"Prairie Houses" F. L
Frank Lloyd Wright born June 8, 1869, Richland, Wisconsin. He studied at the University of Wisconsin for one year, after which in 1887, at the age of 18, he entered the service of one of the famous architectural companies in the United States. And until 1894 he worked as a direct assistant.
In 1894, Wright opened his own workshop in Chicago and during these years until 1901 he built solid houses in an eclectic style, and then began to create mansions, “prairie houses.” He moved away from traditional methods of designing a home, away from imitating any historical styles, in his projects he sought to proceed from the conditions of the area, from the functions of a residential building as a whole and its individual parts in particular.
In "prairie houses" there is usually a central core - a large room with a fireplace, a hall, a dining room and a living room usually have free space that flows into each other. A characteristic feature of “prairie houses” are casement windows arranged in horizontal rows and low-hanging roofs that hang slightly over the walls. Wright abandons architectural symmetry, the plan takes on asymmetrical shapes and free outlines.
The Winslow House in River Forest, Illinois, built in 1894, is considered the largest work of the 1890s. For the architecture of that time, this is a very simple house in its form.
A very typical example of “prairie houses” is the Wilitz house near Chicago, built in 1902. The free, asymmetrical outline of the house strengthens the connection between the architecture of the house and the surrounding area. The principle of maximum connection between architecture and nature becomes one of the leading principles in all of Wright’s subsequent works.
From 1901 to 1909, Wright created about 120 designs and built 76 “prairie houses.” Most of them were intended for the middle class and businessmen. The best are the Robie House in Chicago, built in 1907, and the Coonley Manor in Riverside, Illinois, built in 1908.
In “prairie houses,” Wright abandons the attic and the usual flat ceiling, thereby increasing the volume of living rooms. Also abandoning the basement, Wright places the building on a concrete slab placed on a concrete pad, thereby eliminating both the basement and the foundation.
In 1904, Rice built the Larkin Building in Buffalo, a public building (the building does not survive), which pioneered the use of air conditioning, built-in metal furniture, and hermetically sealed interiors).
In 1905-1906, when creating the paired monolithic cubes of the Temple of Concord in Oak Park, Illinois, Wright left raw concrete surfaces for the first time in the history of architecture.
Wright's works were often exhibited at various exhibitions (models and photographs of buildings), and in 1907 he had a solo exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 1917-1922 he built the earthquake-resistant building of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (the building was dismantled in 1968). Thanks to the powerful “floating” foundation, which goes 18 m into the soil and the cantilever suspension of the floors, this massive building survived the severe earthquake in 1923.
In the 1930s, he developed a type of mansion for a middle-class family, where factory-made parts predominated. In his mansions, Wright created “open” interiors in which the kitchen, dining room and living room formed one unified space. He strove to achieve a connection between the building and the environment, to create harmonious elements of the architectural composition, and to use materials traditional for the construction site. The most magnificent of this type of mansion was the Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin.
In addition to his architectural activities, Wright gave public lectures and wrote extensively. In 1932, his Autobiography was published, in the same year he proposed the project of a “city of wide open space,” a model of an ideal rural community.
In 1936, Wright completed a design for the Johnson-Wax office in Racine, Wisconsin, a windowless building with a glass ceiling as the light source. This project very clearly displays Wright's design principle "from the inside out." The external appearance of this building is determined by its internal structure. There are no facades in this building; blank walls are like a case enclosing the internal space.
Another outstanding project built by Wright in 1936 was the Kauffman House or Falls House in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, which has been named the most remarkable residential structure of the 20th century. The site was located in a hilly ravine on both sides of Bear Run Creek, which formed a small waterfall. Wright located the house right above the stream and waterfall. In this project, Wright implemented his main idea - he abandoned the box house with four walls.
In 1938, Wright created a new workshop school in Scottsdale, Arizona, which was called Teylizin West (later the F. L. Wright School of Architecture). This project was created using local stone, redwood beams and canvas roofing.
Wright's most famous projects include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Projects appeared in 1943, but construction did not begin until the late 1950s. The building is a spiral ramp with spirals widening towards the top, which encloses a light courtyard covered with a transparent dome.
In 1954, he built the building of the Beth Shalom synagogue near Philadelphia, the architectural volume of which is formed by two triangular prisms placed on top of each other, which in plan form a hexagon - the outline of the Star of David.
In 1956, he created the building of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation near Milwaukee, which is a bowl-shaped hall on thin high supports.
In 1957-1959, he built the very light and elegant buildings of the Marin County Community Center in San Rafael, which are spread over three hills of a 121-hectare site.
