A Visit to Frank Lloyd Wright's Auldbrass

[MSHardeman]

John,

Thanks for the post, I had never seen pictures of Auldbrass before. It looks great.

When I was in school, one of my professors was an FLW NUT, and he would drive FLW design into our heads. He was always expounding on the virtues of FLW. FLW this, FLW that. ARGH! I got so sick of hearing about it that I didn't want to have any thing to do with Frank Lloyd Wright. I figure; heck the dude was designing way back when, so what does it have to do with me and the modern world. I couldn't have been more WRONG.

A few years ago, I got a chance to visit Fallingwaterand the only way to describe the experience is "religious". I went in winter, and the contrast of the very linear house to the organic forest was stunning. The siting of the house was perfect, and the design (of everything) was inspiring. The house STILL looks modern by todays standards, and it was originally designed in the 1930's.

I'm not saying the man was a god, or that all of his designs are great, but he truly was ahead of his time and pushed architecture in a direction that we're still expolring today.

[johnnyapollo]

I'm constantly hearing about the very much deserved virtues of FLW (usually from those with little knowledge of him beyond Fallingwater but that doesn't detract from his obvious talent) and occasionally I hear about his being insignificant and not a big deal - it's funny but even though many of his designs are quite significant (look at the Guggenheim or the Johnson Wax building, for instance), I feel his largest contribution is in the Wright Fellowship, Taliesin and his apprentices. I'm on some design forums and he is constantly being diminished as unimportant and compared to other modern architects like Lautner, then someone points out that John Lautner was indirectly one of his apprentices and it becomes a foot-in-mouth moment for the detractor.

If you're into architecture and design, for the record FLW had 263 apprentices (1932-1959, not all of whom went on to practice architecture) whom he directly taught (plus many more at Taliesin after his death, who were taught by his apprentices). His influence on architecture and design is really quite obvious when put into that perspective.

-- John