my mum designed a home based on frank llyod wright book it was a gorgeous and unusual house we grew up in the 70's and was a home for our family for 40 plus years - nestled into the environment (Australian bush)
Great video Stewart, I’ve wandered around and toured as many Wright buildings as I could get too and were open to the public. I do love his quote “Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change”.
Silicon caulk is the unsung hero of Frank Lloyd Wright's story. All his building leaked like sieves before Dow Corning's wonder material fixed his mess.
A proper architect is ALWAYS ahead of the materials. And no owner of any Wright home ever complained about a leak. Basically, your comment shows how little you know, and how poorly able you are to assess architectural design.
@@Chris.Davies Nah. I used to do my architect student roommate's drafting homework (before CAD), made parts of his models. Architects can be an odd bunch. Practical would be great, but... The annex to Falling Water is there because the main room was impossible to heat. All the Modern houses of Mies van der Rohe, The Case Study Houses, Schindler,, etc... ALL leaked, (Along the bottoms of the wall windows was chronic.) They were all nearly impossible to heat/air condition. I've been in several, known people who built them, worked on them. They were far ahead of the materials. Only in the past 40 years have there been windows insulated well enough to make those houses practical. Great architecture is first and foremost visual and spatial. I'm sure Wrights bungalow houses in Chicago which were variations on the more conventional upper class domestic architecture of the day were every bit as practical. When his style advanced, he was ahead of the materials. The Ennis House in Los Angeles is crumbling because decomposing granite isn't a good aggregate material. It is such a beautiful house that it's well worth the decades of repairs and searching for new binders to make it work. Caulking when Wright started would be putty (linseed oil and marble dust); oakum, tar and lead; or 'shingling, to shed water.' We now have caulks used on boats that make silicone seem primitive.
Ha! My dad was a forester and he used to bring home wood samples for me to play with. I never pursued a career in architecture, but maybe playing with those blocks nurtured my fascination with architecture. Thank you for your excellent videos!
I wanted to become an architect but found l had a major problem with math. I just could not catch on to calculus. But then when introduced to Algebra l had lots of trouble with it. Until l explained to the instructor that a,b and c. X,y and z didn't mean anything to me. Then she plugged in values and the light went on. Regarding calculus. I have had others say they had a lot of trouble with it. It seems to be primarily an issue of the instructor than the subject matter.
Building blocks, Legos, Lincoln logs, etc. are excellent toys to exercise young minds and trigger interests in spatial mathematics, and can lead to careers in architecture and engineering. Do your children a favor and give them hands-on toys in place of electronic video games.
Frank Lloyd Wright appeared on a 1956 episode of What's My Line. He wasn't technically the mystery guest-that was Liberace. However, the panel was blindfolded while they asked yes or no questions to try to identify his occupation/identity. That episode, like all the surviving episodes of WML, is available here on TH-cam. WML aired on Sunday nights on CBS from 1950 until 1967. I wasn't born until 1968, but about 20 years ago, I came across the show airing on the Game Show Network at 3 AM. I really enjoyed it and began recording the show on my DVR. There is quite a lot to like about the show, but every once in a while, they would have an exceptionally interesting contestant, exceptionally interesting to modern eyes. For instance, they had an episode with Colonel Harland Sanders. But because he wasn't yet the face of a national ad campaign for KFC, the panel didn't need to be blindfolded. Thomas Eagleton, who was then the DA of St. Louis, Missouri, was a contestant. He would go on to be nominated as George McGovern's running mate in 1972 but would withdraw when the press discovered that in the 1960s, Eagleton had been hospitalized and received electroshock therapy for depression. Of course, plenty of Hollywood movie stars appeared as mystery guests, including one future president. Ronald Reagan appeared as a mystery guest in 1953 and as a guest panelist in 1956.
Your channel has helped me to finally make the trip to appreciate Chicago's architecture in person, I fly out from Philadelphia on Tuesday. So excited, thank you for your great videos!
I worked downtown on Jackson and wells right by the sears tower.2 of my favorite architectural buildings are so close by the rookery And the monad mac And the monadnock building I hope you have a chance to see them both Everybody loves mayor daily from the 70s But man he let's so many buildings that were historical get torn down for no reason (money) There should be so many beautiful buildings left there
Meanwhile, the window manufacturers thank the environmentalists and their lobbyists. On the Gulf Coast, those overhangs save more energy than double pain windows for Pennie’s on the dollar. The double pain windows do almost nothing to help our homes, but they are required by law, and they are many, many times more expensive.
I love Wrights work and think he's brilliant. Another factor which helped him immensely were all of his patrons, many of whom he strung along for money, one whose wife he sorta stole, and most who let him do designs with little oversight. This let him explore his ideas sometimes without the consequences of having to deal with buildings failing, falling apart, leaking, or fitting a program set by his clients that current architects would be in big trouble for.
Yes, it is not enough to be a brilliant architect. One has to be able to communicate the brilliance of one’s architecture. As can be seen in many of the comments, many people have a strong dislike for Frank Loyd Wright’s architecture. Interestingly, most of them don’t say why with any specificity.
Although the ranch format does have disadvantages, like how it's land inefficient to have everything on one level, especially when you get to the bigger square footage ranges. Also, the ranch house isn't as frequently featured in movies and TV shows as two+ story house styles are, when someone pictures the idealized American Dream house, chances are that it's two (or three) storey.
When talking about Wright and the Froebel blocks, it would be a good idea to also show a few pages from a popular 19th century architectural reference book that talks about the use of a grid system to line up structural elements and to provide good proportions. The grid is recommended for use in both horizontal, and vertical, planes. The book is, Encyclopedia of Architecture: The Complete Guide to Architecture, from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. It was written by Joseph Gwilt, and published in 1867. I would say that the odds are extremely good to 100%, that a young guy like Wright who was interested in learning about architecture would at least glance through the books in the libraries of the architects he worked for. If Wright's eyes ever ran across the pages in Gwilt's book that cover the grid system, his Froebel block molded mind would latch onto that like a pit bull. And even if Wright never saw Gwilt's book, he worked in a firm that almost invented steel girder skyscrapers, and they were, and still are, distributed on a grid. And it's likely that Gwilt's book was known to both Adler and Sullivan. Finally, Wright was exposed to traditional Japanese house design, which also has a grid system incorporated into it. The result was that he used grids in his work. He used them silently to guide him in his design decisions. But he also used them more overtly, even having masons score a grid on the concrete floors of many of his buildings. A couple of questions remain, what proportioning system was shown in Gwilt's book? And what system did Wright employ? Gwilt did NOT specify a proportioning system, but the illustrations in his book show Fibonacci proportions without naming Fibonacci. And, Wright's plans show Fibonacci proportions of, 1:2, 2:3, 3:5, 5:8, 8:13, etc. Every skilled designer needs to master MANY other important factors involved in design, proportion is just one of them. But, when Froebel is mentioned in relation to Wright, it is probably a good idea to also mention Gwilt, and Fibonacci.
What is touched upon in this video and bears further discussion is how his architecture was of a certain time and place. It is the stuff of the Midwest or the west coast; born of the automobile era. So lateral buildings built across what would be sprawling properties are where it is best suited. These are neighbourhoods where everyone drives and where walking is impractical. It did not fit so well in urban environments. (I bristle against FLW or anyone, really-Steve Jobs, etc-being declared some godlike, always-right solution to the human condition. He was a brilliant man with a lot of great ideas, and yes, there’s much to learn there. But simply copying his work, inconsiderately stamping it across the landscape, well, it’s what led to things like endless tracts of suburbia, traffic jams and strip malls.)
In addition to making a lot of toxic ideas trendy, a lot of Wright's buildings kind of sucked. Fallingwater nearly collapsed in the 90s because, as it turns out, Wright did not know how to build his famous cantilevers. I bet a lot of his popularity is directly attributable to that last thing mentioned in the video: being better than his peers at spreading his ideas to the next generation.
