Fun fact, the Mart supplanted a famous old Marshall Fields building that was torn down - the Wholesale Store - a building from which Louis Sullivan (Wright's mentor to whom this National Life Insurance plan was tribute) took some of his greatest inspiration.
“It’s a miracle that almost all of Frank Lloyd Wright’s drawings have been preserved, especially considering that his successive houses suffered three fires.”
I once worked in what was Frank Lloyd Wright's old offices. The board room in the back of the building had his original safes where he kept his drawings still in the wall, and you could check them out. Always thought that was cool
My sister-in-law lives in a FLW house (built around a tree, now deceased) and it always surprises me how structurally un-fireproof his building designs are (aside from all the concrete).
His disciple Fay built Thorncrown Chapel, which IMHO is the most-beautiful structure any human has ever designed (even in its simplicity).
Has anyone had any luck feeding floorplans to something like Stable Diffusion and getting accurately generated 3D renderings? I've had some luck but it's still very rough
Agreed, He was always 20-40 years ahead of state of the art for materials.
He also tended to be fast and flexible with the structural engineering on his buildings, that said, none of them have fallen down, and some of his innovations have proven quite durable (SC Johnson Wax, being an example)
I have been inside several FLW houses/structures in the LA area and I don’t get it. They are massive, angular, with small windows and very little natural light, and evoke the feeling that you’re in a burial chamber built in the 1950s. Not for me and I wonder if his popularity is mostly bandwagoning like other modern art.
FLW has a distinctive style with strong ideas. IMHO, I find the style visually pleasing, although I'm a more of a form follows function kind of person, and a lot of FLW's buildings and other things like chairs and such aren't very functional, so he doesn't score many points in my book.
Most buildings from that time period wouldn't have leaned into too much natural light and large windows, because residential AC was far from common. That said, for the time, Wright used a lot of glass, though from looking through pictures online it seems he did less so in his LA buildings. I'm guessing it'd be in response to the climate.
That said, "large and angular" fits his style pretty accurately. Though the most indicative aspect of his designs is the layering. A lot of his buildings are built to have a very particular look of being made up of mostly flat horizontal layers of various thicknesses, protruding or retracting from the layers below them in varied shapes. Often these leaned heavily into having a lot of right angles, but when he used curves, he leaned hard into them: The Norman Lyke's House or The Center for the Performing Arts in San Jose are example of extremely curvy buildings still unmistakably in his style.
Ultimately, Wright's enduring fame can be easily understood by the fact that he was novel, consistent, and prolific. His style was (and to only a slightly lesser extent, still is) new and different from most everything else, and he stuck to it enough that people could recognize his work in particular. Combine that with designing quite a few buildings, and you've got yourself a recipe for the most famous architect ever.
I like them (the ones I've seen anyway). They have an interesting and unique aesthetic. I like the design of the stained glass alot. I'm not sure how practical living day to day, but people did. The one in New Hampshire (Zimmerman house) had wall to ceiling windows on the back side.
This is a fun use of 3d tech. I did some Unreal engine work, and the first thing was building out an apartment interior you could then move through in real time. It was kind of neat. The detail in having to place all the interior lights and all was something.
The "Groupius House" (by walter Groupius) is another modern really practical house. But in this case the architect was the ocupant.
IIRC, his Las Angeles period he was "borrowing" his employers' designs and then adding his own twists, and then letting houses be built without royalties/notice to original architect(s). Eventually one of his bosses saw a house that looked an awful-lot familiar (i.e. he could tell FLW had modified one of the owner's design) and this caused FLW to ... get on with the next phase of his life in Wisconsin. IIRC.
No - thats how he broke from Sullivan, but it was less about him stealing designs (AFAIK he wasn't), its that he was moonlighting without permission, which was contrary to his contract with Sullivan. His style stood out, so it was easy to see.
He changed architecture. This is likely a large part of it.
The I love Lucy show changed the TV industry. It is the first TV show made with archival quality footage, on some kind of reasonable schedule for the actors to have a life, invented the rerun and many of the basic techniques still used today in the industry.
The people who radically alter what was tend to be revered but those who come after and grow up with the heritage of what they fostered often take it for granted and don't get why it's special.
I'm really curious as to how these were done, or might plausibly have been done. Is this indicated anywhere? After working on audio signal processing for quite a few years, I'm investigating image and video rendering, and applications like this are the kind of thing I'm interested in.
