Frank Lloyd Wright and the UNESCO Heritage list

[fractalsteel]

After 15 years of hard work it finally has happened. So happy for Stuart Graff, Lynda Waggoner, and William Storrer.
Since Wright had over 500 of his designs built and some 430 still stand it took a while to get the list down to 8 of his iconic designs.

It is a big deal because Wright's architecture is finally recognized on the world stage and now receives the notoriety it has deserved for so long.
Eight prime examples of a truly original American architecture are now inscribed on the Heritage list.

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/07/73935908 ... tage-sites

Where ever he may be resting, hopefully, the master is smiling today.

[zeke5123]

I might be slow...but did the Article list which 8 sites?

[fractalsteel]

I might be slow...but did the Article list which 8 sites?

Unity Temple(Chicago) 1904
The Robie House(Chicago) 1906
Taliesin 1(Spring Green) 1911/1914/1925 parts burned down twice
Hollyhock House(Los Angeles) 1917/1920 multiple residences on the property
Jacobs House 1(Madison) 1936
Fallingwater House(Mill Run) 1937
Taliesin West (Scottsdale) 1937
Guggenheim(New York City) 1956

In the past, the FLW Panel had submitted dozens and dozens of his designs. This time around they went with a narrowed list and concentrated on designs that had the greatest effect on architecture.

Only the Jacobs house is privately owned. It is rarely open to the public.

With some luck and good timing, I have been inside all eight of these gems.

[COR-TEN]

I've been to a few. Some more than once. Congratulations on seeing all eight. The most recent work I've seen, which is not on that list, is the Gordon house in Oregon. Utilitarianism architecture.

Not a great FLW fan (for various reasons), but this is long overdue. His influence on american architecture needed to be recognized in an official capacity other than in architectural history, etc.

[fractalsteel]

I've been to a few. Some more than once. Congratulations on seeing all eight. The most recent work I've seen, which is not on that list, is the Gordon house in Oregon. Utilitarianism architecture.

Not a great FLW fan (for various reasons), but this is long overdue. His influence on american architecture needed to be recognized in an official capacity other than in architectural history, etc.

Did you visit the Gordon house when it was situated in Wilsonville or after it was moved (2001) to Silverton Oregon?
I visited the house in 2016.

The house sat on the Williamette river until the late 1990's when the new owners told the world they were going to tear down a Frank Lloyd Wright house. The uproar was sudden and loud. The owners were vilified and scorned but were adamant about tearing it down to build their dream McMansion.
Thankfully the FLW Conservancy got involved to such a degree that the two parties worked out a deal to move the house.

Many Wright scholars don't believe that Wright really designed the house. It was built about five years after his death and by the end of Wrights life, a lot of the work he is credited with was really done by his apprentices. But that is the way it is when you work with a legendary architect.

Several of Wright's houses have been moved over the years to stop the demolition of such houses. Right now there is a cottage in Glencoe(Chicago) that is facing demolition. The FLW Conservancy is fighting it but it is a losing battle and the cottage will most likely be torn down by the end of Fall.

Checkout Polymath Park, it is a place where two Wright houses have been transplanted this decade. It is only forty minutes from Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob.

Over the past decade and some, I have visited over 350 of Wrights designs and been fortunate to get inside more than 120 of them.
I'm heading up to Buffalo next month to see the newly installed gardens at Wright's masterpiece the Darwin Martin complex.

[Legacy User]

Kentuck Knob is highly underrated and more livable than Fallingwater.

[COR-TEN]

Fractal, we've talked about this briefly in pm, correct?

I saw the Gordon house after it was relocated. It has major conceptual flaws. Terraces that aren't big enough to use, mullions that deteriorate and let water in, etc.

And the way the architectural system worked in his day, apprentices do most of the work anyway based on sketches and a lot of hand waving. FLW just provided direction at that point in his career. Much of that system still exists today. And that was clear in the gordon house. Door knobs that aren't given clearances, details that weren't thought out, etc. But FLW was a fucking Nazi when it came to doing things his way. And like many architects, were completely full of themselves. He forced his clients to live the way he thought was best, and ignored many engineers. The hollyhock house has cracks due to fault lines in the earth, and FLW ignored environmental conditions. Fallingwater had to be re-engineered to make up for his arrogance.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/200 ... tsfeatures

Edit : But if you're really into this kind of architecture, try and visit the Gamble House by Greene and Greene, in Pasadena CA. That is spectacular. And the ceilings are taller than what Wright wanted being a short guy.

