She Wanted to Make Her Frank Lloyd Wright House Greener | Hacker News Reader

She Wanted to Make Her Frank Lloyd Wright House Greener

wsj.com

23 pointsvoisin34 comments

My understanding of FLW is that his houses are beautiful but impractical to live in. It would be great to see a comeback of his style if the problems with livability could be fixed, though in this case it seems like they couldn’t fix them all.

She was trying to make it "net zero". That is in no way a requirement to have a livable house.

Yeah but insulation is. 55 F with the furnace and fan at max is unreasonable. That's barely shelter.

> My understanding of FLW is that his houses are beautiful but impractical to live in.

That's the problem. These are art pieces that barely attempt to fit the role of suitable human living spaces.

A number of these houses flood, have structural issues, or develop mold problems. Some have been demolished due to their disuse and impracticality.

And many are owned by nonprofits, or ultra-rich people.

I wonder what the feasibility is, if funds are no object, of redesigning and building from scratch to create a replica built to modern standards vs rehabbing in place.

I met an artist who said he could paint me a Monet or Van Gogh or anything I wanted. A good imitator, in other words.

Provenance is all. Once you've lost that, you're competing with everything else out there.

She has inherited wealth. Money means nothing and she took no effort to be cost-effective. The roof work was reasonably priced, but the rest was vanity-priced.

It seems like she probably has inherited wealth but it doesn't actually say that in he article does it?

That would be gauche.

Intriguing, but frustratingly little detail in the slideshow of what the changes entailed, and to what degree the could preserve the historic character while modifying the building envelope.

If you hit “Read More” it opens a full article with more detail.

Direct link to article: https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/net-zero-frank-...

FLW is my favorite architect, ever since I first saw Fallingwater as a kid. Back in 2016, I was in the market and found an incredible albeit somewhat run down home built by one of his understudies. The sellers had it built in 1970, and it hit a lot of familiar notes: long, rectangular, vaguely Japanese aesthetic nestled into a niche in a ravine that overlooked 6 acres of fairly unspoiled nature, angled just right to let light scoop down to all three levels, which of course were 100% glass on two sides and a good portion of the other two. It also leaked like a sieve, drafts coming in around all the panes, the ceiling, and had moisture everywhere. It didn’t have AC, and the owners admitted they couldn’t afford to go on heating the place despite it breaking their heart to leave it. At the end of the day, it would have prohibitively expensive to fix up, try to combat the heating and cooling issue, and I feared would require so many changes to the aesthetic of the house that it just wouldn’t be the same. On top of that, it had an almost non-existent kitchen (I read somewhere that is common in Wright design philosophy, which his student clearly took to heart with this house), and bathrooms awkwardly built into the central support columns that felt more like dungeon pits my partner and I would guarantee slipping and falling in… but I digress.

Anyways, I think about that house a bunch. So many incredible, charming homes that are becoming impractical, if they weren’t right off the drawing board but where past energy costs were low enough they could make the dream work. The house I ended up buying is from 1951 with much more traditional construction, but we’ve still been putting an assload of money (for us, at least) into making it more sustainable and comfortable… but it still just isn’t there yet. Yet I am loathe to just start knocking stuff down.

Must have been some AC bill to balance $800,000 of renovations.

$300k on the AC/heat portion, but that included switching from a gas furnace to geothermal (and all the equipment that entails), reinforcing the basement (for that equipment), adding ducting for more efficient airflow through the house, and some other things.

She also spent a lot to replace windows (single pane originally) and to fix a leaking roof. And this has to be done while preserving the character of the home. If this were a home you could gut, you might be able to do all this for less or more quickly since less care would be needed to preserve the original elements.

And the motivation were things like not being able to get the temperature above 55ºF in the winter with the furnace running constantly. That probably won't get $300k in savings over any reasonable period (her lifetime), but it does make it habitable. It will probably also increase the value of the home by a good amount for the next time it's sold. ("Hey, you can actually survive here year round now!")

> And the motivation were things like not being able to get the temperature above 55ºF in the winter with the furnace running constantly.

Well, that was the impetus, but the motivation was definitely to make an ecological point - which, to be clear, I’m for, but there’s no part of this that pencils out for $300k solely on the money. Taking a work of art like that house and making it net-zero energy while preserving what makes it so special would have been a hell of a feat.

I might have even been in that house, since I was in one FLW house that he lived in.

He wanted to be open to nature, not be insulated from it. Taliesyn in Wisconsin was uninhabitable in winter. So this is an obscenity. If you buy a FLW house, you should know what you're getting into.

A house that is uninhabitable in winter is not fit for purpose; it would be a work of art, not of architecture. Any architect who builds impracticable houses should expect their subsequent owners to fix the problems as best as they can. The alternative is usually that the building falls into disrepair, because how many people can afford to own an entire building just for its looks?

Unless you’re FLW and you built a work of art and it’s not fell into disrepair because it’s a work of art.

It is completely fit for purpose. That was an era of millions of rural and lake cabins built for a season or two and not intended for year round habitation. There are many of these in rural areas and now we have problems with people wanting them to be year round when the seasonal infrastructure is from the 50’s.

And as far as FLW was concerned, it was art, and you were just being given the luxury of living in it.

It's right in the Chicago metro area, not off on a rural lake.

Oak Park in the 19th century was not quite as urban as it is now.

This house was built in 1911, the population was over 20k which puts the population density at the time at over 4000 per square mile. That's not exactly rural.

The current population is only at 54k or so now.

It was built in the 20th century.

Well, Lake Michigan adjacent in winter has always been considered uninhabitable by millions.

"Terraform Chicago!" I always say.

FLW was a genius. That's why people still know his name. What are your credentials?

The Johnson Wax HQ in Racine, WI was an FLW building, and is still in use, year round. I've actually been in it. They had to do a lot of work to make it leak-proof and (I assume) weather-proof.

Many (or even most) of his buildings are operated by non-profits, and the maintenance costs have always been enormous. You don't buy a Monet because the colors go with your couch.

> A house that is uninhabitable in winter is not fit for purpose

Is not an opinion that needs expert credentials.

Just an uninformed one.

Like saying Jackson Pollack just splashed paint around.

very relatable article... I guess it would be too much for WSJ to ask how a typical millenial is making their lives greener.

WSJ paywall renders a blank page, no content.

The actual article is at https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/net-zero-frank-...

https://archive.is/4mHXg

https://archive.ph/lI13N

pro tip: go to archive.ph and enter the URL. For most big sites, it's already been archived.

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