Lloyd Wright has often unjustly been compared to his father, Frank Lloyd Wright. It is true that Lloyd did indeed follow his fathers principles, but Lloyd owned his own effects and was himself quite an innovator and a centrally important Architect in the modernism of Southern California. Had his name been John Smith, it would perhaps be easier for people to take him on his own instead of taking him only as a appendage to his Father, a position Frank Lloyd Wright worked hard to place him in.
Today I went on the Friends of the Gamble House demi tour of Lloyd Wright buildings mainly to get inside of Lloyd Wright's Sowden house, a thirty year aspiration of mine. The house is known around hollywood as "the jaws house" for the prominent inverted chevron of textile blocks making the balcony and the chevron of blocks making the balcony roof.
The tour began with a docent retelling the often told, and totally incorrect tale of Lloyd Wright "adopting his Father's textile block system to this house." Eric Lloyd Wright, Frank lloyd Wright's grandson and Lloyd Wright's son, has often stated that Lloyd was the primary inventor of the Textile Block system, and indeed he first used them in a built structure (Bollman house) before his father ever did. Sweeny's book on the textile block system documents clearly that it was Lloyd who first appropriated this system. But the lie having been told so often and by so many with academic credentials is difficult to erase. Jeanette, my wife grabbed my arm as I was about to correct the docent, so today the lie continues as truth in the minds of the many tour goer's.
SO starting with that lie, but a great deal of anticipation, I began the ascent up the stairwell to the house. This stairwell is entered under the low and forbidding overhand of the balcony textile blocks. We turn at ninety degrees to walk up the very low ceilinged stairwell. The ceiling here is about an average of six foot six, below what the current code allows, but safe enough to traverse. This stairwell was once dark, foreboding and mysterious. Here we encounter the first great "mistake" of the present remodel-The stairwell has had dozens of hologen lights placed within it making the passageway brightly lit. For inexplicable reasons the paving is no longer flat concrete 16" square concrete blocks, but thin slate 12" pavers, altering the module once prominent throughout the house. At the top of the stairs, we arrive at a landing, turn ninety degrees into the small entry space and walk into the living room with a cathedral ceiling that explodes dimensionally and is full of light. A effect that should be dramatic and is less so due to the now overlighted stairwell. A docent is pointing out the new pewter venician plaster that the non block ceiling has been now rendered into. Lloyd Wright had used a very sandy plaster finish with an oil based dye for these areas. The new effect is not unpleasant, it is just not authentic to the house or Lloyd Wright's portfolio of work. We are told that the lighting fixture is a copy of Lloyds original design... Lloyd's original was made of wood. This one is steel and the welding poorly done. The welds look like glops of bubble gum on the mitres and are not dressed or sharp, a condition Lloyd would have never accepted. There are pieces along the edge that are rough due to hurried and uncaring fabrication, again a situation that Lloyd would never have accepted.
The Library has more of this venitian metallic plaster, and indeed in varying colors it is found throughout the house. The library is mostly restored except the lighting fixture/skylight lense ove rthe fireplace is rendered now in hideous swirled colored art glass. In the original Lloyd used a sandblasted amber glass and that was later replaced by him for a later owner with snadblasted clear glass.
The rest of the house plan was severely altered, with rooms having no relation to their prior locations and all of the excellent well thought out bathrooms being replaced with a 1980's Beverly hills decorator interpretation of updated 1920's slick modern. It was plain sad. The center court yard has been raised in height considerably and one no longer walks down into it.
The design of the pool and spa are somewhat sympathetic to Lloyds body of work and even incorporate reproductions of the blocks that Lloyd used at this house to represent water. The paving area is again not on Lloyd's module and is made of 18" x 36" cast concrete common paving like one would find at Home Depot. Many of the doors to the circulation hallway that once allowed immediate access to the central court from every room in the house and from the circulation hall are now blocked with planting or very large placed crystal stones.
A fortune was spent on this house "restoration". While many of Lloyd Wright's features were unable to be overcome by the more recent designer, their is a clear fight going on between the new elements and Lloyd's original intentions and design. Oddly, with all of the money spent, none of the original Lloyd Wright designed furniture for this house was either purchased or reproduced, but versions of his furniture for later homes was reproduced, and done in a almost mocking manner when it came to materials choices.