@@TheRealE.B. there’s something to that. Until and perhaps even since then, there’s not been another American architect so singularly attached to a residential housing style. Also, I think he was lucky: he was in the right place at the right time in history. In booming post-WWII America, people had little interest in historic architecture. The burgeoning middle class, emerging from WWII and depression-era austerity, wanted to leave the past behind and embrace something fresh and new. And there he was. It may very well have been that anything new (well, not anything, but anything decent, let’s say) would have been embraced with similar vigor.
Were there favorable economic conditions during the start of his career? I know that statement can't be applied to his whole career, as Fallingwater was built during the Great Depression.
@@thebigpicture2032 Whether there was manpower is largely irrelevant. Frank Lloyd Wright had to work for clients, and construction in the private sector was greatly slowed during the Great Depression, and that included commissions for Wright.
I was so happy that you covered the Japanese influence with unity temple, I did a case study on the temple for one of my ARCH classes at College of DuPage and when I was trying to find plans I came across an image of the two plans side by side. After a brief deep dive I was shocked with how similar the buildings were on the plans and overall. Great video, I always enjoy your work
Fun fact: I believe at 12:04 we see a model of the Kalita Humphreys Theater Center in Dallas, designed by Wright. It is about to undergo a multi million dollar restoration to return it to the original design after years of neglect and alterations by the City of Dallas!
10:48 The word "Usonian" struck me as interesting. Bears a striking similarity to the Esperanto word for the USA, which is "Usono". Looked it up and apparently both Wright and the author of Esperanto were influenced by an early 20th century author who advocated to use the name Usonia for the US. Only caught on in Esperanto I guess!
11:00 Unfortunately, modern home design *may* have been influenced with respect to exterior appearance by Wright's practice and theories, but plenty of designers/architects/builders of modern developer homes appear to be phoning it in by blindly copying the form without necessarily understanding how it interacts with the intended function.
Yes. Vestiges of form, like a poorly done counterfeit. The reductiveness of forms, ignoring function, the banality of almost every inadequate design since is what encompasses the American suburban experience, the culture of Americans even now. It creates malaise
I’m not an architect, so I’m aware my opinion is uneducated and probably wrong in eyes of most, but although Wright was an uncontested genius ahead of his time, I cannot help but feeling overwhelmed every time I look at one of his designs, his personal home & studio in particular. It gives me vibes of something you’d see in a horror movie. All of his buildings and houses give the impression of being dark, oppressive, claustrophobic, stuffy, sprawled, inefficient and excessively heavy. It feels as if he were in control all the time by not allowing you to look into, by limiting what you can see out of, by compressing you at the entrance just to release you into dimly lit environments full of heavy furniture and ornaments. Then there is the SC Johnson HQ where the manager’s officers are on a raised level so that they could surveil the lesser employees from above, reinforcing who held the power. Is all very sinister and oppressive to me and I wouldn’t like to be inside one of his creations.
Interesting comment. I love most of Wright's architecture but I agree with you about the horror movie vibe. To me his work is beautiful and elegant but also austere and authoritarian. And as we know the houses were cold and damp. I hadn't realised before that he had no official training, especially in construction. His experimentation was not guided by knowledge. But for all that he was a great architect.
I've always admired wright. I don't did his designs to be horror house like. They are monumental. The also have a heart the hearth the fireplace. Yes his building famously leaked he said that's how you knew that was the roof and if it didntthe architec was too timid. Falling water was known to the family as rising damp. I'm not even a great fan of the prairie home but love the usonian the hollyhawk house and the textile block system. His cross hatched lumber plank walls I find fascinating. Imagion building walls of three inch pannels
Yes his residential designs do give off a bit of modern horror movie vibes. Normal looking rich yuppie family living their comfortable life then out of nowhere wham! their house is actually haunted by a nasty ghost which would suddenly appear and asks: whatcha doin? 😄 I'm not a fan of Mr. Wright but I like his expansive exteriors on some of his residential designs and specifically on his industrial/corporate and institutional structures. They got this 1950s clean industrial look. All looked good on large tracts of land. I like them but I don't want to live in them. Just like I admire the practical looks of fighter jets but it would take me a lot of persuasion to make me ride in one. And don't get me started on going under the ocean in a submarine. But Antoine Predock's futurist style CLA Building gets 8 stars from me. Well, at least it's open triangle corner looks simple but amazing in late afternoon sunlight.
As a matter of fact, William Castle did use one of Wright's Mayan houses for exterior shots in "House On Haunted Hill". But he shot the interiors on Old Dark House sets leading to the question, "Why does this look like 'The Fountainhead' outside and 'Dark Shadows ' inside"?
Validation first, I'm not a fan of FLW other than his "big picture" aesthetics. He did, most certainly, have an eye for balance and design, but the beauty of it, at best, is subjective. FLW also was the Grandfather of the "MacMansion," and what he did with OPC cementitious materials (one of the worst polluters in the world today) is a blight on architecture and a never-ending battle to keep his architecture even functional as it (very successfully) falls apart. I've worked on Falling Waters, and know many of his projects on a "hands-on" basis. Each is a collection of good aesthetic design but horrid material choices and decisions that even tradespeople and craftspeople at the time told him were bad, which led to him having many leave projects leaving him with those that would capitulate to his ironic demands that we suffer with today in restoration of such work. As a natural and traditional design builder, historic restorationist, and someone who appreciates architecture deeply I can admire some of FLW's work astheticly; however, the legacy of "track homes," sprawling subdivisions, and poor material use is not to be admired at all...
To be able to study architecture in Chicago seems like one of many "obvious" choices as well as, a dream come true? I really enjoy everything you have to say, Stewart. I like your subject choices as well as how you organize and phrase things. When you describe one aspect of Wright's devices of "compressing the space vertically, only to release it later," and it becoming a "staple of Wright's work" to describe one method he employed to invoke weightlessness was an elegant exposition contraposing the building's actual heavy weight. I am reminded of what it might feel like to be a fish suddenly enveloped and passing through the relatively small mouth of a sperm whale, only to be dumdounded by a new, much larger space, such as it's stomach, still determined, but a little confused by your new environment. Maybe this is a bit silly of such a specific example, but that initial verical narrowing feels very much like a mouth to me, and the quick switch to a large open space is probably awe inducing and maybe, a little purposely jarring, while still being kind of confined space. Lrobably there is an egress system, but I doubt it is as pleasant to walk up the stairs as it may be to escape out the window, however you do it. Your classes must be wonderful. I don't know if it is just that you pick an organized and digestable sample of material, or if architecture is straightforward in some way. I am going to guess it is the former, since it is surely not a limited subject and it's juggernauts are probably well described as opinionated and diverse, maybe necessarily, so they are remembered, like the artists we actually know of today. You have a knack of making big ideas more simple, and conversational. My whole family is from Chicago for as many generations as we have been in America, but because we moved when I was so young, I grew up in friendlier climates, and I am told, far less dangerous cities. Chicago has so much to offer culturally and educationally. My needs have changed due to disability. While I feel sure I need to live in a modestly large to large city for at minimum, support and medical care, I do worry about crime and how to keep myself safe and I now make great use of elevators. There are many reasons I dream of living in Chicago, and not necessarily for the oresence oflr lack of elevators. Just for a start, what there is to see and do and the great and varied food is clearly enough of a reason for many, and I have so many fond memories of so many of the buildings, museums, and even of the statues and all the art there. Very early on I adopted the opinion that all buildings of any quality should clearly be made of brick and have some style or artifice and probably two, three, or more stories to be of any value, and then if climate and space allows, a good guard dog and a pool. It is funny because so many decades later, I'm not sure that my opinions have changed very much, but I can now at least appreciate many other kinds of buildings, and locations, but I still gravitate toward solid, brick buildings for their various qualities. I am delighted to watch your channel and only wish I could have discussed many of the topics you raise with my father before he passed away. I think he would have enjoyed sharing some of his memories even if he did regard Chicago as a world-class city, but a "tough town" he was glad to eventually leave. Your channel may be about architecture, but it is also invariably about Chicago and it fills me with nostalgia and cultural and familial appreciation. I particularly loved your Chicago Rat Hole video posing the question of wjether or not it is art. This may be my favorite video of yours, but only couched in the appreciation gained through all the other videos I have seen of yours. It would have still been a good video, but it came with well earned appreciation, a promise of a fair critique and suble authority. Honestly, I am not sure how much I would appreciate the same Rat Hole in some other cities for how the location changes its context of it being a destination, its survivability, and its location as a part of a significant city in American history as well as a still, comparatively, very relevant one today. Also, for example, this Rat Hole in Portland or Austin wouldn't be as nearly as important because these cities identify as quirky and it's really on brand and just not as interesting, and would be more suspect as being a manufactured and not serendipitous sort of hole. Thank you for this and all your videos.
