It’s been 8 years - can I say something negative about FLW? No? Too bad.
I hate that he never seemed to make his buildings for the actual users. He was notoriously height challenged, and his buildings were fine for him. When I toured Taliesin West, I (a person on the high side of 6’) had to walk around stooped over the whole time.
Were I one of his students, every day I’d hit him in the forehead with a pool noodle. Hi Mr Wright. Just reminding you there are others besides yourself in this world.
Hypocrite or not, it’s a fair criticism.
How odd this would get bumped today; I’m wearing my Frank Lloyd Wright socks.
Fun Frank fact: his second son John Lloyd Wright was the inventor of Lincoln Logs.
Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed Taliesin West when I visited it, but it also really made me shake my head.
There obviously was a lot of personality cult going on, and Im sure Aynn Rand was right about her profoundly non self reflective observations.
As a carpenter / builder a lot made me shake my head. Yes, using horizontal form, echoing landscape and use of local materials are all great design principles. The shear disregard for ergonomics and shameful lack of structural knowledge shocked me though. Did the guy seriously not have an engineer? If he ever took a statics and dynamics course he obviously tossed it all aside as a abhorrent restraint on creation.
Plus his silly choice of canvas roofs. We were there after a rain, and they had fans everywhere drying it out. And it was slippery!
But, to be fair, I loved the Garden Room. I’d live there if I could. Note, however, it has a high ceiling!
I always considered FLW to be 1/3 of a great architect. The Roman core principals of architecture; structural soundness, utility, beauty (firmitas, utilitas, venustas) I always believed were required for anything considered truly great architecture. Otherwise you’re just making art imho.