So hence we have the age old argument :When is it a "restoration" and when is a remodel a Architect designed house a devestation of an important work of art. I can not define where the line is, but as a Supreme Court Justice once said "I know it when i see it". Here one of Lloyd Wright's best homes and a important touchstone of Southern California and American Culture has been desecrated. Lloyd Wright deserves better.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
The New Facism
Presently there are two ideas running rampant in Architectural circles that may not be questioned or spoken against. All agree that these ideas are correct. Developers agree, Planners agree, Building Departments agree, and Architects, God damn them had better get in line and agree! Most are plyable and will. Clients will soon learn that they will agree or they will not be allowed to build. This is because the New Orthodoxies are right, they are correct. We all agree therefore it is.
The first of these new manditory orthodoxies is "the New Urbanism". Whats a "New Urbanism"? It is what Urbanism was when Modern and Organic Architecture freed mankind from Urbanism 150 years ago.
The sales pitch is that the New Urbanism will bring to cities "needed density". This needed density will result in lots and lots of well heeled polite people swilling Latte's at Starbucks while eating French pastry from a precious place nearby and managing their stock portfolio, all in a privately owned "public space". If those folks have a job as opposed to a portfolio, they will work downtown in a building within walking distance from where they live. Should they actually desire to go anywhere farther than walking distance from their wonderful little precious condo, they will take a fixed rail form of public transportation. There will be no crime. The downtown criminal classes, native since the start of every downtown will magically disappear. It will be so, because the planners, developers, electeds and governmental agencies have decreed it will be so. "New Urbanism" is the future, therefore it is good.
One must ask a issue or two....
First issue: What happened to the "Old Urbanism"? Why did people leave it? Well,if we are to believe the three generations that fled the Cities between 1850 and 1900, the Cities were not paradise, even for the Wealthy. In the first place, dense populations of humans spread disease quickly. While the improvements in sanitation and plumbing of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries make this problem less severe, the problem does exist. Further the last thirty years of Reaganomics and the ignoring maintenence on silly things like water delivery and sewer systems reduce the improvements oft he 20th Century considerably.
Second, criminals are not easily removed from downtowns and urban areas, especially in the long run, without a resulting decrease in the quality of life for everyone in the area. In order to keep crime down, police departments tend to institute draconian levels of control. If people have a choice between living in a downtown prison, even one with Opera and Museums, or a place not a prison, overtime they will tend towards more freedom.
Third, all Urbanism, new or old, is heavily dependant on a efficient, active, well run public sector. Anyone who has ever tried to determine what department was responsible say for trimming palm trees in a redevelopment zone, knows that this requirement in the America of the forseeable future will be a problem.
Fourth, This is really all about greed. The greed for rent. A building with a 10,000 sq ft footprint can yeild four, five, ten acres of rentable space. A small lot can generate acres and acres of taxation for local government, without a real increase in services. By framing this "new urbanism" as a cause, as luxury living, those gerbals in their high up cages can actually be convinced to pay ultra high price for a dinky, yardless, non cross ventilated, little box in the sky, unfit for human habitation.
Fifth, Folks ain't gonna give up their cars. In the OLD URBAN areas of Europe, each new generation is getting more cars, and while they rely on mass transit, they are using their cars more in each generation than the one prior. Humans desire mobility and the sensation of freedom. Make no mistake, the City, old or new urbanism, deprives them of same.
Sixth, dense urban areas are not easily remodeled. This means that when whatever the "style" of your "new urbanism" building or neighborhood goes out of style and isn't remodeled, those fashionable stylish latte drinkers will do what they have done from the start of time, migrate to the next fashionable place. This will tend to deminish the rental value of those large expensive buildings. As the rental value reduces over time,even less maintenence is done. This leads to SLUMS. That's right, incredibly dense populations of desperatly poor people attempting to eek out a living. The very people that the Landlords, governmental agencies and developers are busily attempting to remove from the inner core of the city, are it's eventual, and I would say, inevitable residents.
So thats why people left the City in the past, and why they will leave it in the future, no matter what the planners and developers declare,no matter how much they attempt to silence any other speech, and no matter how much they subsidize the downtown, human beings are not made to live in a gerbal cage, and they will escape whenever they can.
Our next brief essay will cover the other Facism of today "Green Building".
The first of these new manditory orthodoxies is "the New Urbanism". Whats a "New Urbanism"? It is what Urbanism was when Modern and Organic Architecture freed mankind from Urbanism 150 years ago.