So he designed a windmill for his Aunt back home. Very intriguing as it is designed to capture the wind and also resist it. A lesson in wind proofing buildings. We came across it while designing a wind proof home out on the Prairies by Milk River, Alberta.
I'm not an architect but I've been to the Samara house and also the John E Christian house, both in West Lafayette IN. It's like you're witnessing a work of art, it's palpable. There's something about masterful work I suppose, it just speaks for itself.
@@codetech5598 The above comments are referring to George Castanza, a character in the television series “Seinfeld”. The character always wanted to be an architect, but has zero training. He attempts to impress women with this claim. When he is an “architect” he uses the name “Art Vandelay”. This channel did a video on the topic. Stewart Hicks: If George Costanza Was Really an Architect
Wright despised garages, attics and basements because he didn't like clutter and knew people would become packrat hoarders by having such spaces. He was right.
First three minutes- family connections - after not finishing college. The usual for those at the top of society. I’m more interested in the interior of this Charnley-Persky house because of the interior, the designs, and materials. All we ever hear about are the buildings - Falling Water, Taliesen, the Guggenheim, etc.
we had a local architect who was an understudy of his, designed many of the city's municipal buildings in a cubist style, with a lot of pillars, cantilevers, big windows, and shapes
I bought a set of the Froebel Gifts (blocks) at Taliesin West many years ago. He was the Master, an American treasure. You can see the hand of FLLW in the work of his apprentices. My favorite is E. Fay Jones.
Excellent content, Stewart. Wright's level of thoughtfulness and consideration for construction technique and human psychology are very inspiring to me and my practice 🤘
When one looks at FLW's early work, you can see how heavily influenced he was by the Scottish Architect Alexander Thompson, Unity Temple has the Japanese influence but is an almost direct copy of St Vincent Street church in Glasgow. I'm glad Wright is appreciated more in the US than Thompson was until the last 30 to 40 years.
In 1963 my parents thought about buying the FLW house at Forest and Superior in Oak Park. See12:08in vid. BUT the roof leaked like a sieve. I came to learn later that this was a major flaw in many FLW houses.
The Sydney suburb of Castlecrag has several homes by Marion Mahony Griffin, as she and Walter Burley Griffin lived there in a Bohemian community while overseeing the construction of Canberra. They moved to Lucknow, India, where Walter died. I have been inside one of those homes and it is sublime, although costly to maintain the aging concrete.
It's an historical injustice that Walter Burley Griffin is generally credited (solely) with master-planning Canberra, when it's clear that Walter and Marion very much operated organically as a creative (as well as marital) partnership.
I always thought of Frank Lloyd Wright's works to be for pretentious people, but after watching this video (I didn't looked much into his biography before) I can't feel but respect for him because he would probably loved all of the attention he got, and will get overtime because of his timeless contributions to architecture.
Wright's ability to manipulate three dimensions in his head is no less impressive than Mozart's ability to manipulate musical ideas in his. Wright fully designed Falling Water in his mind and drew it on paper in a single session. Yes, all those other things were necessary steps along the way, but without his special ability he could not have been what he was: one of America's greatest artists.
It’s a shame that we live in an era where we have to tamper down our knowledge that wright was an amazing genius. Reminds me of the kurt vonnegut short story harrison Bergeron. Because we reward mediocrity now, doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate genius
Excellent video! My first exposure to Frank Lloyd Wright was through the Guggenheim (and Simon & Garfunkel's song about Frank Lloyd Wright). My dad would take my brother and me out on Sunday afternoons, and we often went to museums. We didn't go to the Geggenheim very often because the admission price was very steep, but every once in a while we ended up there. I found the quality of space amazing. At the bottom it felt like we were at the bottom of a narrow cylinder, but when we took the elevator to the top, we entered this very open, expansive space, light-filled space with a giant hole in the middle. As we made our way down the ramp the space would gradually constrict until we reached the bottom, and then we were at the bottom of a hole again. I was far more interested in the space than in the art displayed there, to which I paid no attention. That perhaps highlights one of the criticisms of the Guggenheim: the building itself overwhelmed the art within. However, the first time I was really WOWED by a Frank Lloyd Wright interior was when I first visited the 1914-16 Francis W Little living room as installed in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sometime around 1985. After going through period rooms from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, all of which were interesting in their own ways, I entered the Frank Lloyd Wright space. What a revelation! What a contrast! The room was expansive, yet serene, in the way of Zen Buddhist temple is serene. I felt myself relax, physically and emotionally, into that room. I wanted to live in a space like that. My only frustration was that it was only a fragment of the building outside of its original context. Of course, I've seen many FLW buildings since, like Unity Temple, Fallingwater, Taliesin in Wisconsin, and various Usonian houses, and I knew what to expect, but my first visit to the Little House livingroom is still one of the most architecturally powerful experiences I've ever had.
Thank you, Stewart for this video. Frank Lloyd Wright is my favorite architect. I like the computer generated models. Are you going to do additonal videos with building models like the ones featured in prior videos? It would be cool to see more.
Great video! I've been reading a lot about FLW lately and one of the more interesting things I came across was the warehouse he built in his hometown (Richland Center). It still stands, although it's heavily under-utilized at the moment. It's called the AD German Warehouse and if you look for a picture of it you'll see it could only have been designed by FLW.
I've always been a little skeptical of that block story. I think as architects we tend to embellish the truth for the sake of the bold. And that's okay lol
In the early 1900's the surveyed people about what they thought was the greatest advance of the era. They could have said the airplane, the automobile, electrification, etc. What were they impressed by? Reenforced concrete.
informative. Constructive criticism: Try to move less, especially hand movements. It is distracting. You can then save those movements and especially gestures:for more effective presentation. For example, at 6:00 , the phrase "...not soaring vertical towers..." used a very effective gesture of reaching upward, but it was diminished by all the unnecessary previous hand movements which simply mimic the rhythm of speech (which happens often). When introducing the Charnley-Persky house, after opening the door (nice creative touch), stand as still as possible until saying THIS IS THE... and then do a grand open arms gesture. Smaller or no movements on less important text will make the viewer listen to those parts, and the more visual gestures will cause them to notice/remember key moments in the presentation.
I will say when I was about 8 one of the only channels we could get in the mountains was PBS and I saw a special about the Falling Water and that's when I was hooked.
The genius of Frank Lloyd Wright is that his buildings are striking, inside and out, and that they photograph really well. They look great. I can see why architects like them. Having been inside the Dana -Thomas house in Springfield, lllinois, however, I'm honestly more interested in the opinions of people who've had to actually live in them. Everybody talks about what the buildings look like. Unfortunately, nobody talks about what it's like to have deal with them on a daily basis. I am prepared to admit that taking a brief tour of the house is not enough to make me an expert. I also admit that that my view of the house is not the view of the house that a resident would have gotten when the house was new. Nor do I have a good view of the house in its historical context; it's possible that contemporary houses were worse. Nevertheless, I have my doubts. I've been in even older houses that seemed much more pleasant.
