Frank Lloyd Wright and the “textile block” construction system (1992)

https://www.domusweb.it/en/from-the-archive/2022/02/08/frank-lloyd-wright-and-the-textile-block-construction-system.html

by benbreen • 4 years ago

42 37 4 years ago

domusweb.it

daverol• 4 years ago

Textile Block method, so an obligatory 'Blade Runner' mention: https://www.fancypantshomes.com/architecture/frank-lloyd-wri...

Animats2• 4 years ago

Right, the Ennis house. Recently sold for US$18 million.[1]

[1] https://www.latimes.com/business/real-estate/story/2019-10-2...

DarknessFalls• 4 years ago

Why does no one mention the more blatant use of the Ennis house, in The House on Haunted Hill? The exteriors were used for this, while the motif of the blocks were the only part used for Blade Runner.

Cupertino950146• 4 years ago

Major FLW groupie here. I've been to the Wisconsin Taliesyn, Fallingwater, the Johnson Wax building in Racine, his own home in Oak Park and many of the other homes there he built. I love it.

That said: my brother went with me to Taliesyn. The main thing he noticed was the shoddiness of the workmanship, e.g. glass corners that didn't meet squarely. Still, it's inspiring.

During the Depression, all you needed to move to Taliesyn and study with the master was $500. No skill requirement. Johnson Wax had years and years of water leaking in from the roof, although they finally fixed it and they work in it still.

Steel-reinforced concrete is a time-limited construction technique. Water eventually gets in and rusts the steel.

mikehotel3• 4 years ago

Would you consider insulated concrete forms (ICF) addressing the water intrusion concerns, while retaining the other benefits of reinforced concrete?

Cupertino950146• 4 years ago

Maybe you know more about this than I do. Does the insulation last, say, 200 years?

Animats2• 4 years ago

Stainless steel rebar is the way to go. It's more expensive, but is becoming popular for bridges, especially ones over salt water. 100+ year lifespan. The price differential is coming down as the demand increases.

Plastic-encapsulated rebar was popular for a while, but turned out to be a dead end. A nick in the plastic and water gets in.

Cupertino950146• 4 years ago

I'm not a civil engineer or even close, but I did note that some Roman concrete structures have lasted 2000 years, and nothing we're building now has any chance of lasting that long. 100 years is not much, considering what infrastructure in developed countries costs nowadays.

SECProto• 4 years ago

Non-metallic rebar (eg GFRP rebar, Basalt rebar) is also an option that's becoming more popular, though I've only seen it in low-importance structures. Both have very different design considerations than steel though: they essentially don't yield until failure loads, they have thermal expansion different axial vs radial, etc.

dirtyid• 4 years ago

time-limited construction technique

To be fair, almost all buildings, especially residential, are time limited artefacts. Even if FLW knew some of his works would become protected heritage / conservative buildings, they're still private constructions without the budget scoped for institutional buildings designed to last 100+ years. My memory is FLW already had reputation for going over budget more often than not, there was never much resources dedicated to seriously evaluate longevity of the different building systems he was experimenting with.

linksnapzz2• 4 years ago

"The job of the architect is to spend the client's money!"

He also said:

"The surgeon can bury his mistakes; the architect can only advise his clients to plant vines."

abeppu• 4 years ago

Steel-reinforced concrete is a time-limited construction technique. Water eventually gets in and rusts the steel.

Since you're a groupie perhaps you know and could share -- how are these concrete block homes doing almost a century after Wright started using the system described here? Are they known to have serious structural issues from rusting steel / cracking concrete? Especially because this article says "relatively unskilled labor could easily erect the walls", and because it was a new approach, I'd wonder if water would have gotten in and damaged these walls more quickly than with modern reinforced concrete (which often seems to not last long).

Cupertino950146• 4 years ago

I'm not that much of a groupie, sorry.

A lot of FLW homes are owned by architectural or other charitable organizations, since maintaining them is expensive.

"relatively unskilled labor" -- LOL.

adventured• 4 years ago

Not the concrete block homes, however a few decades ago they had to temporarily support the famous cantilevered roofs of Falling Water and then modify/restore its internal structure for longer-term survivability. I visited Falling Water while that process was going on and it was interesting to see how they were approaching modifying such an icon.

https://old.post-gazette.com/lifestyle/20011208lowry1208fnp3...

https://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/11/garden/an-icon-in-peril-s...

linksnapzz2• 4 years ago

Yeah, they had a terrible time sealing the edges of the lillypad columns in the Johnson Wax building against the skylights in the ceiling.

I'd like to think that Wright had read about polysiloxane synthetic rubber compounds in Scientific American or something, and figured the building he'd designed would just have to leak until someone developed those into commercial RTV silicone to seal the roof with.

Cupertino950146• 4 years ago

Funny, I went there on a Tuesday. They said the guided tours were only on Fridays, but when I told them I was from out of state, they said a guard would walk us around but not narrate.

It was a great office building, way ahead of its time.

alliao2• 4 years ago

I miss the days of time limited construction, nowadays residential building seems to be mortgage-life-limited. I swear nothing lasts more than 20yrs.

kjhughes• 4 years ago

Frank Lloyd Wright restoration project house currently for sale for $4.25M in Los Angeles:

  It is one of “Wright’s 20 most important houses…the missing link between two World Heritage sites: Taliesin and Fallingwater,” according to the writings of architectural historian Kathryn Smith, who was quoted in the listing.

https://www.mansionglobal.com/articles/a-newly-listed-4-25-m...

cepp• 4 years ago

It sold ~3 weeks ago for ~3M.

eternityforest• 4 years ago

It's so bizzare that a construction method can be considered ugly or beautiful. Why doesn't architecture and industrial design have any concept of separate front-end and backend anymore, like software does?

Some things do, like Ikea's crazy composite desktops, and they seem to work well. Why are we still doing this Bauhaus truth to materials stuff?

pontifier• 4 years ago

Lol even Frank Lloyd Wright had problems with zoning officials and the permit process...

hedgehog• 4 years ago

This popped up on HN a couple days ago along with most of these comments that are labeled as being posted today. New HN bug?

jeffrallen• 4 years ago

Anyone else notice the connection between concrete blocks and containers? And the connection between Flaw's assessment of the Ennis house and Kubernetes?

Heh heh.

Frank Lloyd Wright and the “textile block” construction system (1992)

Related Stories