Having just finished a book on his works, I am definately sure that he was the world’s greatest architect! His houses (Fallingwater, The Oak Park homes) are simply brilliant. And the Marin County Civic Center is amazing! Such bold design-and yet, his buildings look like the BELONG there! I consider him head and shoulders above hacks like Philip Johnson, and far ahead of even Bauhaus architects like Mies Van Der Rohe.
My question: Wright had his own school, and trained a lot of young architects-how come his style hasn’t continued on? When I see one of those abortions (by Frank Gehry) , I wonder why people just don’t imitate Wright’s designs?
Anyway, for you architects-what do you think?
Not an architect but I’ve read this book, which says some of Wright’s buildings haven’t proven all that practical to live in/use and/or haven’t held up very well. Fallingwater leaks and leaks.
I am not an architect, but I can give you a darn good answer.
He was a lousy architect, arguably one of the worst in history,
Yes, yes, I know you’re thinking, wha? But hear me out. Wright was a brilliant artist, but thats all his projects amounted to: art. he was lousy at the actual work which architects need to do. Fallingwater is a disasters. It’s a crumblng ruin kept alive only by constant, heavy efforts and great expense. What it isn’t is a good house. And no matter how good it looks or “cool” the concept is, he failed. He failed because he was hired to make a livable house, first and foremost.
In the specific, he really didn’t have a clue what he was doing. Fallingwater has severe water damage and moisture problems along with a leaky roof. The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo was supposed to “float” atop earthquakes, but it seems the contractor-built heavy foundation was the real reason is survived, etc. I’m not saying he wasn’t brilliant, but he wasn’t an architect. Art != Architecture.
Frankly, he should’ve gone into sculpture.
Architects may come, and architects may go, and never change your point of view.
http://www.delmars.com/wright/flwright.htm I like his work but a flat roof on a residential house is asking for trouble.
Fallingwater doesn’t just leak; Wright’s structural calculations were wrong, and had the original contractor (also a building structural engineer who warned Wright and the owner who commissioned the house that it was unsound) not increased the reinforcement in the cantilever supports the whole structure probably would have collapsed. As it was, the support structure had to be rebuilt, and although it isn’t a structural issue or something that could be avoided given the environment in which the house was placed, it had substantial problems with mildew and noise. It is still, like many of Lloyd’s houses, a great looking house, both in photographs and in person, but not necessarily something you’d really like to live or work in.
Wright was highly influential in both commercial and residential architecture, moving away from the Victorian and Colonial paradigm of dividing a house or structure into many small rooms and instead trying to open up interior spaces and build an organic work-flow into the structure. When you see houses with a kitchen opening up to or attached to a dining room which then opens up into a living or entertaining space, that comes largely from Lloyd’s influence. Lloyd was also extemely innovative in his use of glass and consideration of natural light. Again, this makes structures that are very beautiful, though not necessarily without their problems (see the Guggenheim New York). Lloyd also designed a lot of built-in and custom furniture (as frequently seen in the Craftsman-style home), and for better or worse pushed this on his clients. He was something of a tyrant to work for/with or even to hire, but his influence in American architecture is pre-eminent with good reason.
There was and is a lot of imitation (or attempts to improve upon) Lloyd’s style, but cost and skill hinder even good implementations.
Regarding Frank Gehry, words can’t say enough about how bad he is, so instead I’ll leave you with a picture of his Santa Monica house and let you decide for yourself.
Stranger
It was definitely the Wright way or the highway. 6’6" bedroom and corridor ceilings because he was a small man and built to the scale he found pleasing, and some of the least welcoming looking chairs I ever saw that weren’t wired with 2000 volts.
Still a genius. I’ve heard it said that his gift wasn’t so much what he built as what he did with empty space - shaping it and putting it in context. His buildings (the 2 I’ve been in anyway) define space in a very special way.
Note: IANA architect but have visited Fallingwater and Cedar Rock and read much on FLW and his work.