When I look at the rigid structure at Frank Lloyd Wright imposed on his residences, I have to wonder at the pleasure of owning the place. The Guggenheim does not offer a variety of display settings, they are all diagonally placed on the ramp. The Kaleta Humphries theater in Dallas, Texas has windows in the back of the auditorium that require a little wooden panels to close off for productions done in the daytime and it has a set of stairs to the balcony that are small and angled, and since they were provided with carpet to deaden the sound, they are really tricky to walk up. The actual stage space requires accommodation to the architect and has very limited backstage support.
As an architect student in high school, I loved Mr. Wright's work, still do 55 years later. After studying his life I don't admire the man. Wright was a liar ,cheat, irresponsible gadd about. He placed himself on a platform and looked down on those around him. Wright's arrogant attitude was un comparable. He abandoned his wife and 6 children to run away with a clients wife. He took credit for Sullivan's work. Restoration of his work has shown Wright was no engineer. Foundation, heating, general building technical design ,all not up to task. Falling Water, an almost wreck was saved by spending millions of dollars to redo Wright's mistakes. Yes,my words are hard but our heroes are just people. Thanks for the video......RF
The best story I've heard about FLW was he took a commission and didn't do anything for months. One day his client decided to visit his office. The client would arrive in 3 hours so he locked himself in his draft room and made the plans. The client arrived and loved the plans. The plans were for the Waterfall.
70% was his work, but 30% was his self promotion. After all Rule #1 at being ‘successful’ in great Art & Design is not the work itself but who you know that can get your work out there, whether you’re a Designer, Writer, Painter or Musician
Did Wright also come up with the idea of excluding let's say small groceries and pubs from residential areas? In that case he would have been instrumental to destroying the American city in general.
ahaha! very fun that halfway through this video I'm surprised by the appearance of the first licensed female architect, and then seeing her style I notice the name Griffin, and look her up to check that yes, she was married to Walter Burley Griffin and that's why I recognized the artstyle
I feel like nowadays his lack of formal education would become a humongous problem and drama later on. Wouldn't matter if everything was well within regulations.
When he was designing the SC Johnson Wax Administration Building in his 70s, the Racine planning board learned that despite his fame, he had never had a license to practice architecture. In response he agreed to take an oral exam. The board relented. To be fair, I suspect (but don't know for certain) that licensure was not required at the time Wright started his career.
I worked in a FLW building. No square corners, windows inadequate, heating was a joke, electrical plugs and wiring poor. Pretty but a disfunction building!
That modest home you are picking home would be helped a lot by painting the garage door to match the dark colors on the front and planting some nice plants in the front. You have deliberately chosen an unloved little place, probably a rental.
@@Roberta-q1q I caught that, but it's one of the few things I feel he explained poorly. Sullivan designed his ornamental foliage on top of underlying geometric patterns. He used the geometry to give pattern to seemingly random/ organic sculpture. Occasionally the geometry broke through the foliage to and became more visible.
1:31 Im always surprised people struggle with that idea. There is was nothing singularly unique about Wright... or anyone else in history. Some people through natural talent/practice/opportunity, develop a skill set. Sometimes those people are presented an opportunity to use that skill set. Sometimes the right people, at the right time, in the right environment, see the results of that opportunity and that kicks things off. There were probably 10,000s of Wrights in the US at that time. Some lacked the desire to hone that skill, some lacked the opportunity, some never got the opportunity to show it off, some didnt get it shown off to the right person at the right time in the right environment, etc. Im not a big fan of the "mysterious, singular, innate talent" narrative. It doesn't reflect reality and is not good for anyone
Thank you for this excellent review of FLW. I've spent a lot of time in various FLW homes, mostly Wingspread when I was a young musician. I loved that home/community center. I can say that, for me, FLWs homes are fun. They're fun to explore. I've also spent time in his grandparent's farm home in Spring Green, WI and both Talieson and Talieson West. The one negative thing I've heard about his homes is that they require a lot of expensive work to keep them in good condition.
I live in the midwest and I've visited FLW buildings. It's important to remember that Wright was designing for the savage midwest climate before air conditioning and convenient furnaces. (The climate: I've seen it be 110 above and 20 below. My big city has had tornadoes and storms with 8, even 13 inches of rain.) Wright homes are snug and closed in, and as a result rather dark inside. Modern people want windows and sunlight, and are willing to pay high utility bills to get them.
Uh, a Gladwell reference is not a good sign at all, he is not a serious or reliable source for anything and I am frankly shocked to see Stewart name check him here.
@@alittlebitgone I literally thought the exact same thing the second he mentioned him. Why in the world give that man any credibility. He's an absolute shill in the name of journalism and clearly is a puppet for a political agenda.
I live in southern Wisconsin. Wright buildings have two things in common: Cracked foundations and leaky roofs. Only people who have been forced to occupy a Wright building have rights to comment. The Lillypad Office was pure Hell for those secretaries. Most Chicago homeowners try to escape after two years. The Wright warehouse in Richland Center has been vacant for a couple decades, with locals wanting it razed immediately.
my mum designed a home based on frank llyod wright book it was a gorgeous and unusual house we grew up in the 70's and was a home for our family for 40 plus years - nestled into the environment (Australian bush)
That's so awesome! I'd love to build a smaller cabin based on one of his smaller homes
Great video Stewart, I’ve wandered around and toured as many Wright buildings as I could get too and were open to the public. I do love his quote “Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change”.
Silicon caulk is the unsung hero of Frank Lloyd Wright's story. All his building leaked like sieves before Dow Corning's wonder material fixed his mess.
A proper architect is ALWAYS ahead of the materials.
And no owner of any Wright home ever complained about a leak.
Basically, your comment shows how little you know, and how poorly able you are to assess architectural design.
@@Chris.Davies 😂
@@Chris.Davies wow.... just.... wow......
@@Chris.Davies Nah. I used to do my architect student roommate's drafting homework (before CAD), made parts of his models. Architects can be an odd bunch. Practical would be great, but... The annex to Falling Water is there because the main room was impossible to heat. All the Modern houses of Mies van der Rohe, The Case Study Houses, Schindler,, etc... ALL leaked, (Along the bottoms of the wall windows was chronic.) They were all nearly impossible to heat/air condition. I've been in several, known people who built them, worked on them. They were far ahead of the materials. Only in the past 40 years have there been windows insulated well enough to make those houses practical.
Great architecture is first and foremost visual and spatial. I'm sure Wrights bungalow houses in Chicago which were variations on the more conventional upper class domestic architecture of the day were every bit as practical. When his style advanced, he was ahead of the materials. The Ennis House in Los Angeles is crumbling because decomposing granite isn't a good aggregate material. It is such a beautiful house that it's well worth the decades of repairs and searching for new binders to make it work.
Caulking when Wright started would be putty (linseed oil and marble dust); oakum, tar and lead; or 'shingling, to shed water.' We now have caulks used on boats that make silicone seem primitive.
Every building leaks lmao 😂 leaks arent the main thing architects are responsible for and not leaky buildings don’t make it a good building
Ha! My dad was a forester and he used to bring home wood samples for me to play with. I never pursued a career in architecture, but maybe playing with those blocks nurtured my fascination with architecture. Thank you for your excellent videos!
I wanted to become an architect but found l had a major problem with math. I just could not catch on to calculus. But then when introduced to Algebra l had lots of trouble with it. Until l explained to the instructor that a,b and c. X,y and z didn't mean anything to me. Then she plugged in values and the light went on. Regarding calculus. I have had others say they had a lot of trouble with it. It seems to be primarily an issue of the instructor than the subject matter.
Building blocks, Legos, Lincoln logs, etc. are excellent toys to exercise young minds and trigger interests in spatial mathematics, and can lead to careers in architecture and engineering.
Do your children a favor and give them hands-on toys in place of electronic video games.
I think Frank had something to do with Lincoln logs !