The Arizona State Capital building interior looks like something straight out of Star Trek, circa Star Trek I - VI movies - maybe a smaller building at Starfleet Headquarters.
FLW wasn't invited to to participate in the contest for the new capitol; he hated the proposed designs, and wanted to make a statement all his own.
As reported in the papers at the time, Arizonans thirty or younger mostly loved it. Older folks, many of whom had lived in the area since before it was a state, were disdainful at best. One old cowboy referred to the drawing as "looking like an Oriental whorehouse". Dropping it in the middle of Papago Park was also a controversial choice.
One of the drawings for it is still in FLW's office at Taliesin West.
37 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 79.3 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchandise_Mart#/media/File:M...
Fun fact, the Mart supplanted a famous old Marshall Fields building that was torn down - the Wholesale Store - a building from which Louis Sullivan (Wright's mentor to whom this National Life Insurance plan was tribute) took some of his greatest inspiration.
One of these fires is particularly notorious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamah_Borthwick#Murder
His disciple Fay built Thorncrown Chapel, which IMHO is the most-beautiful structure any human has ever designed (even in its simplicity).
https://localwiki.org/scottsdale/Scottsdale_Spire
Mind you, some clear silicone caulk in between the gaps in the windows where they don’t quite fit would be nice.
FLW had a tendency to dream beyond what the building materials of the day could achieve and just didn’t care about little details like that.
https://www.taliesinpreservation.org/
He also tended to be fast and flexible with the structural engineering on his buildings, that said, none of them have fallen down, and some of his innovations have proven quite durable (SC Johnson Wax, being an example)
https://lynceans.org/all-posts/frank-lloyd-wrights-1956-mile...
Look at photos of the Robie house in Chicago, typical of his early prairie period:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robie_House
https://www.google.com/search?q=Robie+House+interior
The largest building of his prairie period was the Dana-Thomas house in Springfield, also worth seeing.
That said, "large and angular" fits his style pretty accurately. Though the most indicative aspect of his designs is the layering. A lot of his buildings are built to have a very particular look of being made up of mostly flat horizontal layers of various thicknesses, protruding or retracting from the layers below them in varied shapes. Often these leaned heavily into having a lot of right angles, but when he used curves, he leaned hard into them: The Norman Lyke's House or The Center for the Performing Arts in San Jose are example of extremely curvy buildings still unmistakably in his style.
Ultimately, Wright's enduring fame can be easily understood by the fact that he was novel, consistent, and prolific. His style was (and to only a slightly lesser extent, still is) new and different from most everything else, and he stuck to it enough that people could recognize his work in particular. Combine that with designing quite a few buildings, and you've got yourself a recipe for the most famous architect ever.
https://currier.org/frank-lloyd-wright/
I like them (the ones I've seen anyway). They have an interesting and unique aesthetic. I like the design of the stained glass alot. I'm not sure how practical living day to day, but people did. The one in New Hampshire (Zimmerman house) had wall to ceiling windows on the back side.
This is a fun use of 3d tech. I did some Unreal engine work, and the first thing was building out an apartment interior you could then move through in real time. It was kind of neat. The detail in having to place all the interior lights and all was something.
The "Groupius House" (by walter Groupius) is another modern really practical house. But in this case the architect was the ocupant.
https://www.historicnewengland.org/property/gropius-house/
Here is a very well done KCET documentary that explains more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3juSckHif90
The I love Lucy show changed the TV industry. It is the first TV show made with archival quality footage, on some kind of reasonable schedule for the actors to have a life, invented the rerun and many of the basic techniques still used today in the industry.
The people who radically alter what was tend to be revered but those who come after and grow up with the heritage of what they fostered often take it for granted and don't get why it's special.
The house-sized ones you could build for the better virtual worlds, such as Second Life.
He basically defined the american mid-century modern aesthetic, from which TOS set design was heavily influenced.
FLW wasn't invited to to participate in the contest for the new capitol; he hated the proposed designs, and wanted to make a statement all his own.
As reported in the papers at the time, Arizonans thirty or younger mostly loved it. Older folks, many of whom had lived in the area since before it was a state, were disdainful at best. One old cowboy referred to the drawing as "looking like an Oriental whorehouse". Dropping it in the middle of Papago Park was also a controversial choice.
One of the drawings for it is still in FLW's office at Taliesin West.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auldbrass_Plantation
Fun fact: the producer of Die Hard owns it.
It's a fascinating place.