The Plan to Save Frank Lloyd Wright's Only Skyscraper Isn't Going as Planned

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/30/arts/design/frank-lloyd-wright-skyscraper-price-tower.html

by tintinnabula • 2 years ago

34 52 2 years ago

tromp• 2 years ago

rsanek• 2 years ago

never really understood the hype around this guy. to me his designs are unattractive and often downright hostile to having any natural light indoors

kcplate2• 2 years ago

I felt the same way until I toured several of them. There is something about the beauty of the spaces when you are in them that just doesn’t translate to photos.

Even the natural light plays into the design. In a lot of ways it’s magical.

AlbertCory2• 2 years ago

Amen. You could look at the Acropolis and be unimpressed, too. That says more about you than the building.

ethagnawl• 2 years ago

I've only been to (not in) Fallingwater but I concur. I would have to imagine FW translates better than most but, still, being there was surreal and breathtaking. It feels equally futuristic, classic and organic -- elemental, even.

If I had a bucket list, spending a night there (something that used to be offered a few times each year, IIRC) would be on it.

jimmyswimmy• 2 years ago

For me (and I imagine a lot of people) it is his Fallingwater house (https://fallingwater.org/) which is a tremendous example of architecture which builds on its environment. I don't think that's a particularly great place to live in - seems to be a museum now anyhow - but it's a wonderful idea. In a lot of ways architecture is about setting high expectations, and that does it. A lot of his other work - the Usonian designs - look to me to be like what became 80's style American architecture. But I'm no student of the field; I just admired Fallingwater.

OldGuyInTheClub4• 2 years ago

I don't get the worship, either. Fallingwater has required a lot of intervention to stay up. The much praised Johnson Wax complex has a tower that can't be occupied. The administration building has workers on the ground floor ("Great Workroom") where management can look down upon them from the second floor. He dictated how people who commissioned him were to live in their homes down to what they could and could not have in them. Many of those houses have required work as well. The guy was arrogant and constantly over budget. HN doesn't consider these good traits in other engineering fields.

makeitdouble• 2 years ago

This is a pattern with the early modern architects, especially as the materials and construction process were still mildly experimental.

LeCorbusier also made a house (Villa Savoye) that was supposed to be functional and easy to live in. It looks super clear and luminous and could be mistaken for a modern house at a glance, but was a hell to maintain (leaked like a seave) and not great to live in in general.

bryan0• 2 years ago

his designs are … often downright hostile to having any natural light indoors

Are you sure about this? From Wikipedia [0]:

To unify the house to its site, Wright often used large expanses of glass to blur the boundary between the indoors and outdoors.Glass allowed for interaction and viewing of the outdoors while still protecting from the elements. In 1928, Wright wrote an essay on glass in which he compared it to the mirrors of nature: lakes, rivers and ponds.

Also check out the interior of the Johnson wax headquarters, the ceiling is basically a giant sky light [1]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Lloyd_Wright#/media/Fi...

zerocrates• 2 years ago

Yeah he was... hugely into natural light.

One factor that may be relevant here: many of his houses are designed to not use curtains or other window coverings; privacy is instead built into the house by having the front approach have few windows, or only the kind that are small and near the roofline, with the rear having many.

moomoo11• 2 years ago

As someone who lives in CA I think it would be cool to bring back neo Roman or Greek architecture.

Open spaces with columns and hemp roofs.

Animats• 2 years ago

That would be the Temple of Wings in Berkeley.[1] Originally, it had only columns, no solid walls. Sheets of canvas were the only protection from the weather.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_Wings

aardvark179• 2 years ago

I’m not sure I agree, but there is definitely a sense of enclosure and protection. He made some space beautifully well lit (the office attached to his home in Oak Park is a good example) but others parts of his houses seem to offer ways to see the outside world while retreating from it.

tightbookkeeper• 2 years ago

It’s one 1 of 3 names in architecture that educated people recognize. That’s the extent of the discussion here.

WillPostForFood• 2 years ago

Check out this photo of Taliesin West in Phoenix - great natural light.

https://media.architecturaldigest.com/photos/663cf0bbe8f993f...

leetrout• 2 years ago

Very aside: If you like the look of the rooms pictured in TFA you would probably appreciate the visual design of "Return to Grace"

https://returntogracegame.com/

encore2097• 2 years ago

Visit one of his houses. He designed and built them to suit and fit the client, like tailored clothing.