Frank Lloyd Wright appeared on a 1956 episode of What's My Line. He wasn't technically the mystery guest-that was Liberace. However, the panel was blindfolded while they asked yes or no questions to try to identify his occupation/identity. That episode, like all the surviving episodes of WML, is available here on TH-cam. WML aired on Sunday nights on CBS from 1950 until 1967. I wasn't born until 1968, but about 20 years ago, I came across the show airing on the Game Show Network at 3 AM. I really enjoyed it and began recording the show on my DVR. There is quite a lot to like about the show, but every once in a while, they would have an exceptionally interesting contestant, exceptionally interesting to modern eyes. For instance, they had an episode with Colonel Harland Sanders. But because he wasn't yet the face of a national ad campaign for KFC, the panel didn't need to be blindfolded. Thomas Eagleton, who was then the DA of St. Louis, Missouri, was a contestant. He would go on to be nominated as George McGovern's running mate in 1972 but would withdraw when the press discovered that in the 1960s, Eagleton had been hospitalized and received electroshock therapy for depression. Of course, plenty of Hollywood movie stars appeared as mystery guests, including one future president. Ronald Reagan appeared as a mystery guest in 1953 and as a guest panelist in 1956.
5:12 Topic Suggestion: This is a topic that would make a great video on its own - rebuilding a city after a war or natural disaster.
I would love to hear that
Enough material for a series!
That’s a great idea!
Beirut
Your channel has helped me to finally make the trip to appreciate Chicago's architecture in person, I fly out from Philadelphia on Tuesday. So excited, thank you for your great videos!
I worked downtown on Jackson and wells right by the sears tower.2 of my favorite architectural buildings are so close by the rookery And the monad mac And the monadnock building
I hope you have a chance to see them both
Everybody loves mayor daily from the 70s But man he let's so many buildings that were historical get torn down for no reason (money)
There should be so many beautiful buildings left there
The roof repair industry would sincerely like to thank Wright for the decades of job security that his influence provided.
Meanwhile, the window manufacturers thank the environmentalists and their lobbyists. On the Gulf Coast, those overhangs save more energy than double pain windows for Pennie’s on the dollar. The double pain windows do almost nothing to help our homes, but they are required by law, and they are many, many times more expensive.
😂 coming from a roofer- that’s exactly what I was thinking
Way overblown.
Also, he designed Marge's hairdo, just as Apu Nahasapeemapetilon once sang: "Maggie with her eyes so bright, Marge with hair by Frank Lloyd Wright."
Oh. Marge Simpson, not Taylor Green.
I love Wrights work and think he's brilliant. Another factor which helped him immensely were all of his patrons, many of whom he strung along for money, one whose wife he sorta stole, and most who let him do designs with little oversight. This let him explore his ideas sometimes without the consequences of having to deal with buildings failing, falling apart, leaking, or fitting a program set by his clients that current architects would be in big trouble for.
Yes, it is not enough to be a brilliant architect. One has to be able to communicate the brilliance of one’s architecture. As can be seen in many of the comments, many people have a strong dislike for Frank Loyd Wright’s architecture. Interestingly, most of them don’t say why with any specificity.
@@barryrobbins7694 His ability to be a self promoter was pretty legendary as was his confident communication of his ideas.
@@benmarshall5984 I agree.
@@benmarshall5984 Apparently FLW never got a chance to speak to many of the commentators.😀
Why is everyone shoving each other out of the way to see who can best deep throat FLW? It's disgusting to watch.
The ranch house is a great design. Cheap and easy to build, use all square footage, easy to work on.
Although the ranch format does have disadvantages, like how it's land inefficient to have everything on one level, especially when you get to the bigger square footage ranges. Also, the ranch house isn't as frequently featured in movies and TV shows as two+ story house styles are, when someone pictures the idealized American Dream house, chances are that it's two (or three) storey.
When talking about Wright and the Froebel blocks, it would be a good idea to also show a few pages from a popular 19th century architectural reference book that talks about the use of a grid system to line up structural elements and to provide good proportions. The grid is recommended for use in both horizontal, and vertical, planes. The book is, Encyclopedia of Architecture: The Complete Guide to Architecture, from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century. It was written by Joseph Gwilt, and published in 1867.
I would say that the odds are extremely good to 100%, that a young guy like Wright who was interested in learning about architecture would at least glance through the books in the libraries of the architects he worked for. If Wright's eyes ever ran across the pages in Gwilt's book that cover the grid system, his Froebel block molded mind would latch onto that like a pit bull. And even if Wright never saw Gwilt's book, he worked in a firm that almost invented steel girder skyscrapers, and they were, and still are, distributed on a grid. And it's likely that Gwilt's book was known to both Adler and Sullivan. Finally, Wright was exposed to traditional Japanese house design, which also has a grid system incorporated into it. The result was that he used grids in his work. He used them silently to guide him in his design decisions. But he also used them more overtly, even having masons score a grid on the concrete floors of many of his buildings.
A couple of questions remain, what proportioning system was shown in Gwilt's book? And what system did Wright employ? Gwilt did NOT specify a proportioning system, but the illustrations in his book show Fibonacci proportions without naming Fibonacci. And, Wright's plans show Fibonacci proportions of, 1:2, 2:3, 3:5, 5:8, 8:13, etc.
Every skilled designer needs to master MANY other important factors involved in design, proportion is just one of them. But, when Froebel is mentioned in relation to Wright, it is probably a good idea to also mention Gwilt, and Fibonacci.
What is touched upon in this video and bears further discussion is how his architecture was of a certain time and place. It is the stuff of the Midwest or the west coast; born of the automobile era. So lateral buildings built across what would be sprawling properties are where it is best suited. These are neighbourhoods where everyone drives and where walking is impractical. It did not fit so well in urban environments.
(I bristle against FLW or anyone, really-Steve Jobs, etc-being declared some godlike, always-right solution to the human condition. He was a brilliant man with a lot of great ideas, and yes, there’s much to learn there. But simply copying his work, inconsiderately stamping it across the landscape, well, it’s what led to things like endless tracts of suburbia, traffic jams and strip malls.)
In addition to making a lot of toxic ideas trendy, a lot of Wright's buildings kind of sucked.
Fallingwater nearly collapsed in the 90s because, as it turns out, Wright did not know how to build his famous cantilevers.
I bet a lot of his popularity is directly attributable to that last thing mentioned in the video: being better than his peers at spreading his ideas to the next generation.
@@TheRealE.B. there’s something to that. Until and perhaps even since then, there’s not been another American architect so singularly attached to a residential housing style. Also, I think he was lucky: he was in the right place at the right time in history. In booming post-WWII America, people had little interest in historic architecture. The burgeoning middle class, emerging from WWII and depression-era austerity, wanted to leave the past behind and embrace something fresh and new. And there he was. It may very well have been that anything new (well, not anything, but anything decent, let’s say) would have been embraced with similar vigor.
Another major factor toward his success: favorable economic conditions and a very strong middle class with well paid and talented tradesmen.
💪🏼
Something we will be fortunate to ever see again....
Were there favorable economic conditions during the start of his career? I know that statement can't be applied to his whole career, as Fallingwater was built during the Great Depression.
@@davidmayes4212 building during the Great Depression was easier due to the available manpower.
@@thebigpicture2032 Whether there was manpower is largely irrelevant. Frank Lloyd Wright had to work for clients, and construction in the private sector was greatly slowed during the Great Depression, and that included commissions for Wright.
I was so happy that you covered the Japanese influence with unity temple, I did a case study on the temple for one of my ARCH classes at College of DuPage and when I was trying to find plans I came across an image of the two plans side by side. After a brief deep dive I was shocked with how similar the buildings were on the plans and overall. Great video, I always enjoy your work
Fun fact: I believe at 12:04 we see a model of the Kalita Humphreys Theater Center in Dallas, designed by Wright. It is about to undergo a multi million dollar restoration to return it to the original design after years of neglect and alterations by the City of Dallas!
... I guess I will need to venture eastward and visit Dallas again...
Texas? Ignoring a cultural treasure? I am absolutely shocked. NOT. (From someone who lived there for a long time. Too long.)
Each video is as professional as if it was filmed by the BBC.