In the last years of his life, Wright published several books: The Natural House in 1954, Testament in 1957, The Future of Architecture, which collected the most important printed works of the 1930s, and a revised project for a city of wide open spaces. " - "Living City" in 1958.
Wright called himself "the world's greatest architect" and was a tremendous promoter of his own ideas. This is confirmed by the exhibition for his 150th anniversary at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Frank Lloyd Wright. View from the east of the Temple of Concord in Oak Park. 1905-1908. Watercolor. Photo: MoMA
On October 16, 1956, Frank Lloyd Wright held a press conference at the 1,700-room Sherman Hotel in Chicago. America's most famous architect needed a truly large platform to present his "Illinois" - a project of a more than one and a half kilometer high, 528-story skyscraper with 56 nuclear-powered elevators, designed for 130 thousand residents, equipped with a garage for 15 thousand cars. and a double platform for 100 helicopters.
Skyscraper the size of a city
Knowing how to seduce journalists, Wright, using photographic equipment, enlarged the almost three-meter drawing of the tower, which in itself was very impressive, to 6.7 m. He thought not only on a large scale, but also radically. It may seem strange, but the Illinois project was inextricably linked to Wright's conviction that the modern city was a monstrous, sprawling creature that needed to be curbed. Ideally, a city the size of Chicago would be contained in a few towering skyscrapers, surrounded by lush vegetation instead of streets. Nature with a capital “N” was almost a cult object for Wright. "Illinois" was conceived as a means to protect nature by densifying and confining the modern city.
Frank Lloyd Wright. Gordon Strong Planetarium Project in Maryland. 1924-1925. Colored pencil on tracing paper. Photo: MoMA
The press received this project with great enthusiasm: the 88-year-old architect provided journalists with interesting material, which, however, had constantly happened in the previous 70 years. Scandalous, outspoken, witty and completely absorbed in his work, Wright thought big and acted decisively. His life was full of drama and real tragedies. Two burnt houses. A mistress and her two children, hacked to death with an axe. Noisy divorces. And of course, many magnificent innovative buildings and projects developed since the founding of the workshop under his name in 1893. Frank Lloyd Wright was a very versatile man.
It is perhaps not surprising that Wright’s archive is so rich and multifaceted. In 2012, it was moved from the architect's former studios in Taliesin East (Wisconsin) and Taliesin West (Arizona) to Columbia University and New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). And the curators began studying approximately 55 thousand sketches, 300 thousand pages of correspondence, 285 films and 2.7 thousand manuscripts.
Unpacked archive
In honor of Wright's 150th birthday, MoMA is hosting an exhibition, Unpacking the Archive, featuring some 450 of the architect's works. The museum has released a voluminous catalogue, the authors of which have attempted to interpret all this architectural wealth. And it definitely needs interpretation, since over the 72 years of Wright’s activity, the style of his sketches and drawings developed and went through different periods, as happens with long-lived artists. All these periods are united by a very interesting, often brilliant technique, consistently revealing the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement, Japanese printed graphics, the Vienna Secession, Art Deco, European modernism, automobile design (he had 85 cars in total) and even Hollywood.
Wright would have made a great production designer and set designer. His own life was partly the basis for Ayn Rand's best-selling novel The Fountainhead (1943), which was made into a melodrama in the United States in 1949 starring Gary Cooper. Although the worldview and ideals of the hero can be equally attributed to Le Corbusier, the colorful architect from Wisconsin was the undisputed star. And Wright knew it. When once asked in court about his profession, he replied: “I am the greatest architect in the world.” His third wife, Montenegrin ballerina Olgivanna Lazovic, was outraged by such bravado, to which he replied: “I had no choice, Olgivanna. I was under oath."
Unknown photographer. Frank Lloyd Wright. Photo: MoMA
Talent recruiter
In the late 1950s, as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was growing on Fifth Avenue, the architect made several television appearances. Particularly striking was his live interview in September 1957 on the Mike Wallace Interview, where he talked about religion, war, euthanasia, art, criticism, American youth, sex, morality, politics, nature, death and his one and a half kilometer skyscraper.
Driven by global ideas and a desire to reach a wide audience, Wright mastered a variety of presentation techniques - from drawing with colored pencils to books, magazines, exhibitions, monographs, films, radio and television. He even took part in the popular game show What's My Line? In addition, he attracted gifted young assistants who could draw well. Many of Wright's exemplary sketches were created by his assistants, most notably Jack Howe, known as "the pencil in the hand of Frank Lloyd Wright." Having started working in the workshop in 1932 at age 19, he became its chief draftsman in 1937, during the construction of the Falls House, one of America's most famous buildings.
