.
I had toured the Wright Hollyhock house in LA. Most interesting, with a little stream flowing through the living room. There was lots of indirect lighting that I thought was very nice.
There’s a Wright beach house in my area that was featured in an old movie “A Summer Place.”
This one below is cute, and not a Wright, because it has a large boulder that is half outside and half inside the living room.
https://www.priceypads.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/69d697_c7556aac70db42209f150fbe0ed92773mv2-630×420.jpg
We’re currently living in a mid-century modern designed house– low slope roof, open beam ceiling and lots of glass, built in 1955. The stone fireplace is very similar to the Wright house.
We bought it as a foreclosure– neglected and while not a crack house, the police knew the address well. First thing was getting the “tenant” out, but that’s another story.
My wife hated the architecture from the outside (it’s no Frank Lloyd Wright house)– but inside it’s very pleasing with the rough beams, stone fireplace and lots of natural light. We bought it to be a rental, but I completely remodeled the inside, built on a master suite and we ended up moving here (perfect retirement home).
physicsguy:
I’ve often wondered this myself. When your days are obviously numbered and you won’t be around to enjoy the fruits of your schemes and plots, why bother?
The best answer I can come up with that is that for some people power acts like a drug. If you are someone for whom power has no real attraction, you can’t really understand the effect it has on those who seek it. Just as a casual drinker can’t really understand the effect alcohol has on an alcoholic. I think some people just really like telling other people what to do. I’ve never really understood the attraction of power for it’s own sake but this is the best I can come up with.
Kissinger one of schwabs last remaing mentors herman kahn and galbraith were the other two is nearly 100
For the five years I was stationed at NAS Alameda, we lived in a house that was designed by a Wright student. Open beam ceilings. redwood lap siding, complete privacy from the street, walls of gas, a concrete slab floor with radiant heating, a huge open living-dining area with a stone fireplace, a galley kitchen, two small bedrooms, and a tiny bathroom. It also had a lot of built in storage as well as a covered patio.
We loved that house. It was great for entertaining our Navy friends. Many fine memories from the years we lived there.
I’ve always been a fan of Wright’s designs. I like the clean low lines, the walls of glass, the intimacy of the house with its site and the flow of the floor plans.
We once visited Taliesin West near Phoenix. You hardly even notice the house until you’re right on it. It’s truly integrated into the site.
We have built three houses that I designed, where we acted as our own contractors. In all three I tried to implement Wright’s principles, but budget and available materials meant not reaching the standard of a real Wright home. But we enjoyed the process and the homes once we moved in.
I second OBlodyHell’s recommendation of visitng FSC. I did 2 tours there with both daughters while they were searching for schools. Both ended up at other colleges (Eckerd and Stetson). FSC’s campus is primarily FLW design for the majority of the buildings. Very impressive to see.
“What…causes 80+ year olds to….”
The likely cause is that they’ve convinced themselves that the world needs savin’…and that THEY’RE the ones to do it.
Once you’ve been thus persuaded the sky’s the limit…and because your intentions are SO good and because you care SO much for humanity and the future of the planet—or at least tell yourself that you do—you can allow yourself to commit all kinds of, yes! totalitarian abuses.
I suppose one could say—to paraphrase Reagan—that those who intend to save the world are mucho scary and should be avoided at all costs. This includes such “youngsters” as SBF and that former “We Work” wanker and his wonder-wife.
Kinda wish they’d all just take up golf…or lawn bowling…or maybe become swamis and meditate (with a genuinely rock-bottom carbon footprint) on elevated platforms—(they can compete with one another regarding the height…).
Here’s an engineering paper from 1999 considering options to stabilizing the Fallingwater house.
Included in the paper is a fascinating historical timeline to the design and building of the house with correspondence between the owner, Edgar Kaufmann Jr. and Wright. The footnotes at the end are very informative.
“It is not the intent of this paper to draw any conclusions as to
why or how the master terrace failed. Nor is it the intent to lay negligence on any one person or circumstance. A certain amount of ambiguity is evident between the intention and execution of the concrete work as designed by Wright’s engineers, particularly in Wright’s reliance on the contractor Hall to provide formwork crowned to counter initial deflections along the cantilevered extents
without any such directive given. Additional concrete placed in slabs beyond the designed thickness increased the dead loads considerably. Form stripping procedure and re-shoring, with the addition of Hall’s shanty (and its stored contents) as live load, was also highly questionable.