Thanks for making so much Chicago content! You’re our ambassador
10:48 The word "Usonian" struck me as interesting. Bears a striking similarity to the Esperanto word for the USA, which is "Usono". Looked it up and apparently both Wright and the author of Esperanto were influenced by an early 20th century author who advocated to use the name Usonia for the US. Only caught on in Esperanto I guess!
there is an Usonian Inn in Spring Green WI
Age can not wither Wright, nor custom, stale his wonderful variety. His designs are still incredible.
Wright was said to have visited the Japanese village that was part of the Chicago worlds fair, almost daily
Holy smokes, I loved every second of this one. Looking forward to part 2!!!
I wanted to be the next Frank Lloyd Wright when I was younger, but I ended up being Frank Lloyd _Wrong_
TH-cam community policy finds your attempt at architectural pun to violate our user guidelines. Try harder.
I tried to go the Frank Lloyd Wright direction too, but I accidentally took a Frank Lloyd Left.
Ooh, too bad! Looks like Frank Lloyd Wright was Frank Lloyd Wstoopid!
Saaaaaame
You need to be PUNished for that one
11:00 Unfortunately, modern home design *may* have been influenced with respect to exterior appearance by Wright's practice and theories, but plenty of designers/architects/builders of modern developer homes appear to be phoning it in by blindly copying the form without necessarily understanding how it interacts with the intended function.
Yes. Vestiges of form, like a poorly done counterfeit. The reductiveness of forms, ignoring function, the banality of almost every inadequate design since is what encompasses the American suburban experience, the culture of Americans even now. It creates malaise
Success is the combination of talent and opportunity!
I’m not an architect, so I’m aware my opinion is uneducated and probably wrong in eyes of most, but although Wright was an uncontested genius ahead of his time, I cannot help but feeling overwhelmed every time I look at one of his designs, his personal home & studio in particular. It gives me vibes of something you’d see in a horror movie. All of his buildings and houses give the impression of being dark, oppressive, claustrophobic, stuffy, sprawled, inefficient and excessively heavy. It feels as if he were in control all the time by not allowing you to look into, by limiting what you can see out of, by compressing you at the entrance just to release you into dimly lit environments full of heavy furniture and ornaments. Then there is the SC Johnson HQ where the manager’s officers are on a raised level so that they could surveil the lesser employees from above, reinforcing who held the power. Is all very sinister and oppressive to me and I wouldn’t like to be inside one of his creations.
Interesting comment. I love most of Wright's architecture but I agree with you about the horror movie vibe. To me his work is beautiful and elegant but also austere and authoritarian. And as we know the houses were cold and damp. I hadn't realised before that he had no official training, especially in construction. His experimentation was not guided by knowledge. But for all that he was a great architect.
I've always admired wright. I don't did his designs to be horror house like. They are monumental. The also have a heart the hearth the fireplace. Yes his building famously leaked he said that's how you knew that was the roof and if it didntthe architec was too timid. Falling water was known to the family as rising damp. I'm not even a great fan of the prairie home but love the usonian the hollyhawk house and the textile block system. His cross hatched lumber plank walls I find fascinating. Imagion building walls of three inch pannels
Yes his residential designs do give off a bit of modern horror movie vibes. Normal looking rich yuppie family living their comfortable life then out of nowhere wham! their house is actually haunted by a nasty ghost which would suddenly appear and asks: whatcha doin? 😄
I'm not a fan of Mr. Wright but I like his expansive exteriors on some of his residential designs and specifically on his industrial/corporate and institutional structures. They got this 1950s clean industrial look. All looked good on large tracts of land. I like them but I don't want to live in them. Just like I admire the practical looks of fighter jets but it would take me a lot of persuasion to make me ride in one. And don't get me started on going under the ocean in a submarine.
But Antoine Predock's futurist style CLA Building gets 8 stars from me. Well, at least it's open triangle corner looks simple but amazing in late afternoon sunlight.
As a matter of fact, William Castle did use one of Wright's Mayan houses for exterior shots in "House On Haunted Hill". But he shot the interiors on Old Dark House sets leading to the question, "Why does this look like 'The Fountainhead' outside and 'Dark Shadows ' inside"?
Validation first, I'm not a fan of FLW other than his "big picture" aesthetics. He did, most certainly, have an eye for balance and design, but the beauty of it, at best, is subjective. FLW also was the Grandfather of the "MacMansion," and what he did with OPC cementitious materials (one of the worst polluters in the world today) is a blight on architecture and a never-ending battle to keep his architecture even functional as it (very successfully) falls apart. I've worked on Falling Waters, and know many of his projects on a "hands-on" basis. Each is a collection of good aesthetic design but horrid material choices and decisions that even tradespeople and craftspeople at the time told him were bad, which led to him having many leave projects leaving him with those that would capitulate to his ironic demands that we suffer with today in restoration of such work. As a natural and traditional design builder, historic restorationist, and someone who appreciates architecture deeply I can admire some of FLW's work astheticly; however, the legacy of "track homes," sprawling subdivisions, and poor material use is not to be admired at all...
To be able to study architecture in Chicago seems like one of many "obvious" choices as well as, a dream come true? I really enjoy everything you have to say, Stewart. I like your subject choices as well as how you organize and phrase things. When you describe one aspect of Wright's devices of "compressing the space vertically, only to release it later," and it becoming a "staple of Wright's work" to describe one method he employed to invoke weightlessness was an elegant exposition contraposing the building's actual heavy weight. I am reminded of what it might feel like to be a fish suddenly enveloped and passing through the relatively small mouth of a sperm whale, only to be dumdounded by a new, much larger space, such as it's stomach, still determined, but a little confused by your new environment. Maybe this is a bit silly of such a specific example, but that initial verical narrowing feels very much like a mouth to me, and the quick switch to a large open space is probably awe inducing and maybe, a little purposely jarring, while still being kind of confined space. Lrobably there is an egress system, but I doubt it is as pleasant to walk up the stairs as it may be to escape out the window, however you do it. Your classes must be wonderful. I don't know if it is just that you pick an organized and digestable sample of material, or if architecture is straightforward in some way. I am going to guess it is the former, since it is surely not a limited subject and it's juggernauts are probably well described as opinionated and diverse, maybe necessarily, so they are remembered, like the artists we actually know of today. You have a knack of making big ideas more simple, and conversational. My whole family is from Chicago for as many generations as we have been in America, but because we moved when I was so young, I grew up in friendlier climates, and I am told, far less dangerous cities. Chicago has so much to offer culturally and educationally. My needs have changed due to disability. While I feel sure I need to live in a modestly large to large city for at minimum, support and medical care, I do worry about crime and how to keep myself safe and I now make great use of elevators. There are many reasons I dream of living in Chicago, and not necessarily for the oresence oflr lack of elevators. Just for a start, what there is to see and do and the great and varied food is clearly enough of a reason for many, and I have so many fond memories of so many of the buildings, museums, and even of the statues and all the art there. Very early on I adopted the opinion that all buildings of any quality should clearly be made of brick and have some style or artifice and probably two, three, or more stories to be of any value, and then if climate and space allows, a good guard dog and a pool. It is funny because so many decades later, I'm not sure that my opinions have changed very much, but I can now at least appreciate many other kinds of buildings, and locations, but I still gravitate toward solid, brick buildings for their various qualities. I am delighted to watch your channel and only wish I could have discussed many of the topics you raise with my father before he passed away. I think he would have enjoyed sharing some of his memories even if he did regard Chicago as a world-class city, but a "tough town" he was glad to eventually leave. Your channel may be about architecture, but it is also invariably about Chicago and it fills me with nostalgia and cultural and familial appreciation. I particularly loved your Chicago Rat Hole video posing the question of wjether or not it is art. This may be my favorite video of yours, but only couched in the appreciation gained through all the other videos I have seen of yours. It would have still been a good video, but it came with well earned appreciation, a promise of a fair critique and suble authority. Honestly, I am not sure how much I would appreciate the same Rat Hole in some other cities for how the location changes its context of it being a destination, its survivability, and its location as a part of a significant city in American history as well as a still, comparatively, very relevant one today. Also, for example, this Rat Hole in Portland or Austin wouldn't be as nearly as important because these cities identify as quirky and it's really on brand and just not as interesting, and would be more suspect as being a manufactured and not serendipitous sort of hole. Thank you for this and all your videos.