Unknown photographer. Frank Lloyd Wright at work. Photo: MoMA
The assistant Wright hired in 1895 was Marion Mahoney, one of the first women to graduate in architecture. Mahoney's contribution to Wright's work is significant, producing drawings and watercolors of the highest quality. In 1910, Berlin publisher Ernst Wasmuth released a two-volume volume of lithographs of plans and perspectives of Wright's buildings. Mahoney was the author of more than half of these images, made in a single “corporate” style. She not only set the tone and style of sketch portfolios, but also - in an instant and under Wright's name - captured the minds and pencils of the leading representatives of the first generation of European modernist architects.
A copy of the book “Erected Buildings and Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright” was also delivered to the Berlin workshop of Peter Behrens. They say that work in it froze for several days while the architect’s students carefully examined the drawings. The students' names were Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. Other copies fell into the hands of young Austrian architects Rudolf Schindler and Richard Neutra. Both of them subsequently immigrated to the United States and worked for Wright, and later contributed to the formation of modernist architecture in California. At the end of World War I, drawings for Wright's designs for "American prefab houses" were made by Schindler and the young Czech architect Antonin Raymond, who after World War II became one of the fathers of modernist architecture in Japan.
Frank Lloyd Wright. Darwin Martin's Buffalo site and house plan. 1903-1906. Ink drawing. Photo: MoMA
Wright himself was closely connected with Japan (all his life he collected Japanese printed graphics). The exhibition features a rare selection of photographs of his Imperial Hotel (1913-1923) in Tokyo, a complex building that was damaged in a major earthquake in 1923 and demolished in 1968. Designed, in Wright's words, as "a system of gardens, hanging gardens, sunken gardens, balcony gardens, loggia gardens and roof gardens," the building served as a link between his early and middle periods as an artist-architect and between Western and Eastern design.
Wright spent a lot of time in Tokyo, where he began painting on Japanese rice and carbon paper, which he continued to order for his Taliesin studio upon returning to the United States. In the 1920s, his assistants included Japanese architects Kameki and Nobuko Tsuchiura, who also worked on the Imperial Hotel. Nobuko was the first Japanese female architect.
Among Wright's later assistants at Taliesin West, part architectural studio, part back-to-the-land pastoral farm, was Elizabeth (Betty) Bauer, who headed the department of architecture and design at MoMA during World War II. “Betty is in the trenches in blue,” Wright wrote to a friend, “and everyone around is sweating like boys.”
Frank Lloyd Wright. Project of the House over the Falls (Kaufman Houses) in Pennsylvania. 1934-1937. Color pencil. Photo: MoMA
Romantic ruralism
Particular attention in the exhibition is given to Wright's love of nature and his belief that the best life is outside the city. In 1932, taking advantage of Roosevelt's New Deal, Wright worked with engineer, accountant, and food management consultant Walter Davidson to develop plans for "small farm units"—small farms of up to one and a half hectares in size, combining farms and roadside markets. Just imagine this - the Wright - way of life instead of the suburban bedroom communities of the 21st century, which have nothing in common with either nature or the land on which they stand!
The model of "small farming units" was never realized, but their layouts demonstrate the very essence of Wright's romantic ruralism. His abiding love of nature and fascination with individualism can be traced back to the writings of 19th-century authors such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. All three celebrated the self-sufficient, independent and individualistic lifestyle of rural America. Wright read Whitman's poems from Leaves of Grass (1855) to his students at Taliesin West. And he lived in accordance with the principle formulated at the end of Thoreau's Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854): “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, is it perhaps because he hears a different rhythm? Let him walk to the music he hears, whatever its rhythm and however distant it may sound.”
Frank Lloyd Wright. One of the "American prefab houses". Project. 1915-1917. Lithography. Photo: MoMA
Wright was a prolific and unique artist, but he was not alone. This is evidenced by the layout and sketches of Broadacre City, which, according to Wright's equation, is the sum of architecture and area. Work on the low-density garden city project has been underway since the early 1930s. It was a kind of response to New York and Chicago, created by a group of young architects. Even if you are not a proponent of anti-urban philosophy, you have to admit that this unrealized suburban utopia makes as much of an impact today as it did when it was unveiled at Rockefeller Center in New York in April 1935. Broadacre City transformed into the Living City project of 1958, complete with futuristic flying cars to attract new audiences. It was a paired object to Wright's one and a half kilometer skyscraper. He may have wanted Americans to live a rural life, but he knew how to impress urban audiences with mesmerizing projects using every available means.
