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How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

newyorker.com

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Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#21

Post by zrail »

mynegation wrote: post #9

I recommend everyone to visit his masterpiece building: Fallingwater tucked in the Pennsylvania countryside, and also a nearby smaller house Kentuck Knob. I visited both twice. During my second visit I stood breathless before the Fallingwater and weeped, so beautiful and perfect it was.

It's a gorgeous building that I plan to visit soon.

Interestingly, at construction it had severe structural and environmental deficiencies. For example, mildew was a huge problem for many years, and the perfect cantilevers were not strong enough and sagged until they were repaired in the early 2000s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallingwater#Repair_work

Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#22

Post by yincrash »

silverbax88 wrote: post #19
vanderZwan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point: bad city planning forces you to use a car. Compare that to a city like Groningen: https://vimeo.com/76207227

Groningen, a city of less than 200,000, is not scalable for the biggest cities in the world, which is the problem. Biking across New York or L.A. is not even remotely feasible. I'm not saying better cities are not possible, but just putting everyone on bikes is not even close to a solution. You'd be better off going back to horses.

Singapore does it just fine. I bike in NYC often and I think it could support mass bike ridership in combination with the subway.

Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#23

Post by seeingfurther »

jacquesm wrote: post #14

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Niemeyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BAcio_Costa and their work on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia

I lived in Rio for 3 years and every time I saw a building or design that didn't seem to fit, invariably it was a Niemeyer work or inspired by Niemeyer. You can still find the old Portuguese architecture in spots but you really have to look for it maybe I'm just not modern enough.

Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#24

Post by zanny »

mercer wrote: post #16
chc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a practical solution for many people. If I lived nearer to where I work, I'd be living on the streets.

Yes, but isn't that the whole point? If a city is designed for cars, you're gonna need a car. Which has all kinds of downsides. I have to admit I often thumbed my nose at 'those Americans and theird cars', but only until I spent some time in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Once there, I realized that it's pretty much impossible to do anything without a care! It shocked me.

I like the Dart, though. I've window shopped employment in the DFW area. Problem is all the major companies are in suburbs like Plano, where there is no metro access.

At least they build the roads to accommodate down there. 4 lanes each side for regular avenues, and the travel density justifies them. Up in the northeast some major interstates and roads like i78 and route 22 are two lanes with the traffic of a 3 lane each side highway.

Whenever I move next, though, I'm moving where I can take public transport commutes to any office I work at (if any at all, I'd prefer remote, maybe one in office day a week). The monetary investment and insane risks with cars is just way too much to justify.

Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#25

Post by Shivetya »

mercer wrote: post #16
chc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a practical solution for many people. If I lived nearer to where I work, I'd be living on the streets.

Yes, but isn't that the whole point? If a city is designed for cars, you're gonna need a car. Which has all kinds of downsides. I have to admit I often thumbed my nose at 'those Americans and theird cars', but only until I spent some time in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Once there, I realized that it's pretty much impossible to do anything without a care! It shocked me.

well there is weather, cities rarely are designed to protect you from adverse weather. Usually it what ends a lot of people's new found idea of, lets bike to work. One day its too hot, its too cold, its wet, its windy, oh I need to take x, and on and on and on, now we have a nice garage ornament.

Biking to work is fine, I just wish people quit implying its an alternative to cars or mass transportation when its very weather dependent. Got a change of clothes at work? Not where I work you don't, top it off where I am going to put the bike though I did have a nice folding BMW one awhile back.

Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#26

Post by saalweachter »

The article mentions that his spread out, one-acre-per-person city "would be connected by a complex design of streets and highways."

Is anyone familiar with his highway plan? My impression of city planning is that roads are the hard, boring part, so I'm curious if Wright's roads were just a thing he drew between his beautifully arranged buildings and parks, or if he had an actual plan for how to move people efficiently around his cities.

Saying "everyone should live close to their workplace" only works if you have a single, mega-office/industrial park, with all of the housing arranged tightly around it. Once you have two places people can work, changing jobs requires people to change houses, and only people who work together can live together. So in practice you need to have a transportation system that allows everyone in the city to commute between work and home in a short amount of time during a small window of time in the morning and afternoon.

Sitting in traffic in a beautifully designed city does not sound particularly more fun than sitting in traffic in a poorly designed city.

Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#27

Post by snail22 »

josephlord wrote: post #12

I've heard the name lots of times in a Simon & Garfunkel song but I didn't know who he was.

As someone who studied architecture for years, this made me literally groan out loud. Frank Lloyd Wright is usually the one architect whom people at least have heard of. One of the issues which has discouraged me from pursuing computer programming in the past is my impression that a lot of people involved in technology-related careers (ie my would-be future peers) have narrow perspectives on the world due to their reduced levels of interest in a wider liberal arts education, and it is annoying when I see something which confirms that. I really hope that I don't sound like a troll, but I also value giving and receiving honest feedback, and my guess is that some of you could probably benefit from looking away from the computer screen once and a while and exploring something new.

Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#28

Post by sanoli »

jacquesm wrote: post #14

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Niemeyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BAcio_Costa and their work on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia

Lived in Brasilia for about a decade. Hated the way the city was planned. Everyone needed cars, only a handful of local commerce close to you, no real downtown, everything spread out so people ended driving everywhere, and public transport was only for the poor who lived in surrounding cities, so the busses sucked big time (same thing with subway, was built to take workers in and out of the city, only run until 9 p.m. or earlier).

Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#29

Post by sanoli »

seeingfurther wrote: post #23
jacquesm wrote: post #14

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Niemeyer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BAcio_Costa and their work on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bras%C3%ADlia

I lived in Rio for 3 years and every time I saw a building or design that didn't seem to fit, invariably it was a Niemeyer work or inspired by Niemeyer. You can still find the old Portuguese architecture in spots but you really have to look for it maybe I'm just not modern enough.

Lived in Rio for long time and always go there to visit. Agree with you, Niemeyer stuff is just out of place, and some just look like badly aged sci-fi. Here in Sao Paulo there's this little mall on the first floor of one of his buildings, and none of the stores have bathrooms. I was told by an architect that Niemeyer, being a communist, wanted bathrooms to be collective. So you have to go up a flight of stairs and pee in this dark, dungeon-like cave that nobody uses anyway.

Re: How Frank Lloyd Wright Tried to Solve the City

#30

Post by sanoli »

snail22 wrote: post #27
josephlord wrote: post #12

I've heard the name lots of times in a Simon & Garfunkel song but I didn't know who he was.

As someone who studied architecture for years, this made me literally groan out loud. Frank Lloyd Wright is usually the one architect whom people at least have heard of. One of the issues which has discouraged me from pursuing computer programming in the past is my impression that a lot of people involved in technology-related careers (ie my would-be future peers) have narrow perspectives on the world due to their re…

What are you talking about? Here in HN people are aware of and interested in a bunch of different subjects. Plus, unlike the liberal arts/artist crowd, they have tachnical knowledge and are usually more rational about their opinions and conclusions. So one person says he hadn't heard of Wright in the middle of many more people commenting the article, and you say hackers need to look more at the arts?
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