Architecture is an informed design process which is forever dynamic. Wright was a genius and similar to the architect of Hadrian’s Pantheon (1 18- 125 AD), pushed the envelope of concrete design and placement to its limits. Fallingwater is a tribute to this process and a masterwork of twentieth century architecture that must be constantly maintained, conserved, and restored.”
https://www.acsa-arch.org/proceedings/Technology%20Proceedings/ACSA.Tech.1999/ACSA.Tech.1999.41.pdf
BTW, this is why the Founders’ “pursuit of happiness” is SUCH a revolutionary concept (or ideal)—since it imputes being responsible for self, i.e., independence, s well as toleration of others—and why the pursuit of happiness is among the FIRST thing that wannabee totalitarians have to stamp out.
That is, “How DARE you tell yourself how to pursue your OWN happiness….?”
(Also see economist Hernando deSoto’s expositions on the ultimate social need/desirability to own one’s own home…which, by the way, will also go by the wayside once “Biden” really starts cooking…but first, of course, one must outlaw those gas stoves/ovens/ranges…)
Speaking of concrete, you may have seen this fascinating article, which has been making the rounds of late….
“Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?
“An unexpected ancient manufacturing strategy may hold the key to designing concrete that lasts for millennia.”—
https://news.mit.edu/2023/roman-concrete-durability-lime-casts-0106
(Especially holds the key to underwater concrete structures—ports, docks, breakwaters, sea walls, etc.—built by the Romans…)
well that was locke’s insight, which was pursuit of property, reading fielding’s tom jones, for example you see what a semi feudal existence was still around in the UK
And for those with a greater scientific bent:
“Hot mixing: Mechanistic insights into the durability of ancient Roman concrete”—
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add1602
Indeed, and it is said that “the pursuit of property” was the initial phrasing of the Declaration of Independence, ultimately replaced by “the pursuit of happiness”…
Can’t say for sure, but I suppose that the Founders must have realized that not everyone had the wherewithal to buy property (for a variety of reasons) but even such people could “pursue happiness”, however they would decide to define it…and however within their means and limitations. (Or they could attempt to exceed those limitations, thus fueling innovation and—dare one say—“capitalism”??)
There’s one FLW house in Alabama–the Rosenbaum House, in Florence:
https://www.wrightinalabama.com/
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/article/h-2397
I’ve been. It’s actually cozy, not an adjective I’d apply to other FLW houses I’ve visited (the Dana Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois and the Robie House at the University of Chicago).
TommyJay: thanks for the information about the Mrs. Clinton Walker House in Carmel and “A Summer Place”. The theme from that movie was everywhere in the early 1960s. Inescapable. I finally watched the whole movie a few years ago. Not bad. Came out one year before the pill, which might have changed the plot.
plus jefferson was more artistically minded, as well as a farmer, so he might have had a broader perspective
furthermore, you see the clash of lockeans like jefferson and adams, vs the premature social justice warriors, like robespierre, danton corday marat, the latter were anti slavery, suffragists, anticlerical
physicsguy et al…
“What causes…” the Davos set their urge to rule?
It is decidedly not “mental illness.”
It is a spiritual malady tracing directly to the First Commandment.
Kerry’s off the cuff at a Q&A the first day or so…he references the gathered as a “select few” who get to “save the planet.” He sees his Davos peers as a pantheon of the mighty gods of this age: noble and benevolent and all-powerful.
I could go on but you get the point.
Falling Water suffers from uncontrolled high humidity (or did when I was there).
Maybe secret A/C has been installed!
physicsguy et al…
“What causes…” the Davos set their urge to rule?
In part it is their ego, or more so, their extroverted nature that craves attention and derives energy from that attention. They must be “that person”. I work with many high-level professionals who cannot ever let go of their power. They have amassed great wealth and many possessions (yachts, numerous vacation homes), and despite being well-past retirement age they never take the time to enjoy the fruits of their labor (or time with their family) because doing so takes time away from being in the spotlight and calling the shots. Like Zack Mayo, they have nowhere else to go.