The exhibition “Unpacking the Archive” shows that Wright was not only a distinctive architect who knew how to find talented assistants, but also a tremendous propagandist. No other architect has had so many exhibitions dedicated to him. His works were included in MoMA’s first ever architectural project, the International Exhibition of Modern Architecture, in 1932 - and now, 85 years later, Frank Lloyd Wright is still as lively and interesting as he was when he unveiled his incredible skyscraper in the center of Chicago.
New York, Museum of Modern Art
Frank Lloyd Wright turns 150. Unpacking the archive
Until October 1
20th century architecture
The father of American architectural modernism, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), said: “Doctors can bury their mistakes with their patients, but an architect can only advise his clients to plant ivy.”
How they were built textile block houses Frank Lloyd Wright's "Miniature" and the Ennis House.
Wright considered this house to be the first "Usonian" building, reflecting the architect's dream of an ideal America. "Usonian" or "Usonian", "North American" style of Frank Lloyd Wright - from Usonia, an abbreviation of U.S.O.N.A. /Unites States of Northern America. Beginning in 1936, Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built about 50 Usonian-style homes: single-story structures surrounded by gardens; compact, economical and technologically advanced with flat roofs. Such houses were intended for citizens with average incomes. Wright’s immediate “Usonian” period is later – the 1930s, and La Miniatura is a work of the 20s, when Wright built four houses in a similar textile-block design.
2.
Millard House or "Miniature". Pasadena, California. Construction 1923 Architect Frank Lloyd Wright / The Millard House. Architect: Frank Lloyd Wright and Lloyd Wright. Year built: 1924. Sq. Ft.: 4230. Beds/Baths: 3/3.
In the early 1920s, the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was deeply saddened by the fate of concrete blocks. “So what is a concrete block? For years it remained the cheapest and ugliest item in the construction world. He huddled on the outskirts of architecture - he had to imitate the texture of stone. Is it really impossible to change the fate of this outcast?” - Wright wrote. His idea was as follows: he proposed making concrete blocks of a non-standard cubic shape, hollow inside, with holes at the top and bottom, and stringing them on reinforcing bars, like beads on a thread. Or like a transverse thread in weaving fabric - it is no coincidence that Wright called his blocks “textile”. With this design, much less cement mortar was needed, the wall surface looked neater and could be perceived as a single decorative plane. Because Wright, of course, wasn't content with just a constructive idea—he turned concrete blocks into an aesthetic statement. He came up with the idea of covering the visible surfaces of the cube with an ornament in the spirit of the Mayan Indians.
3.
Frank Lloyd Wright and his "Miniature" / This photograph shows Frank Lloyd Wright walking past his residential design La Miniatura, also known as the Millard House. La Miniatura was the first of Wright's four "textile block" houses—all built in Los Angeles County in 1923 and 1924. Photo Credit: Robert Carroll May, 1940. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives. The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York.
The first house Wright built in the newly invented style was the Millard House in Pasadena. The decor there was not particularly Mayan - just a cross and four holes. For Storer's house on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, Wright came up with a design more reminiscent of a Romanesque cross. It was this house that was once owned by “The Matrix” producer Joel Silver. Wright built both of these houses and the Freeman mansion in Los Angeles in 1923.
4.
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright
A year later, in 1924, he began the construction of the Ennis house - the largest and with the most complex asymmetrical ornamentation on the surface of the blocks.
However, first things first. First, about the Millard House La Miniatura.
5.
The Millard House
Each work of art is a portrait of its creator. So the author of an article in Architectural Digest Russia, Vladimir Paperny, found features of the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the La Miniatura house in California.
Article:
6.
The Millard House
Our shortcomings are a continuation of our strengths. This conventional wisdom applies entirely to the life of Frank Lloyd Wright. A rich imagination turned into a disregard for facts - he half-invented his autobiography, starting with his date of birth (1869 instead of 1867), height (174 instead of 170 cm) and education (he studied, but did not graduate from school or university).
7.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is probably America's most famous architect and an emblematic figure in the profession in general.
His uncompromising attitude and contempt for bourgeois conventions sometimes forced his friends to break off relations with him. Just look at the episode in 1909, when Frank, leaving his wife and six children, went to Europe with his client’s wife. He treated money with the same unceremoniousness. The search for new designs and materials helped to find unexpected solutions, but experiments sometimes led to a catastrophic increase in construction costs. Trust in his own intuition (and not in engineering calculations) led to alterations and rebuilds, sometimes even at his own expense. The California period of the architect's career perfectly illustrates all the pros and cons of Wright's character.