Architect wanna-be here. I love the horizontal lines of Wright’s work. It’s very appealing to my eye. I wasn’t aware of the design flaws of Fallingwater but from an aesthetic point of view, it’s an amazing structure.
An achievement worthy of Bergholt Stuttley Johnson.
I visited Fallingwater about, oh, maybe 10 years ago, and the tour guide talked about what a genius Wright was because of his cantilever construction, and how the contractor told him the calculations were wrong. According to the guide, Wright stuck to his guns, and just told the contractor to build the damn deck over the creek. And the guide continued on to say, “And as you can see, the deck is still standing today, decades later.”
This is when the tour group broke into laughter, because the deck was at that very moment undergoing a renovation to keep it from falling into the Fallingwater.
The campus of Florida Southern College, in Lakeland, FL, has your traditional symmetrical red-brick-and-white-trim academic buildings on one side and some of FLW’s work on the other. The contrast is trippy.
The Johnson Wax bldg is unbelievably cool.
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Johnson_Wax_Building.html
If memory serves, the local building inspector wouldn’t approve the design, thinking the lily pads wouldn’t support the roof. So he built one and started loading it down. It finally collapsed at ten times the load it was required to hold.
That said, I understand this and many of his bldgs leaked. IMO he dreamed big and building tech just wasn’t up to what he needed at the time.
I spent a couple of years back in the early 80s working for a refugee Czech architect in Victoria B.C. He had designed buildings in Germany and Italy, was a member of the AIA, but couldn’t get acredited in B.C. so his buidings had to be approved by a structural engineer.
He loved Wright’s work, but having subscribed to Sullivan’s “form follows function”, didn’t like Wrights amendment “form and function are one”.
Having designed several homes myself, as well as marine deck structures, I don’t understand Wright’s statement. I always start with the requested function of my clients and follow up with a design and build an asthetic solution.
I was lucky enough to visit a couple of the Wright-designed buildings at SC Johnson recently…both the interior of the Great Workroom, with the lily pads, and the interior of the Golden Rondelle Theater. They were both really impressive in person, and it’s nice to see the company still using the spaces for the purposes they were meant for.
I agree with those who have said, though, that a lot of Wright’s buildings aren’t successful architectural designs, beautiful though they may be. But I disagree with the OP’s statement that his style hasn’t been carried on…modified versions of his Prairie-style buildings are built all the time, both in houses and municipal buildings…the popularity of the look seems to have endured quite well over the last 80-100 years since he was originally building them.
I’m glad you brought up the SC Johnsons wax complex-one of Wright’s best works! I understand that his unique pyrex glass tube "windows’ gave quite a bit of trouble(they leaked). But the effect is simply wonderful!
I wish FLW was still around-I’d live in a doghouse designed by him!
Wright is said to have inspired Ayn Rand’s character Howard Roark – the architect in The Fountainhead who is so obsessed with architecture as art for art’s sake that we get the impression he would be perfectly content to put up a building in a remote desert where nobody would ever use it or see it. Wright, with his little artistic enclave at Taliesin and his cult following, was the first of the modern starchitects, by virtue of which fact alone he embodies much of what is wrong with modern architecture quite regardless of the quality of his own actual work.
Ain’t it the truth. The house I grew up in was a 1937 International Style flatroof that leaked like hell for decades until a hip roof was put on. Even after that it gave us trouble in heavy rain.
I’m not an architect, but as a sculptor I can say that despite whatever Wright has said about his work, He was allowing form to dictate. What he is doing is sculpting with space, using the walls, lights etc, to achieve a pleasing design. I consider him visionary in his field for his time, but out of touch with the reality of function. Today’s materials offer a wealth of new possibilities to architects, and the same brilliance has been exhibited by many since Wright.
I had the good fortune to grow up in Hollin Hills (click on the ‘View Sandi’s latest listings’ link to see pix of individual houses - it’s a java pop-up so I can’t link directly), a neighborhood just south of Alexandria, VA. Maybe FLW’s houses had structural problems, but he inspired others to build houses in a similar vein that worked.