For those interested in college architecture and Lakeland, Florida, I highly recommend a tour of Lakeland’s other campus, Florida Polytechnic, designed by Spanish architect Dr. Santiago Calatrava.
And, speaking of architecture and Thomas Jefferson, Monticello is quite a home,
The best answer I can come up with that is that for some people power acts like a drug. –Gregory Harper
There’s that.
Plus if one has devoted one’s life to power — or just a seat at some table — into one’s sixties/seventies, holding onto it might seem the surest way to maintain some significance in the face of time’s erosion.
I’m seeing that happen to some boomer friends I know. They don’t have a Plan B for what they would do without their jobs.
Rufus-
I agree, Monticello is amazing. Entirely designed by the great Thos. himself. In the years I was at UVA, the locals spoke about him reverently, as if he had just gone away for a weekend.
Overall, I greatly admire Wright’s work and was stunned the first time I saw a picture of Falling Water. Later reflection upon it has led me to view the concrete as a discordant note in an otherwise magnificent work. Concrete does not naturally occur in nature, while every other major element in the design does naturally occur in nature.
IMO, Falling Water would be a more successful design had Wright, instead of the concrete used wood platforms set on lodgepoles for the cantilevered extensions with open railings consistent with the design.
I too find Wright’s furniture ‘inorganic’.
@physicsguy, et al: I think there is an additional reason that drives old, ego-driven people like Kerry (and so many others) to retain their positions of power with advancing age – yes, it’s a powerful drug, but it’s partly because their physical body at that age is becoming more and more frail, more subject to the vagaries of aging. I think they cling to power because it’s something they can still do – or so they believe. It must be terribly, insultingly painful to such individuals to experience their physical abilities diminish by the day. Plus, it’s fair to say, none of these people get to their current position by resting on their laurels, or by being anything less than extremely driven.
I went to Falling Waters some years ago, after the saving renovation, and thought the most striking feature was its exterior, in the woodland setting. Inside, I was impressed, but not as much as I was with that outward statement. I too found it very humid inside, and not nearly as inspired, or impressive.
about time
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/01/19/the-fbi-is-offering-rewards-for-information-about-attacks-on-pro-life-clinics-and-centers-n1663272
now schwab, sees himself as close to the endpoint of the project he started 50 years after he earned his harvard sheepskin,
kerry does as well, recall when he started denouncing american servicemen in vietnam, even went along with those that sought to attack pro war politicians like Senator stennis
Hubert,
I haven’t seen that film in a very long time. I’ll have to remedy that.
I’ve known about the F.L. Wright house in Carmel for a long time. In the film the house is supposed to be a CA beach house which it is. What I didn’t know until recently is that the house in the first half of the film, which is supposed to be a beach house in Maine, is actually the LaPorte house in downtown Pacific Grove, about 6 miles as the crow flies from the F.L. Wright house.
Remember when it was cost effective to shoot location films in California instead of Canada or Georgia?
TommyJay on January 19, 2023 at 1:24 pm
They got the stonework walls and the large stone, but failed to provide the corner glass. Per below – tough to capture his magic, although some other architects did or do come close.
Gregory Harper: “I think some people just really like telling other people what to do.” Yes, it seems some people just cannot leave other people along. Thomas Sowell’s book Conflict of Visions sort of addresses this with his concept of the unconstrained vision.
JJ on January 19, 2023 at 1:54 pm “…I tried to implement Wright’s principles, but budget and available materials meant not reaching the standard of a real Wright home.” Yes, same here. I think I came closest with my first attempt, but somehow even with my house having corner glass, wide roof overhangs, cedar channel siding, and selected brick piers and walls, there was still something not quite there in my results compared to what he did. Cost was part of it, but talent will out. Even so, I was pleasantly surprised how the moon shown through one of my south facing clerestory windows in the MBR.