8.
In the 1920s, the orange groves of Southern California were transformed into Hollywood film sets. A mass migration of actors, directors and writers began from the East Coast to the West. The newcomers, who got rich in the film industry, began to build houses for themselves in the Hollywood Hills. This is where they needed architecture. Wright's first California building was the home of Elin Barnsdall (1921), an oil heiress, philanthropist, failed actress and “salon Bolshevik.” Here Wright first used the “California Romanza” style: a collage of elements of the architecture of Egypt and pre-Columbian Mexico with the addition of some formality of the Beaux Arts style.
9.
The Millard House - La Miniatura
It was in California that Wright invented the so-called textile blocks. The idea had two origins: they reminded Frank of his childhood Froebel Gifts building blocks, and they seemed like a way to make construction cheaper through standardization. Reinforced concrete blocks (approximately 40 × 40 × 20 cm) were cast into molds with stylized patterns. Double walls were built from them with a small gap for heat and sound insulation. In theory, no qualifications were required to cast blocks; anyone could do it for a minimal fee. The combination of manual labor with standardization was supposed to give the house a unique texture and make it financially accessible to the masses. In theory everything was great, but in practice problems arose. Blocks cast by unskilled workers often had to be remade several times. The reinforcement inside the blocks began to rust, and after a few years the blocks cracked and sometimes fell apart.
10.
The Millard House - La Miniatura
La Miniatura (1923) is considered Wright's absolute masterpiece, although it was not without technical problems. The client, a collector of rare books and antiques Alice Millard, showed miracles of patience, generosity and trust in the architect. As he later did with The House Over the Waterfall, Wright chose a picturesque location that seemed unsuitable for construction - a deep ravine with two picturesque eucalyptus trees.
11.
The Millard House - La Miniatura
To create organic architecture that expressed the “spirit of place” and was in color harmony with the environment, Wright added sand and gravel from the construction site to the concrete composition. Fortunately, this time the blocks were made without metal reinforcement, so they were well preserved.
12.
The Millard House - La Miniatura
You understand the uniqueness of the house when you climb the stairs from the lower level facing the pond (dining room, kitchen, servants' quarters) to the middle one (guest room and two-story living room with fireplace and balcony), and then to the upper one (master bedroom with access to the mezzanine above the living room and bathroom). The upward movement occurs in a spiral and clockwise direction.
13.
The Millard House - La Miniatura
This already contains the seed of Wright's idea for the Guggenheim Museum in New York. One of Alice Millard's conditions - to integrate objects from her collection into architecture - Wright faithfully fulfilled: a rare case when he refused total control. Sales of books and antiques grew, the owner needed additional space. It became the studio, which is located on the left (if viewed from the side of the pond). It was added in 1926, and not by Frank himself, but by his son, Lloyd Wright, who managed to accurately repeat his father’s style.
14.
The Millard House - La Miniatura
The current owner has invested a lot of money into restoring the house, but no one lives there now and it is for sale through ArchitectureForSale.com. The unique house is magically attractive, but few local residents have heard of it. It's hard to find, but I advise anyone who finds themselves in Los Angeles to enter the address: 645 Prospect Crescent, Pasadena, California 91103 into their GPS and go looking. I assure you, you won't regret it.
15.
The Millard House - La Miniatura
Text: Vladimir Paperny
Photo: Vladimir Paperny, ESTO, SCOTT MAYORAL
Article from AD: in pdf Architectural Digest Russia: Legendary house. Portrait Miniature and on the AD website ADmagazine.ru: "Miniature" by Frank Lloyd Wright
16.
18.
Frank Lloyd Wright. Millard House - La Miniatura, Pasadena, California.
19.
Frank Lloyd Wright. Millard House - La Miniatura, Pasadena, California.
20.
21.
Frank Lloyd Wright. Millard House - La Miniatura, Pasadena, California.
The last of the four mansions in the “textile” style that the architect became interested in in the 1920s was the Ennis House.
22.
Ennis House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. A black-and-white photograph from the 1940s clearly shows the Mayan origins of the Ennis House's austere geometric volumes.
The house was under construction in 1924. And immediately after construction was completed, the Ennis House became famous.
Fragment of the article Ennis House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright from AD Magazine Russia:
23.
Wright's drawing showing the plan and perspective of the house. Wright made presentation drawings like this for all of his projects.