The sales pitch is that the New Urbanism will bring to cities "needed density". This needed density will result in lots and lots of well heeled polite people swilling Latte's at Starbucks while eating French pastry from a precious place nearby and managing their stock portfolio, all in a privately owned "public space". If those folks have a job as opposed to a portfolio, they will work downtown in a building within walking distance from where they live. Should they actually desire to go anywhere farther than walking distance from their wonderful little precious condo, they will take a fixed rail form of public transportation. There will be no crime. The downtown criminal classes, native since the start of every downtown will magically disappear. It will be so, because the planners, developers, electeds and governmental agencies have decreed it will be so. "New Urbanism" is the future, therefore it is good.
One must ask a issue or two....
First issue: What happened to the "Old Urbanism"? Why did people leave it? Well,if we are to believe the three generations that fled the Cities between 1850 and 1900, the Cities were not paradise, even for the Wealthy. In the first place, dense populations of humans spread disease quickly. While the improvements in sanitation and plumbing of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries make this problem less severe, the problem does exist. Further the last thirty years of Reaganomics and the ignoring maintenence on silly things like water delivery and sewer systems reduce the improvements oft he 20th Century considerably.
Second, criminals are not easily removed from downtowns and urban areas, especially in the long run, without a resulting decrease in the quality of life for everyone in the area. In order to keep crime down, police departments tend to institute draconian levels of control. If people have a choice between living in a downtown prison, even one with Opera and Museums, or a place not a prison, overtime they will tend towards more freedom.
Third, all Urbanism, new or old, is heavily dependant on a efficient, active, well run public sector. Anyone who has ever tried to determine what department was responsible say for trimming palm trees in a redevelopment zone, knows that this requirement in the America of the forseeable future will be a problem.
Fourth, This is really all about greed. The greed for rent. A building with a 10,000 sq ft footprint can yeild four, five, ten acres of rentable space. A small lot can generate acres and acres of taxation for local government, without a real increase in services. By framing this "new urbanism" as a cause, as luxury living, those gerbals in their high up cages can actually be convinced to pay ultra high price for a dinky, yardless, non cross ventilated, little box in the sky, unfit for human habitation.
Fifth, Folks ain't gonna give up their cars. In the OLD URBAN areas of Europe, each new generation is getting more cars, and while they rely on mass transit, they are using their cars more in each generation than the one prior. Humans desire mobility and the sensation of freedom. Make no mistake, the City, old or new urbanism, deprives them of same.
Sixth, dense urban areas are not easily remodeled. This means that when whatever the "style" of your "new urbanism" building or neighborhood goes out of style and isn't remodeled, those fashionable stylish latte drinkers will do what they have done from the start of time, migrate to the next fashionable place. This will tend to deminish the rental value of those large expensive buildings. As the rental value reduces over time,even less maintenence is done. This leads to SLUMS. That's right, incredibly dense populations of desperatly poor people attempting to eek out a living. The very people that the Landlords, governmental agencies and developers are busily attempting to remove from the inner core of the city, are it's eventual, and I would say, inevitable residents.
So thats why people left the City in the past, and why they will leave it in the future, no matter what the planners and developers declare,no matter how much they attempt to silence any other speech, and no matter how much they subsidize the downtown, human beings are not made to live in a gerbal cage, and they will escape whenever they can.
Our next brief essay will cover the other Facism of today "Green Building".
Saturday, July 19, 2008
John Lautner
Today Jeanette and I were joined by our Coffee Gallery buddy Patty, at the Hammer Museum where we viewed "John Lautner: Between Earth and Heaven". I must admit, I went with considerable trepidation as there had been complaints about the exhibit by several Architectural Historian and Architect friends who I generally admire. Fortunately, I kept an open mind.
Some of the early reviews of this exhibit did not appreciate the fact that many construction drawings with details were presented. Our friend Patty who,has built her own modern house in Laguna, enjoyed these particularly and wished there had been MORE of them. As a person who practices the design of buildings himself, I believe this was one of the more educational Architectural exhibits I have ever seen. In the first place, something other than just the floor plans, elevations and renderings are shown. Virtually every kind of drawing that a Architect uses to express and form his ideas is shown in this exhibit. We have preliminary sketches that show just a germ of an idea forming. We have drawings that show the labor and the struggle in the Malin house of the attempt to find the form that fits a difficult site and the programmatic needs of the client. We have sections, details, presentation interiors, interior sketches, the underlaying drawings for perspectives where everything is worked out on grids before the final perspectives are drawn over them, renderings, and preliminary and final models. Most people have no idea that this kind of work ever goes into a building before it is built. This show for the first time, reveals to the public the dozens upon dozens of steps that are needed to get to a final set of drawings for a building.