So he designed a windmill for his Aunt back home. Very intriguing as it is designed to capture the wind and also resist it. A lesson in wind proofing buildings. We came across it while designing a wind proof home out on the Prairies by Milk River, Alberta.
I'm not an architect but I've been to the Samara house and also the John E Christian house, both in West Lafayette IN. It's like you're witnessing a work of art, it's palpable. There's something about masterful work I suppose, it just speaks for itself.
I went to Purdue and walked by the flw house near the stadium many times. It was a beaut.
I thought George Costanza designed the Guggenheim 😂
No, just the new addition to it 😂
I thought Art Vandelay designed it.😀
Wright designed the Guggenheim museum in New York City.
@@codetech5598 The above comments are referring to George Castanza, a character in the television series “Seinfeld”. The character always wanted to be an architect, but has zero training. He attempts to impress women with this claim. When he is an “architect” he uses the name “Art Vandelay”. This channel did a video on the topic.
Stewart Hicks: If George Costanza Was Really an Architect
Didn't really take him very long either
I absolutely hate the miles upon miles of large garages with a small living space attached that have proliferated across the world.
Wright despised garages, attics and basements because he didn't like clutter and knew people would become packrat hoarders by having such spaces. He was right.
First three minutes- family connections - after not finishing college. The usual for those at the top of society. I’m more interested in the interior of this Charnley-Persky house because of the interior, the designs, and materials. All we ever hear about are the buildings - Falling Water, Taliesen, the Guggenheim, etc.
we had a local architect who was an understudy of his, designed many of the city's municipal buildings in a cubist style, with a lot of pillars, cantilevers, big windows, and shapes
Are you in Midland, Michigan, and taking about Alden B. Dow?
I bought a set of the Froebel Gifts (blocks) at Taliesin West many years ago. He was the Master, an American treasure. You can see the hand of FLLW in the work of his apprentices. My favorite is E. Fay Jones.
Excellent content, Stewart. Wright's level of thoughtfulness and consideration for construction technique and human psychology are very inspiring to me and my practice 🤘
Great summary 🙏🏽
When one looks at FLW's early work, you can see how heavily influenced he was by the Scottish Architect Alexander Thompson, Unity Temple has the Japanese influence but is an almost direct copy of St Vincent Street church in Glasgow.
I'm glad Wright is appreciated more in the US than Thompson was until the last 30 to 40 years.
In 1963 my parents thought about buying the FLW house at Forest and Superior in Oak Park. See12:08in vid. BUT the roof leaked like a sieve. I came to learn later that this was a major flaw in many FLW houses.
The Sydney suburb of Castlecrag has several homes by Marion Mahony Griffin, as she and Walter Burley Griffin lived there in a Bohemian community while overseeing the construction of Canberra. They moved to Lucknow, India, where Walter died. I have been inside one of those homes and it is sublime, although costly to maintain the aging concrete.
I've long been fascinated by the story of Canberra. It's quite a saga
It's an historical injustice that Walter Burley Griffin is generally credited (solely) with master-planning Canberra, when it's clear that Walter and Marion very much operated organically as a creative (as well as marital) partnership.
I always thought of Frank Lloyd Wright's works to be for pretentious people, but after watching this video (I didn't looked much into his biography before) I can't feel but respect for him because he would probably loved all of the attention he got, and will get overtime because of his timeless contributions to architecture.
Wright's ability to manipulate three dimensions in his head is no less impressive than Mozart's ability to manipulate musical ideas in his. Wright fully designed Falling Water in his mind and drew it on paper in a single session. Yes, all those other things were necessary steps along the way, but without his special ability he could not have been what he was: one of America's greatest artists.
My grandfather was apprenticed to Alphonso Illaneilli. It would be awesome to hear about some of those artists behind the artist!
I can only imagine travelling to Japan in 1905. It's an intimidating thought even today. You can see a lot of his influence in Japanese architecture.
It’s a shame that we live in an era where we have to tamper down our knowledge that wright was an amazing genius. Reminds me of the kurt vonnegut short story harrison Bergeron. Because we reward mediocrity now, doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate genius
i lived on the block with frank loyd wright's block. oak park is a beautiful place.
I was prepping for a Skillshare ad read this whole time!
Excellent video! My first exposure to Frank Lloyd Wright was through the Guggenheim (and Simon & Garfunkel's song about Frank Lloyd Wright). My dad would take my brother and me out on Sunday afternoons, and we often went to museums. We didn't go to the Geggenheim very often because the admission price was very steep, but every once in a while we ended up there. I found the quality of space amazing. At the bottom it felt like we were at the bottom of a narrow cylinder, but when we took the elevator to the top, we entered this very open, expansive space, light-filled space with a giant hole in the middle. As we made our way down the ramp the space would gradually constrict until we reached the bottom, and then we were at the bottom of a hole again. I was far more interested in the space than in the art displayed there, to which I paid no attention. That perhaps highlights one of the criticisms of the Guggenheim: the building itself overwhelmed the art within.
However, the first time I was really WOWED by a Frank Lloyd Wright interior was when I first visited the 1914-16 Francis W Little living room as installed in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, sometime around 1985. After going through period rooms from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, all of which were interesting in their own ways, I entered the Frank Lloyd Wright space. What a revelation! What a contrast! The room was expansive, yet serene, in the way of Zen Buddhist temple is serene. I felt myself relax, physically and emotionally, into that room. I wanted to live in a space like that. My only frustration was that it was only a fragment of the building outside of its original context. Of course, I've seen many FLW buildings since, like Unity Temple, Fallingwater, Taliesin in Wisconsin, and various Usonian houses, and I knew what to expect, but my first visit to the Little House livingroom is still one of the most architecturally powerful experiences I've ever had.
Thank you, Stewart for this video. Frank Lloyd Wright is my favorite architect. I like the computer generated models. Are you going to do additonal videos with building models like the ones featured in prior videos? It would be cool to see more.
Great video! I've been reading a lot about FLW lately and one of the more interesting things I came across was the warehouse he built in his hometown (Richland Center). It still stands, although it's heavily under-utilized at the moment. It's called the AD German Warehouse and if you look for a picture of it you'll see it could only have been designed by FLW.
Really cool building.
Seems to me as a clutter of styles and materials , proportionally unbalanced, in all sense
thanks for the marion mahony griffin info. first time learning of her. really like her renderings.
I've always been a little skeptical of that block story. I think as architects we tend to embellish the truth for the sake of the bold. And that's okay lol
How many million kids were given blocks by their parents?
In the early 1900's the surveyed people about what they thought was the greatest advance of the era. They could have said the airplane, the automobile, electrification, etc. What were they impressed by? Reenforced concrete.
Interesting about the building blocks. In much of his architecture, he still uses a look and feel of blocks.
informative.
Constructive criticism:
Try to move less, especially hand movements. It is distracting. You can then save those movements and especially gestures:for more effective presentation. For example, at 6:00 , the phrase "...not soaring vertical towers..." used a very effective gesture of reaching upward, but it was diminished by all the unnecessary previous hand movements which simply mimic the rhythm of speech (which happens often).
When introducing the Charnley-Persky house, after opening the door (nice creative touch), stand as still as possible until saying THIS IS THE... and then do a grand open arms gesture. Smaller or no movements on less important text will make the viewer listen to those parts, and the more visual gestures will cause them to notice/remember key moments in the presentation.
thank you!!!!
I will say when I was about 8 one of the only channels we could get in the mountains was PBS and I saw a special about the Falling Water and that's when I was hooked.
FLW's mom wanted him to be an architect when she was pregnant. She put prints of some of the world's great architecture up in his nursery
If that story about his mother giving him blocks is not apocryphal, its incredible parenting.
