Built his own home at 22. Started his own firm at 26. Raised six children. Peak Gilded Age energy. Boomers have nothing on him.
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
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Re: Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
#52I guess it’s pretty basic to like FLW but god damn did he make some lovely houses. Incredibly cozy and livable, just a pleasure to simply reside in them. I just love their shapes, materials and spaciousness.
Re: Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
#53I guess it’s pretty basic to like FLW but god damn did he make some lovely houses. Incredibly cozy and livable, just a pleasure to simply reside in them. I just love their shapes, materials and spaciousness.
I believe that the Guggenheim museum in New York was completed postumusly. I've been there.
Like the Johnson Wax complex in Racine, there were regulatory objections to the design. For the Guggenheim, two fire exits were required per level, so how is this done with a spiral ascending gallery? For Johnson Wax, the "lily pad" column supports were tested to 10x the maximum rated weight. I have not been to Johnson Wax.
Wright did prove his designs durable in unexpected ways, several times.
Re: Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
#54I guess it’s pretty basic to like FLW but god damn did he make some lovely houses. Incredibly cozy and livable, just a pleasure to simply reside in them. I just love their shapes, materials and spaciousness.
A pleasure to live in them? In a FLW design? I actually came here to say "let me guess, it's drafty and/or damp, it leaks, and it started falling apart six months after it was finished".
They do look fabulous, but man I wouldn't want to live in one.
Re: Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
FLW almost always gets very generous interpretations of his intentions. I've been to 5 of his houses (including this one) and I've not heard anything negative about him on the tours. I say this as someone who likes his houses a lot (and considers themselves as someone who's gotten over the "FLW is overrated" hump).
He's had a wild life with an arc similar to Steve Jobs. Taliesen West was basically an architecture cult where he frittered away for nearly a decade before landing Falling Water for his big comeback... at 70 years old.
Actually more similar than most let on too I believe. I think it's been accused that he didn't even come up with some of the designs either by others. History is weird like that. Griffin is his woz
Re: Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
#56I guess it’s pretty basic to like FLW but god damn did he make some lovely houses. Incredibly cozy and livable, just a pleasure to simply reside in them. I just love their shapes, materials and spaciousness.
I find the small (relatively speaking) homes of some of the big architects more fascinating than the big flagship buildings. Another example is Louis Kahn's Esherick House: https://archeyes.com/the-margaret-esherick-house-by-louis-ka...
(But yeah, as someone else mentioned, many of them probably demanded a special fortitude of those who chose to live in them.)
Re: Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
#57> Wright left Oak Park and separated from Tobin Wright in 1909. Before leaving, he divided the studio and the home, allowing Tobin Wright and the children to live in the studio wing and rent out the house for income. Wright sold the property in 1925 and later owners divided the building into six units and neglected to preserve the historically significant property. This is a really generous interpretation of what hap…
It really would be nice if there were much less hero worship of FLW. He was quite the imperfect man, who did some terrible harms.
He also made some buildings.
Re: Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
#58There’s a great ( and true ) story about the song “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright”.
Art Garfunkel had studied architecture, and asked Paul Simon to write a song about Wright. Paul Simon didn’t know anything about Wright, so instead he made the song about Garfunkel. What Garfunkel didn’t realize was that Simon was singing about ditching Garfunkel and going solo, which is what happened.
Garfunkel has talked about how painful that realization was. He still performs the song, because it’s just a great tune.
Re: Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
At age 22, FLW was specially trained, working at the equivalent of a frontier AI lab (the most important architect in Chicago) and in the most booming city at the time (Chicago, especially where construction was concerned- due to the Great Fire rebound) He's not a random, there are a lot of factors working for him
> equivalent of a frontier AI lab Except frontier AI labs basically consider the entirety of human creation, multiplied by 100, to be their total addressable market. The most important architect in Chicago could only ever be able to capture a small fraction of a single city's architecture business.
Not exactly just a single city, Adler&Sullivan designed buildings across the US.
Re: Frank Lloyd Wright’s first home
#60Frank Lloyd Wright designed KFC in Koreatown, LA.
It's two-story structure with cyclindral dome in Art-Deco facade.