[fractalsteel]

Kentuck Knob is highly underrated and more livable than Fallingwater.

To be fair, one was designed as a weekend house and the other a full-time residence.

With FW you get that dose of water which was very important to Edgar and Lillianne when the house was built. Those decks as well. Since the Kaufmans liked to parade in the nude and Edgar sneaking his girlfriends in under his wife's 'eye' you kind of needed a place like FW.
One thing few speak about concerning Kentuck knob is that three hundred yard walk out to the clearing where the valley of Laurel Highlands opens before you. Just a stunning location.
A lot of people ask why Wright didn't design Kentuck Knob to overlook this view. If you know Wright you understand why.

[fractalsteel]

Fractal, we've talked about this briefly in pm, correct?

I saw the Gordon house after it was relocated. It has major conceptual flaws. Terraces that aren't big enough to use, mullions that deteriorate and let water in, etc.

And the way the architectural system worked in his day, apprentices do most of the work anyway based on sketches and a lot of hand waving. FLW just provided direction at that point in his career. Much of that system still exists today. And that was clear in the gordon house. Door knobs that aren't given clearances, details that weren't thought out, etc. But FLW was a fucking Nazi when it came to doing things his way. And like many architects, were completely full of themselves. He forced his clients to live the way he thought was best, and ignored many engineers. The hollyhock house has cracks due to fault lines in the earth, and FLW ignored environmental conditions. Fallingwater had to be re-engineered to make up for his arrogance.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/200 ... tsfeatures

Edit : But if you're really into this kind of architecture, try and visit the Gamble House by Greene and Greene, in Pasadena CA. That is spectacular. And the ceilings are taller than what Wright wanted being a short guy.

We have.
Actually, the apprentices didn't start their workload in architecture design until the later part of the thirties into the early forties. Before that, the school didn't exist and Wright employed a few draftsmen and laborers for help.
I'd agree with your statement that apprentices did most of the work but only in the later 40's and most of the 50's. Wright was simply too busy in those last 15 years of life to pay full attention to all the work coming his way.

Many of his designs are flawed. Wingspread's roof still leaks 80 years later.
With fallingwater, it was more than the flawed engineering. Wright was slow to design and Kaufman was very eager to have his weekend house. The working drawings were vague and Mosher(contractor) had never taken on a project like FW before.
Kaufman hired an engineering firm during the construction and if he hadn't the decks and most likely the house would have fallen down. Mosher and the engineers snuck in a lot of steel in those decks under Wright's nose.
He threw a fit when he found out and fired Mosher who he hired back shortly after that.
By the end of the first year of construction at Fallingwater Wright and Kaufman were at odds. During the second year of construction, Wright didn't really care about FW because he was building a bigger design in Racine for the Johnson wax company.
Thankfully, through the efforts by Lynda Waggoner Fallingwater was saved.
The Johnson Wax Building is an incredible place(and if you haven't visited it, do so!).

Was Wright a control freak? Legend says so but I'm not so sure. If you didn't follow his way you usually didn't last at Taliesin. His third wife, Olgivanna was the true control freak in the Fellowship. She was the one insisted that Wright give the world his autobiography which helped launch the second half of his career. It was her idea for the architectural school and she set the ground rules for how it was run. Wright deferred to her the second half of his career often.

As far as his relationships with clients he made sure he knew the client before he designed for them. He wanted to know what was important to each member of the family so that he could design something for each of them. Could he be stubborn with them when they suggested a change? Yes, he could but he was not the ass that legends say he might have been.
I have read nearly all the books out there written by his former clients and apprentices(more than 60 books) and it is rare for a client to have something negative to say about him. Ditto for his apprentices.

Two instances with clients stick out in my mind that were negative. The first one was with the Elam family who built his design in Austin Minnesota. From the start, they didn't get along. Money was an issue. The original design wasn't what the Elams wanted. By the time the house was starting to get built Wright and Elam's were not talking.
They reconciled but Wright had enough of their demands and walked away from the ordeal before the house was finished leaving the kitchen unbuilt. The kitchen in the house looks nothing like the rest of the house.
The other client was the Teater's who built a studio in Bliss Idaho. They clashed often and Wright finally sent one of his apprentices to the building site so he didn't have to deal with them.