Wright's clients were Charles Ennis, a millionaire who made a fortune from a chain of department stores, and his wife Mabel. Ennis was keenly interested in Mayan culture, which is why he ordered such an unusual project. A large budget and shared tastes with the client allowed Wright to expand - the scale of the building can only be described as grandiose. From the outside it does not give a residential impression - rather it looks like an ancient temple. The forbidding image is partly softened by the texture of the concrete blocks: they divide the high walls into small cells, the cells themselves are also delineated with decorative brackets. As a result, the facade of the house, especially in the rays of the setting sun, appears as a luxurious patterned fabric with a slight relief - an effect due to which the term "textile houses" is often mistakenly attributed not to constructive, but to Wright's decorative solutions.
24.
The inhospitable appearance of the Ennis house's façade is softened by the texture of the concrete blocks and the soft, sandy color of the walls.
Inside the house makes an ambivalent impression. Its enormity and solemnity do not disappear anywhere: high ceilings, long corridors, twenty-seven stained glass windows - at times it seems that you have entered a cathedral, and not a living space. However, in general, Wright managed to curb the desire for gigantomania in this project, primarily because he abandoned his beloved open plan. The Ennis house is clearly divided. There is a front part: a living room with a balcony overlooking Los Angeles, a symmetrical dining room, which is decorated with the rarest golden glass mosaic panel in Wright’s creative heritage, and a swimming pool in the courtyard. This pool, however, appeared in the house only in the 1940s, although Wright designed it right away - it runs along a long corridor connecting the front rooms with much more modest and discreet bedrooms. And throughout all the rooms, Wright very delicately plays with scale, “breaking up” the empty and echoing spaces with divisions and details: sometimes a height difference of two or three steps, sometimes a row of screen partitions, sometimes a niche, sometimes a bronze panel, sometimes a mosaic above the fireplace.
25.
The Ennis House in Los Angeles was built by the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1924. The salon features antique Art Deco furniture.
As usual in his homes, Wright designed everything for the Ennises, from the architectural volumes to the smallest details, like electrical switches. However, Ennis' interest in Mayan culture ultimately led to a conflict: the client did not obediently listen to Wright's every word - he expressed his own opinion, and Wright left the construction site with a scandal. So now researchers studying the Ennis house are wondering which details are really Wright’s, and which were invented by Charles Ennis himself after his departure. In the original project there were, for example, no marble floors, no wrought iron grille on the stairs, no Tiffany chandeliers, no Art Deco furniture - Ennis did not order furniture designed by Wright. The fact that all these things ended up fitting into the interior of the house quite organically once again shows how good the structure of the building is: a beautiful face, as we know, cannot be spoiled even by the worst makeup.
26.
The dining room is on the first floor of the Ennis house. The late Art Nouveau wrought iron chandelier appeared here, of course, without Wright's approval.
The fate of the Ennis house turned out to be quite dramatic. It was Wright's last work in the "textile" style: conflicts with Ennis forced him to abandon the idea of ornamental concrete blocks. Despite the disputes with Wright, the owners loved the mansion and lived in it for quite a long time - only in 1968 it was bought by a certain Augustus Brown. In 1980, Brown donated the house to the Society for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. The community celebrated this good deed by renaming the monument “Ennis-Brown House.”
27.
Dining room. In the wall there is a glass mosaic created according to Wright's sketches.
Even after ceasing to be private property, the magnificent building lived a full life - it was constantly filmed in films. In fact, the process began back in 1959 - it was the Ennis house that was the main character in the legendary horror film The Haunting of Hill House with Vincent Price. The filmography of the house includes more than twenty titles - from the computer fantasy “The Thirteenth Floor” to the action film “Rush Hour” with Jackie Chan. Ridley Scott used the house twice - in Blade Runner (1982) and Black Rain (1989). David Lynch said of him: "Walking into the Ennis house is like entering heaven." A beautiful phrase, although the gloomy creator of Twin Peaks has, of course, not quite ordinary ideas about paradise.
28.
The owner of the house himself came up with a grate on the stairs.
But there are troubles in paradise, and for the Ennis-Brown house they began in 1994 - it was damaged during a devastating earthquake. Raising funds for its restoration was extremely slow - ten years later, in 2004, the house was still in a “vulnerable” state. And higher powers dealt the building a new blow: the winter of 2004 turned out to be unusually rainy in California, and the damaged Ennis house suffered from moisture and wind. Wright could not have foreseen such misfortunes - in his time the Californian weather was not so capricious. The house was completely closed to the public and they urgently began to organize the non-profit Ennis House Foundation - Wright's son, Eric Lloyd Wright, who also became an architect, plays a prominent role in it. The foundation estimated the building's conservation work at $5 million. All fifteen were needed for a complete restoration. One and a half million, received from the California state government, went to make the Ennis house safe for tourists and thus raise a little more money for restoration.