There are snippy comments from some about the imitation masking tape used to in their view create a false impression that these drawings are in a Architects studio. They see this as some kind of falseness because the tape is not real, but held down by the plexiglass that protects the drawings. I never thought about it before, but when I draw my drawings they are taped down. The tape as I view them and make them is a part of my experience. When they do hang in my studio, I fold over the tape and pin it to the wall, so as a object related to my work, my drawings are always taped. They say that "Art is the lie that tells us the truth" here the lie of this false tape indeed tells us that these now priceless drawings were at one time things a human being made, in order to make something more. They are lies in that they are not functional, this I will admit, but they are lies that lead us to truth, and this should not be objectionable.
I always have fears when I go to Architectural exhibits. It is difficult to take a large scale three dimensional art form and show it off in a museum. In this case, the Hammer has done a WONDERFUL job. There are very large scale models of most of Mr. Lautner's more famous works that have been constructed so that a part of the building has been cut away and the museum wall in the distance has the viewscape one would see from the house mounted on it. You can stand and look through the model to the earth and sky as it would be in the house beyond. The house in your mind can be experienced in part. You can get differing angles and perspectives. These are the best done Architectural models in a museum I have ever seen and I was personally delighted, especially after the unhappy experience of models at the Schindler exhibit a decade ago at MOCA where hovering security guards kept anyone from getting any useful knowledge of the buildings from the models.
Near the models were playing film strips of the house in the model, walking up to and through the homes public spaces. The Hammer really has done a great deal to convey an experience of John Lautner's Architecture and short of building a mock up of a house as a exhibit, they have gone as far as anyone can go. This really is a superlative show.
OK I do have a couple quibbles, it's true. I'd have like to have seen something about Lautner in the context of his time, of his peers in the Taliesin Fellowship and his peers in Los Angeles Architecture of his time. I'd have liked some more delving into Lautner's work for Douglas Honnald on Coffee Shops and his pivotal Goggie's and Henry's. That work led to an entire generation of American public spaces and had more effect on American popular culture than the work of any other Architect of the Twentieth Century. It is true that academicians despise that work, but they do so unjustly and incorrectly. It was an important expression of American democratic and Architectural theory, and should be explored more deeply. John Lautner was the founder of that expression, and its best single practitioner.
Finally, my last, but perhaps most important quibble, is that there is no examination of John Lautner as a man. I was very fortunate to know John during the last decade and a half of his life. I knew many of his employees and clients. John was a very demanding boss who had the highest standards for his employees, but who was kind, attentive and generous with them. He was a doting and concerned mentor of anyone who he recognized "had it"and went out of his way with students and younger members of the profession to help them see and think Architecturally.
John's students and employees were not, as Frank Lloyd Wright's employees and apprentices had been, and as employees in Architects offices often are, little more than slaves. John treated his employees as if they were worthy of his friendship,and worthy of the ideals of Organic Architecture and Democracy, as free valuable and valued individuals. John loved his clients with more devotion than any Architect I have ever known. He found what was good in each of them, and he believed and remembered that about them, and it seemed nothing else. John, to the last of his days, loved Frank Lloyd Wright. He never failed to honor his Master, he never spoke ill of him, or of the Taliesin Fellowship. I believe this was in no small part because John learned from Frank Lloyd Wright everything he could, he took all of the essence of Wright's Architecture into HIMSELF, distilled it, took the principles and made with them in every building a complete new world. He never ripped off a single detail from Wright, and therefore he never had to hate him.
John had no patience with lies, falsehood, of pretension. he could not abide people who tried to suck up to him, and flatter him with flowery statements. He didn't need that, he already knew he was America's best living Architect, there was nothing to say to him, really, beyond that.
This exhibit is one of the best ever on the artistic process of an Architect creating a building. In the respect that it focuses on birth, rather than a "completed" artifact, it is perhaps the best exhibit on Architecture of any kind ever mounted. John Lautner would be justly proud that his work was the work used to educate the public in this way.