10:28 Garden Suburbs came from England decades before. Wright was mimicking ideas learned after visting England.
The genius of Frank Lloyd Wright is that his buildings are striking, inside and out, and that they photograph really well. They look great. I can see why architects like them. Having been inside the Dana -Thomas house in Springfield, lllinois, however, I'm honestly more interested in the opinions of people who've had to actually live in them. Everybody talks about what the buildings look like. Unfortunately, nobody talks about what it's like to have deal with them on a daily basis.
I am prepared to admit that taking a brief tour of the house is not enough to make me an expert. I also admit that that my view of the house is not the view of the house that a resident would have gotten when the house was new. Nor do I have a good view of the house in its historical context; it's possible that contemporary houses were worse. Nevertheless, I have my doubts. I've been in even older houses that seemed much more pleasant.
Unrelated to the video. I now realised the genius of your logo
The wood block thumbnail was way more intriguing.
When I look at the rigid structure at Frank Lloyd Wright imposed on his residences, I have to wonder at the pleasure of owning the place. The Guggenheim does not offer a variety of display settings, they are all diagonally placed on the ramp. The Kaleta Humphries theater in Dallas, Texas has windows in the back of the auditorium that require a little wooden panels to close off for productions done in the daytime and it has a set of stairs to the balcony that are small and angled, and since they were provided with carpet to deaden the sound, they are really tricky to walk up. The actual stage space requires accommodation to the architect and has very limited backstage support.
This video was so good!
That ad at the end is giving me ransom video vibes
As an architect student in high school, I loved Mr. Wright's work, still do 55 years later. After studying his life I don't admire the man. Wright was a liar ,cheat, irresponsible gadd about. He placed himself on a platform and looked down on those around him. Wright's arrogant attitude was un comparable. He abandoned his wife and 6 children to run away with a clients wife. He took credit for Sullivan's work. Restoration of his work has shown Wright was no engineer. Foundation, heating, general building technical design ,all not up to task. Falling Water, an almost wreck was saved by spending millions of dollars to redo Wright's mistakes. Yes,my words are hard but our heroes are just people. Thanks for the video......RF
Enjoyable vid, thanks
The best story I've heard about FLW was he took a commission and didn't do anything for months. One day his client decided to visit his office. The client would arrive in 3 hours so he locked himself in his draft room and made the plans. The client arrived and loved the plans. The plans were for the Waterfall.
70% was his work, but 30% was his self promotion. After all Rule #1 at being ‘successful’ in great Art & Design is not the work itself but who you know that can get your work out there, whether you’re a Designer, Writer, Painter or Musician
A movie about his life would be awesome! I see Leonardo DiCaprio playing the part.
It's hard to think of a bad FLLW building although, like Lutyens, he paid little mind to budgets.
What I think is cool about people like Frank Lloyd wright is that people who don't know the first thing about architecture know who he is.
Did Wright also come up with the idea of excluding let's say small groceries and pubs from residential areas? In that case he would have been instrumental to destroying the American city in general.
That was postwar zoning made for the car. Not this great architect
That would be the fault of later urban planners and the implementation of strict zoning.
ahaha! very fun that halfway through this video I'm surprised by the appearance of the first licensed female architect, and then seeing her style I notice the name Griffin, and look her up to check that yes, she was married to Walter Burley Griffin and that's why I recognized the artstyle
Naturally he needed the opportunities and encouragement, but in my experience, those mean nothing without the right person getting them.
I feel like nowadays his lack of formal education would become a humongous problem and drama later on. Wouldn't matter if everything was well within regulations.
When he was designing the SC Johnson Wax Administration Building in his 70s, the Racine planning board learned that despite his fame, he had never had a license to practice architecture. In response he agreed to take an oral exam. The board relented. To be fair, I suspect (but don't know for certain) that licensure was not required at the time Wright started his career.
I worked in a FLW building. No square corners, windows inadequate, heating was a joke, electrical plugs and wiring poor. Pretty but a disfunction building!
Great video, thanks! Why so much boom on the CG renders though? Rather over the top..
I hope in my "late career" *after I die* I am most successful. 😂 Seriously, though, a great video, thank you. That part just made me laugh.
That modest home you are picking home would be helped a lot by painting the garage door to match the dark colors on the front and planting some nice plants in the front. You have deliberately chosen an unloved little place, probably a rental.
Thumbnail seems clickbait-y, since it implied FLW was the cause of the prominent garages in many home designs.
Would you rather live in a traditional American neighborhood built in the 1920s, A brick row house built in the 1800s, or a modern suburb
Thanks!
Thank you!!
Frank Loyd wright building in Bartlesville, ok has an interesting story for apartment upstairs and design/ look of it.
Ridge not collegiate is my favorite wrightbuilding
Shingles , a roof a tornado lifts off and slams back down directly atop the structure
Your thumbnail looks exactly like my home.
Cool to see you in the Charnley house foyer
Ironic that narration praises simple geometric surface designs on wood walls while showing close up of baroque twining foliage motif on column.
@@Roberta-q1q I caught that, but it's one of the few things I feel he explained poorly. Sullivan designed his ornamental foliage on top of underlying geometric patterns. He used the geometry to give pattern to seemingly random/ organic sculpture. Occasionally the geometry broke through the foliage to and became more visible.
10:30 Those one-acre lots!
Dissapointed that your split level choices use gable roofs. I lived 58 years in one with Wrightian hip roofs with sheltering overhanging eaves.
1:31 Im always surprised people struggle with that idea. There is was nothing singularly unique about Wright... or anyone else in history. Some people through natural talent/practice/opportunity, develop a skill set. Sometimes those people are presented an opportunity to use that skill set. Sometimes the right people, at the right time, in the right environment, see the results of that opportunity and that kicks things off.
There were probably 10,000s of Wrights in the US at that time. Some lacked the desire to hone that skill, some lacked the opportunity, some never got the opportunity to show it off, some didnt get it shown off to the right person at the right time in the right environment, etc. Im not a big fan of the "mysterious, singular, innate talent" narrative. It doesn't reflect reality and is not good for anyone
Thank you for this excellent review of FLW. I've spent a lot of time in various FLW homes, mostly Wingspread when I was a young musician. I loved that home/community center. I can say that, for me, FLWs homes are fun. They're fun to explore. I've also spent time in his grandparent's farm home in Spring Green, WI and both Talieson and Talieson West. The one negative thing I've heard about his homes is that they require a lot of expensive work to keep them in good condition.
Outliers is a very good read I’d recommend as well
I live in the midwest and I've visited FLW buildings. It's important to remember that Wright was designing for the savage midwest climate before air conditioning and convenient furnaces. (The climate: I've seen it be 110 above and 20 below. My big city has had tornadoes and storms with 8, even 13 inches of rain.) Wright homes are snug and closed in, and as a result rather dark inside. Modern people want windows and sunlight, and are willing to pay high utility bills to get them.
The long repetitive bleak grid layout of the suburbs is nothing to be proud of.
I'm sure he wouldn't be proud of how his ideas were twisted into the current suburban landscape.
@@benmarshall5984 *suburban Hellscape
The Malcolm gladwell reference in a FLW video is *chefs kiss* 👨🍳🤌
Uh, a Gladwell reference is not a good sign at all, he is not a serious or reliable source for anything and I am frankly shocked to see Stewart name check him here.
@@alittlebitgone I literally thought the exact same thing the second he mentioned him. Why in the world give that man any credibility. He's an absolute shill in the name of journalism and clearly is a puppet for a political agenda.
Frank llyod wright, all of the times we harmonised til dawn.
I never laughed so long, so long, so long.
I live in southern Wisconsin. Wright buildings have two things in common: Cracked foundations and leaky roofs.
Only people who have been forced to occupy a Wright building have rights to comment. The Lillypad Office was pure Hell for those secretaries. Most Chicago homeowners try to escape after two years. The Wright warehouse in Richland Center has been vacant for a couple decades, with locals wanting it razed immediately.