29.
Bedroom. The owners abandoned the gloomy furniture created by Wright in favor of comfort.
Until 2011, restoration work in the Ennis house (the foundation “cut off” the mention of Brown from the name of the monument) was in full swing, but there was still not enough money. That's why four years ago [? from what year to count] Billionaire businessman Ronald Burkle purchased the house for $4.5 million to continue the foundation's restoration efforts.
30.
The courtyard pool was designed by Wright in 1924 but not built until the 1940s.
Text: David Suffman and Evgenia Mikulina
Photo: Alexis Armande; Getty Images/Fotobank.Com; Alexis Armanet/Marie Claire/East News; Copyright 1962, 2006 The Frank Lloyd Write Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ
Published: ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST. The most beautiful houses in the world. No. 8 (43) August 2006. Original article.
"To the Young Architect" was one of two lectures given by Frank Lloyd Wright in Chicago in 1931. Despite its age, many of its theses are still relevant today. The architect reflects on the backwardness of the architectural education system, the importance of studying technologies and materials, and the commercialization of architecture. At the end he gives twelve pieces of advice to the young architect:
1. Forget about all the architectures in the world if you don’t understand that they were good in their kind and in their time.
2. Let none of you enter into architecture in order to earn a living if you do not love architecture as a living principle, if you do not love it for its own sake; prepare to be faithful to her, as a mother, a friend, to yourself.
3. Beware of architecture schools for anything other than engineering education.
4. Go into manufacturing where you can see the machinery at work that produces modern buildings, or work in hands-on construction until you can move naturally from construction to design.
5. Immediately begin to develop the habit of wondering “why” about everything you like or dislike.
6. Do not take anything for granted - beautiful or ugly - but disassemble each building in parts, finding fault with every feature. Learn to distinguish the curious from the beautiful.
7. Acquire the habit of analysis; over time, the ability to analyze will make it possible to develop the ability to synthesize, which will also become a habit of the mind.
8. “Think in simple terms,” as my teacher used to say, meaning that the whole is reduced to its parts and simplest elements based on first principles. Do this in order to go from the general to the specific, never confusing them, otherwise you will get confused yourself.
9. Throw away like poison the American idea of “fast turnaround.” To begin a practical activity half-baked means to sell your innate right to be an architect for lentil stew, or to die pretending to be an architect.
10. Take your time to complete your preparation. At least ten years of preliminary preparation for architectural practice is necessary for the architect who wants to rise above the average level in judgment and in the practical practice of architecture.
12. Consider building a chicken coop as good a job for yourself as building a cathedral. The size of the project means little in art, if we ignore financial issues. Expressiveness is actually taken into account. Expressiveness can be big in small things or small in big things.
As a supplement, one cannot help but cite an excerpt from Wright’s thoughts on modern organic architecture, expressed at the same lecture:
In organic architecture, the rigid straight line is broken into a dotted line, which is not limited to mere bare necessity, but allows the manifestation of an appropriate rhythm to give room to the judgment of proper values. This is modern.
In organic architecture, the design of a building as a building begins with the basic and develops towards external expression, but does not begin with any pictorial expression and then grope in the opposite direction. This is modern.
Tired of repetitions of faceless banalities in which light reflects from bare planes or sadly falls into holes cut into them, organic architecture again brings man face to face with the appropriate nature of the play of chiaroscuro, which gives freedom to man's creative thought and his inherent sense of artistic imagination. This is modern.
The understanding of interior space as a reality in organic architecture is consistent with the increased capabilities of modern materials. The building now figures according to this understanding of interior space; the fence now appears not only as walls and roofs, but as a fencing of the internal space. This reality is modern.
In truly modern architecture, therefore, the sense of surface and mass disappears. A structure must no less be an expression of the principle of force directed towards an end than that which is seen in any mechanical device or apparatus. Modern architecture affirms the highest human sense of sunlit space. Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the web, buildings characterized by light and expressed by the character of their surroundings - connected to the earth. This is modern!
The book “The Future of Architecture” was translated into Russian and published in the USSR under the editorship of the prominent architect A.I. Geggelo in 1960, a year after Frank Lloyd Wright's death.