He also was pompous and designed something terrible for a lady who really wanted a house designed by him.

nick3443• 2 years ago

"designer" or "custom" "architect" etc can often mean looks interesting, but doesn't live well for a house.

Catalog homes from the early 1900s actually live quite well of you're not into boomer open floor plans (IMO it'll be remembered as the shag carpet of their design era)

vundercind• 2 years ago

Ugh, open plans. Wow factor for listing photos and naïve buyers when they walk in, way worse than having rooms with doors unless you host, like, lots of parties I guess. And even for that, having rooms with some sound dampening to spread out into is nice.

cozzyd• 2 years ago

Too bad he didn't build the Illinois...

dhosek2• 2 years ago

It would have been awful. Past about 50–60 floors, highrises end up just being impractical. And while Wright was a great artist, to be honest, he was kind of a bust as an engineer and I suspect that the Illinois, had it been started would likely have never been completed thanks to cost overruns and would be a disaster if finished thanks to engineering oversights (I doubt, for example, that he would have properly engineered for wind shear).

lambdasquirrel• 2 years ago

From the article, it was only 19 floors? But it was built in Oklahoma, where there once were oil wells, and now that the wells are not operational, it's unclear what'll happen to the building in the long run.

I think the parent comment is has a point. If it were near Chicago (where Wright was based out of), it'd get visitors.

snakeyjake2• 2 years ago

Facing a financial crisis, the nonprofit organization turned last year to a married pair of cryptocurrency entrepreneurs

Lie down with dogs....

dhosek2• 2 years ago

Yeah, the second I saw that sentence, I didn’t need to go any further. It was obvious that things were going to fall apart quickly.

msisk6• 2 years ago

Yeah, and this should really should have set off alarm bells to the officials there: "Ms. Blanchard would buy the building, renovate it and make it the launchpad for a rethinking of Bartlesville as “Silicon Ranch,” a new hub for technology start-ups drawn by Oklahoma’s lower cost of living."

Bartlesville is in the middle of nowhere, even by Oklahoma standards; not even on an interstate highway and only a general aviation airport. No start-up is going there unless they're handing out million-dollar seed rounds.

exabrial• 2 years ago

Not really an architecture buff but that is a cool looking building

dweinus• 2 years ago

It is a special building. Like most of his work: charming, unique, and completely impractical. Keeping it maintained out where it is was always going to be hard, but it looks like they've been had. It's a shame.

dreamcompiler• 2 years ago

I visited and toured this building a few years ago. It's amazing. When you're inside it feels like you're on one of those advanced planets they visited in ST:TOS, except everything is real.

Everywhere you turn your gaze there is another cool thing. It's sculpture you can live and work inside.

As long as you don't care that the elevator is too small, everything is non-ADA compliant, and the roof leaks.

abcanthur• 2 years ago

To help explain his reputation, he was extraordinarily influential and prolific (400+ completed buildings). His first 20 yrs of work was published as the Wasmuth Portfolio in Europe in 1910; basically all the great European architects who started Modernism had a copy, and even more studied under him at Taliesin. His space planning was revolutionary in the West, his Usonian homes were technologically and sociologically innovative, his many writings are often incisive. To the mentions of his buildings deteriorating; they were unusual, made of new materials, and many residential (no budget for upkeep). He should be regarded as an architect, not an engineer; these fields are almost entirely separate now. And he had great engineering successes, his Imperial Hotel in Japan famously survived a major earthquake. In my opinion he's underrated (even being the most famous American architect) probably because he was so stylistic (a virtuoso) and he was a half generation older than the more significant wave of Modernists. Go to the Guggenheim, the Marin Civic Center, Oak Park Illinois, Hollyhock, Taliesin East and West, his buildings really hum.

blankx322• 2 years ago

Side note have a read about his unfortunate life history events.

blankx322• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/XXjyK

jmclnx• 2 years ago

The new owners have sold some one-of-a-kind furnishings that Wright designed for the building

Sad, already the building was partially desecrated. Unless the Gov steps in, I doubt it will be saved :(

The Plan to Save Frank Lloyd Wright's Only Skyscraper Isn't Going as Planned

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