There are hundreds and hundreds of letters showing that Wright and the vast majority of his clients got along very well. Many built second homes with him. IMO, it is an unfair reputation that Wright garnered that said he was difficult to work with. If he as such a bastard why did have to turn down so much work the last two decades of his life?

Same goes for his apprentices.
Many loved him but there were a few that didn't. Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin were two such. Both went on to have big careers but they worked for Wright early on his career and back then Wright was known to be slow to pay the help. Even Wright's son complained about all the work he didn't get paid for. He even took some of his dad's beloved prints to compensate for lack of pay.

The Guardian article you linked has a lot of flaws in it concerning Wright. I'm going to forward it to William Storrer and see what he thinks of it.

Just did a quick search of the Gamble house. Amazing place but I don't see it as being organic. Right off the bat, the roof lines reminded me of the Gilmore house in Madison. If/when I get back to CA I'll try and fit this one in. There is so much good/great architecture out West.

[COR-TEN]

You most certainly are well versed and knowledgable in regard to FLW architecture and history. No doubt, and I respect that.

However, I would never use the word "organic" to describe his work. It is artificial and contrived. Like much of what architecture is. Following a program is all about the budget, and the efficient use of space per dollar and the construction time frame - because time is money.

Frank Gehry is more organic, as are scores of other arch firms that bring nature to design. More so with the advent of software that can plot 3D space. Gehry was instrumental, as he used aviation software to create his buildings. Try plotting a hot dog cut in half lengthwise penetrating a donut. By hand, on a drafting board. What's the profile? But organic can be perceived differently. Antonio Gaudi was organic, and no software was used in his work. Hell, even igloos are more "organic." But organic has been appropriated to mean different things.

FLW was all about parallel and perpendicular/ parallel lines, proportion/geometry, and the horizon. Not to mention his opinion about life and what the culture was at the time. Prairie style on steroids.

Oh. And diminutive ceiling heights.

I admire your love of his work. Kudos.

[fractalsteel]

'Organic' and 'Architecture' being used together goes back to Louis Sullivan who was Wrights mentor.
I agree about organic being appropriated to mean different things.
When I think about organic architecture I'm drawn to how a design sits with its site.
The American Prairie is often flat, long and horizontal which is what Wright was striving for early on in his first style of architecture.
Those early big Prairie styles hugged the ground and seemed to fit those spaces like they grew from the ground. That is what I believe he meant about organic architecture.
Another thing those Prairies had in common in with the organic theme was the pure use of wood, stone, brick, and glass with little steel.
That said, Wright dabbled in poured concrete(Unity Temple Chicago) and concrete block early on and came back to both later in his career. I will admit that I think his architecture got away from the organic element as he became popular again in the 40's and 50's.

What you call his use of parallel and perpendicular lines is what Wright fans call the horizontal element which defined his work the first half of his career. He also used triangles and parallelograms in house design.
The Kraus house outside of St Louis is one where he put one parallelogram on top of another parallelogram. The whole house is a study in this shape. A fascinating house inside and out. Not very organic except that it fits the landscape perfectly.
The Palmer House in Ann Arbor is a study in equilateral triangles. The floor grid plan is made of such and the house has few right angles in it. I spent a night in that house and by the time I was leaving, I still had no clue how he made the house work.

In the '50s Wright started to tackle what I call chaotic landscapes. He dared his clients to pick places where a house shouldn't or couldn't fit. He used the circular design to reconcile the chaotic landscape.
It worked a great deal of the time.

James Schildroth is a contemporary 'organic' architect. You might want to check out his work. He studied at Taliesin right after Wrights death. He reminds me more of Aaron Green then Wright.

Frank Gehry is hit or miss for me.

As far as the low ceilings Wright used it went beyond his scale. He used low ceilings to move people. He didn't want people to gather in vestibules or hallways so he gave them low roofs for compression. That is why most of his hallways are so thin. Move on folks I want you in another part of the house.
Funny thing, his lake houses feature high ceilings throughout the house with wide hallways.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and views. I'm always interested(good and bad) to hear what others think of Wright and his contemporaries.