He was a visionary, a brilliant artist, and an egotistical force of nature; from everything I’ve read and from talking to people who knew & worked with him, his sheer ego bowled over clients, who had no idea what they were getting into. Can you imagine hiring him to design your “summer home in the woods” and being told “You’re not allowed to use any of your own furniture; I’ve designed new furniture. No decorations or furnishings, either. And I don’t care how tall you are, I’m building this house for my own comfort.”
2 Likes
Stuff like this is still happening, if I understand correctly, on the basis of intellectual property rights.
I know of a case where a faculty of a larger university got a new building, realised that numerous birds broke their necks on the large windows and wanted to use some kind of visual deterrent to prevent that. (Not the usual bird silhouettes, AFAIK, but something striped.) They received something like a cease and desist letter from the architect.
The faculty, you ask?
Biology.
2 Likes
I love looking at and, whenever I can, exploring FLW buildings, but I would not want to live or work in one, save perhaps the Guggenheim (and maybe Price Tower), which always seemed unusually restrained for FLW and therefore looks less like it should have problems than his other projects. FLW did have amazing visions. Unfortunately he didn’t seem to believe in precipitation and humidity. And he seemed more than willing to sacrifice comfort for appearance.
Yep. Another example is the Wexner Center for the Arts at OSU; it was built to be a gallery, but it has huge floor-to-ceiling windows that expose displayed art to direct sunlight. When they realized what a terrible idea this was and proposed shades, the architect objected and refused to let them. They compromised on tinted windows.
2 Likes
That looks pretty boring, actually.
The exterior photos don’t give a great impression. I found it interesting since the floor plan is triangular, and the apartments are a split level design that gives every living room large story-and-a-half windows, and there’s copper cladding on a lot of surfaces that serve as clever wind baffles, which you certainly need on a tall building in a flat landscape.
2 Likes
I can’t comment on FLW, but the sentiment of “leaks aren’t an indication of failure” has been passed down to his succesors
“These things are complicated,” he said, “and they involved a lot of people, and you never quite know where they went wrong. A building goes together with seven billion pieces of connective tissue. The chances of it getting done ever without something colliding or some misstep are small.”
Seach on [ArchitectName]+leaks. A lot of well-known names have tried hard enough.
As a son and grandson of architects, it’s my understanding that the job involves at least knowing what engineering can do*, and taking it into account when designing a building. That’s supposed to be part of the training, along with notions of law and various other things. Architecture isn’t a purely artistic endeavor, practicality is a strong part of it, and can’t be ignored in favor of prettiness.
*Though not necessarily with a deep knowledge of how.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