Photo Tour de Force 360VR, xlforum.net, studyblue.com, flwright.org, trekearth.com
TOP 10: Iconic projects of Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright - American architect, founder of organic architecture - was born on June 8, 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin, into the family of a church leader and a teacher. Receiving knowledge at home, he did not attend secondary school. Studied for a year at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Wisconsin. After that, he left “to free bread” and in 1887 moved to Chicago, where he ended up in the architectural studio of Joseph Lyman Silsbee. In 1893, Wright already had his own workshop in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. Innovative in Wright's work was the use of prefabricated reinforced concrete blocks with reinforcement, panel heating, the use of air conditioners, and diffuse lighting. He also proposed to base the design, first of all, on landscape conditions, and during his career he managed to build 363 objects.
1. Roby House (Chicago, Illinois, USA, 1910)
Belongs to the "Prairie Houses" series, so named because of the abundance of horizontal lines, eaves and flat roofs that resemble the prairie. Asymmetrical shape, strip glazing, horizontal orientation. Large roof overhangs give a feeling of security and protection from the sun's rays. The heart of the house is the fireplace. The scale of the building to a person is clearly visible. 
2. House Over the Falls (Bur Run, Pennsylvania, USA, 1939)
By the 1930s, after a very fruitful period, Wright's work began to stagnate. To improve his situation, the architect organized the Taliesin art studio in his residence. Edgar Kaufman comes there to study. It was thanks to this acquaintance that Wright received an order from Kaufman’s parents to design a country house, which became one of the architect’s most famous creations. 
3. Taliesin Complex (Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911-1925)
The project, like the Roby House, belongs to the “Prairie Houses”. Characteristic features of the complex: low shingled roofs, stone walls, terraces cutting into the landscape. The main building of the complex has a U-shaped plan. One of its wings is Wright's residence with 3 bedrooms, a dining room, a kitchen and a loggia. After construction, the house suffered from fires twice and was completely rebuilt. 
4. Yamamura House (Ashiya, Japan, 1924)
The only building designed by Wright that has survived in Japan. A long road through a picturesque valley leads to the house. At the main entrance, right in the walls, there are lavas for relaxing and contemplating the surroundings. The center of the interior is the fireplace - Wright often used this technique in his projects. As a tribute to Japanese traditions, the walls are partially made of clay. A series of trapezoidal pipes were successfully integrated into the landscape. Also noteworthy are the vaulted ceiling and the elongated southern balcony, from which you can see the mountains, sea, and cityscape. 
5. BethShalom Synagogue (Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, USA, 1959)
The building is designed in Art Nouveau style. An expressive element is the translucent pyramidal roof, symbolizing Mount Sinai. The architect was also inspired by Mayan buildings, so the volume was formed using 2 triangular prisms placed on top of each other and forming a hexagon in plan - the Star of David. 
6. Hotel Imperial (Tokyo, Japan, 1915)
In the project, it was important for Wright to take into account the seismological features of the area and achieve the stability of the building. Thanks to the cantilever suspension of the floors, as well as a powerful “floating” foundation that went 18 m into the ground, the building survived the earthquake in 1923. 
7. Johnson Wax Company Office (Racine, Wisconsin, USA, 1936)
The project is interesting because the building, measuring 69x69 m, has no windows. The architect used special tree-like columns in the interior. Special lighting creates favorable working conditions, despite the lack of direct sunlight. The furniture was also designed by Wright, as in many of his other projects. 
8. Herbert Jacobs House (Middleton, Wisconsin, USA, 1944)
The solar semicircle is the name of the plan that Wright came up with for designing in northern climates. The building has the shape of a semicircle, the northern side of which is elevated and completely insulated, and the southern side is composed of double-layer windows and doors to allow solar heat to penetrate into the house even in winter. 
9. Larkin Company Office (Buffalo, New York, USA, 1906)
The red sandstone building is 61 m high and 41 m wide. Here Wright used stained glass windows with steel frames and sculptural elements to decorate the facade. The interior walls were made from a combination of light-colored brick and glass-like material to allow sunlight to easily penetrate. Due to the bankruptcy of the Larkin company, despite protests from the architectural society, the building was demolished in 1950. 
10. Solomon Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA, 1959)
Named after its founder Robert Solomon Guggenheim. Built and designed over 16 years. From the outside, the museum is an inverted spiral; inside, the interior resembles a shell, in the center of which is a glassed courtyard. According to the architect's plan, viewing the exhibition should begin from the top, taking the elevator. The descent is supposed to be along a ramp, along which (as well as in the adjacent halls) works of art are located. The reality is that the inspection occurs from the bottom up. 
http://architector.ua/post/arch/1751/TOP_10__Znakovye_proekty_Frenka_Llojda_Rajta/
.......................