Some of the early reviews of this exhibit did not appreciate the fact that many construction drawings with details were presented. Our friend Patty who,has built her own modern house in Laguna, enjoyed these particularly and wished there had been MORE of them. As a person who practices the design of buildings himself, I believe this was one of the more educational Architectural exhibits I have ever seen. In the first place, something other than just the floor plans, elevations and renderings are shown. Virtually every kind of drawing that a Architect uses to express and form his ideas is shown in this exhibit. We have preliminary sketches that show just a germ of an idea forming. We have drawings that show the labor and the struggle in the Malin house of the attempt to find the form that fits a difficult site and the programmatic needs of the client. We have sections, details, presentation interiors, interior sketches, the underlaying drawings for perspectives where everything is worked out on grids before the final perspectives are drawn over them, renderings, and preliminary and final models. Most people have no idea that this kind of work ever goes into a building before it is built. This show for the first time, reveals to the public the dozens upon dozens of steps that are needed to get to a final set of drawings for a building.
There are snippy comments from some about the imitation masking tape used to in their view create a false impression that these drawings are in a Architects studio. They see this as some kind of falseness because the tape is not real, but held down by the plexiglass that protects the drawings. I never thought about it before, but when I draw my drawings they are taped down. The tape as I view them and make them is a part of my experience. When they do hang in my studio, I fold over the tape and pin it to the wall, so as a object related to my work, my drawings are always taped. They say that "Art is the lie that tells us the truth" here the lie of this false tape indeed tells us that these now priceless drawings were at one time things a human being made, in order to make something more. They are lies in that they are not functional, this I will admit, but they are lies that lead us to truth, and this should not be objectionable.
I always have fears when I go to Architectural exhibits. It is difficult to take a large scale three dimensional art form and show it off in a museum. In this case, the Hammer has done a WONDERFUL job. There are very large scale models of most of Mr. Lautner's more famous works that have been constructed so that a part of the building has been cut away and the museum wall in the distance has the viewscape one would see from the house mounted on it. You can stand and look through the model to the earth and sky as it would be in the house beyond. The house in your mind can be experienced in part. You can get differing angles and perspectives. These are the best done Architectural models in a museum I have ever seen and I was personally delighted, especially after the unhappy experience of models at the Schindler exhibit a decade ago at MOCA where hovering security guards kept anyone from getting any useful knowledge of the buildings from the models.
Near the models were playing film strips of the house in the model, walking up to and through the homes public spaces. The Hammer really has done a great deal to convey an experience of John Lautner's Architecture and short of building a mock up of a house as a exhibit, they have gone as far as anyone can go. This really is a superlative show.
OK I do have a couple quibbles, it's true. I'd have like to have seen something about Lautner in the context of his time, of his peers in the Taliesin Fellowship and his peers in Los Angeles Architecture of his time. I'd have liked some more delving into Lautner's work for Douglas Honnald on Coffee Shops and his pivotal Goggie's and Henry's. That work led to an entire generation of American public spaces and had more effect on American popular culture than the work of any other Architect of the Twentieth Century. It is true that academicians despise that work, but they do so unjustly and incorrectly. It was an important expression of American democratic and Architectural theory, and should be explored more deeply. John Lautner was the founder of that expression, and its best single practitioner.
Finally, my last, but perhaps most important quibble, is that there is no examination of John Lautner as a man. I was very fortunate to know John during the last decade and a half of his life. I knew many of his employees and clients. John was a very demanding boss who had the highest standards for his employees, but who was kind, attentive and generous with them. He was a doting and concerned mentor of anyone who he recognized "had it"and went out of his way with students and younger members of the profession to help them see and think Architecturally.
John's students and employees were not, as Frank Lloyd Wright's employees and apprentices had been, and as employees in Architects offices often are, little more than slaves. John treated his employees as if they were worthy of his friendship,and worthy of the ideals of Organic Architecture and Democracy, as free valuable and valued individuals. John loved his clients with more devotion than any Architect I have ever known. He found what was good in each of them, and he believed and remembered that about them, and it seemed nothing else. John, to the last of his days, loved Frank Lloyd Wright. He never failed to honor his Master, he never spoke ill of him, or of the Taliesin Fellowship. I believe this was in no small part because John learned from Frank Lloyd Wright everything he could, he took all of the essence of Wright's Architecture into HIMSELF, distilled it, took the principles and made with them in every building a complete new world. He never ripped off a single detail from Wright, and therefore he never had to hate him.
John had no patience with lies, falsehood, of pretension. he could not abide people who tried to suck up to him, and flatter him with flowery statements. He didn't need that, he already knew he was America's best living Architect, there was nothing to say to him, really, beyond that.
This exhibit is one of the best ever on the artistic process of an Architect creating a building. In the respect that it focuses on birth, rather than a "completed" artifact, it is perhaps the best exhibit on Architecture of any kind ever mounted. John Lautner would be justly proud that his work was the work used to educate the public in this way.
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