Hubert on January 19, 2023 at 3:42 pm — and as you may know, the Rosenbaum house was a slightly larger version of the first Jacobs house in Madison, WI. Both houses were truly proper “Usonian” designs, followed by quite a few more. When I visited in 1979, Mr. Rosenbaum had passed, but Mrs. Rosenbaum was very gracious in letting a FLLW enthusiast take all of the pictures he wanted.
Geoffrey Britain on January 19, 2023 at 6:25 pm — but his use of concrete in Fallingwater was his way of calling out the modern Bauhaus style of that time, as being ugly and unnatural. He was saying “if you want or need to use concrete, this is how you should do it!! Use this fantastic compressive/tensile material the way it can really work for you, physically and artistically. And join it with nature, not in spite of her.”
If any of you do get to the Fallingwater area, you should also try to find the Kentuck Knob house he designed nearby, which also used cypress wood, stone, and glass, but with a hexagonal design theme.
And Fallingwater cost about $150,000 in 1935; so equivalent to $10M today? Provided many with a job during the depth (or height) of the Depression.
Barry Meislin on January 19, 2023 at 3:33 pm — referencing pursuit of happiness, Newt Gingrich wrote some years ago that in colonial times (at least for the upper crust) “happiness” meant “wisdom and virtue”. So the “American gentry” and any other responsible self governing citizens should wish to be virtuous in their personal and public behavior, and seek wisdom as “intellectual property” beyond the acquisition of mere physical property. Then again, George Washington was very concerned about his personal reputation, but was also a major land speculator/ investor. And Jefferson never got out of debt due to his acquisitiveness. [And Wright had a similar affliction.]
Lot of great comments in this thread, leading to more replies than usual.
I’ve also been to Fallingwater. We took the 1.5 hour in-depth tour that gets you into places that the regular tours don’t and also allows you to take pictures. If you visit, it’s definitely worth it. I loved the main house but the guest house, which is slightly up the hill behind it, seemed much more livable and hospitable.
There’s an excellent book by Franklin Toker about Fallingwater’s design, building, and promotion called “Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E. J. Kauffman, and America’s Most Extraordinary House.” The reason the house is so famous was no accident; both Wright and Kauffman were motivated to heavily publicize the house. Highly recommended.
R2L @11:55—thanks for that!
(Adds a whole new dimension to “Don’t worry, be HAPPY!”)
TommyJay: I was surprised to learn that the first half of “A Summer Place” was filmed in northern California. The shots of the coast do kind of look like the Maine coast (e.g. Vinalhaven in Penobscot Bay), but the trees around the guest house don’t look like New England. I can think of another example where the California coast was used as a stand-in for the New England coastline: “Young at Heart” (1954) with Doris Day and Frank Sinatra, which is set in Connecticut (or “Connecticut”). To come full circle, a location in Connecticut–Chester, on the Connecticut River–was used as a stand-in for a Maine lobster town in another Doris Day movie, “It Happened to Jane” (1959). On the subject of shooting locations: movies that use Canadian cities as a stand-in for the States have never really looked right to me. Different somehow. Too clean.
R2L: very cool that you got to visit the Rosenbaum House while Mrs. Rosenbaum was still living there. I knew it was a relatively early Usonian but didn’t know where it fit in the list of Usonian houses until I looked it up. Coincidentally, it was built in the same year–1940–as the only FLW house in Massachusetts: the Baird House in Amherst (my hometown):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Baird_Residence
As far as I know, the owners have never allowed visitors to that house. Another similarity: both Stanley Rosenbaum and Theodore Baird were English professors.
}}} physicsguy:
I’ve often wondered this myself. When your days are obviously numbered and you won’t be around to enjoy the fruits of your schemes and plots, why bother?
Y’all seem to have missed the obvious…
“Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
😉
Neo:
Wasn’t that a rule of Wright’s when you bought one of his houses? It came furnished, and you had to agree to leave everything in place?
yup..
in fact, if he came to visit his house, he would move the furniture back where he designed it should be!! back then, at least, eccentricism doesnt get you a stay in the crank box with the padded walls… [ever notice they pad the ceilings too… I would love to read about the case that set that precident]
What sort of mental illness causes 80+ year olds to cling to power, and set about destroying everything??
Dynasty…
the whole point of it..