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

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

nytimes.com

34 pointstintinnabula52 comments

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.

"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)

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.

We have a nice mix in our house of main rooms (living, dining, kitchen, office) separated by large archways instead of just no walls at all.

All the benefits of open floor plan, with seemingly large square footage, but most of the benefits of doorways, with separate spaces.

I don't know why more houses aren't built like this one.

I grew up in a house with a separate dining room, kitchen, and living room. I now have an open floor plan, and you'll only be able to take it from me from my cold, dead fingers.

If you want privacy or quiet, there are other options in the house. Living room, dining room and kitchen are all social spaces for me, and the only separation I have between any of them is a very slight inset wall essentially forming a massive arch between the living and dining room.

I wouldn't want it any other way.

Edit: FWIW I'd prefer to not have the arch between the living and dining room, but the dining room was added on by a previous owner so it wasn't exactly an option.

Hard disagree, having used both I exclusively want everything as open as possible. The only exceptions are for bathrooms and maybe bedrooms (but honestly I like open lofts better).

Open is wildly more useful and more flexible. If you crave a room, put up a couple bookshelves. And I agree with zdragnar: every space is a social/community space in my house, so the easier the access and movement is, the better. And it's not for parties (I'm really not a fan of parties), it's just for normal living.

E.g. my house right now has a wide open upstairs bedroom and we've just divided it up to add an office. Which we've adjusted several times to make it just like we want it to be. Because we can, there aren't walls and doors to limit either space, and it's fantastic.

> Open is wildly more useful and more flexible.

It's very much a matter of personal preference. I prefer individual rooms

- Kitchen and living/family room together means that someone doing the dishes (or the dishwasher running, depending on your model) can make enough noise that using the living/family room (for something like watching tv, but also reading) can be difficult

- Bedrooms without doors lack privacy

- Office without a door lacks the ability to block out noise when on calls (or just trying to focus)

- Office and bedroom together (without a wall) makes it harder for someone to sleep while someone else is working

Clearly, open works for some people, but it's definitely not for everyone.

Open plan houses are the noisiest places to be. And for some reason the same people who like open plan houses also hate carpet and love high ceilings. Meaning you get the plate reverb effect on everything you do. How living in a place like that doesn't give you tinnitus I'll never know.

The general strategy to avoid this is to have fabric walls and/or ceiling drapery. It cuts noise down to normal house levels, because yeah, if you leave everything bare it's just an echo chamber.

Loud sounds leak through still of course, but echoes and background clatter drops off extremely quickly. Particularly if you use two layers.

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.

https://archive.is/AYlsC

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

Lie down with dogs....

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

>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 :(

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

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).

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.

OP was musing, the Illinois was a proposed/concept skyscraper by Wright.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illinois

https://archive.ph/XXjyK

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

> It feels equally futuristic, classic and organic -- elemental, even.

This is a great description. Thanks.

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.

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.

I hate the arrogance as well… but, I’ve watched shows of homes built by renowned architects and some their clients have a special ability to accommodate the architects’s eccentricities. They’ll point out some odd and queer things with pride —and how they keep the oddities despite how impractical or inconvenient they prove. It’s like the clients get off on that themselves. It’s really weird.

The only profession more full of arrogance than architecture is orthopedic surgery.

Unlike the failed artists and engineers who build little dioramas out of cardboard and model railroad scenery, surgeons merit the arrogance.

To reach your maximum safe annual dose of arrogance-by-proxy, just watch a single documentary covering what all of the architects who decided to become "urban planners" did to the fabric of society in the 50s and 60s because they thought that poured concrete hellscapes were beneficial to mankind and that they knew better than the sum total of all of humanity.

The wealthy can be into that kind of ... abuse. Jay Leno explains why he doesn't own a Ferrari.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUPOvcolNZg

Highlight: https://youtu.be/VUPOvcolNZg?t=96

Context is a big part of it. He died in 1959 at 91, so everything he worked on is old at this point much of it well over 100. People have copied and improved on many of his ideas, but it’s a mistake to judge historic buildings based on modern practices.

Natural light is wonderful in a world with AC and modern windows, but the first residential AC was installed in 1931. Structures that could keep you cool where still a big deal when most of his buildings where constructed. Which fed into the idea of building a building for the location, prevailing wind and weather patterns mattered more.

I believe other engineers were concerned about the Fallingwater cantilevers at the time of construction and in the end they were correct.

Indeed, they recommended much more steel reinforcing than Wright’s design, and what got built was somewhere between the two.

AIA has a pretty detailed history of it here: https://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/1016/1016d_falli...

I dunno, it sounds like Wright had the concrete done in 1935 and it was 60 years later that "forensic evaluations revealed fatal developing conditions in the late 1990s.". Like after 60 years you can only detect a problem when you bring out tooling (but not an actual failure!)?

I might be no architect but I always hear the comment that "anybody can design a building that stands but it takes an engineer to design a building that just barely stands". It really sounds like Wright correctly designed a building that just barely stands and the rest of the people are too worried about his success.

The engineers of his day and his client both raised concerns. This is the first I've heard that engineers build to barely last. Maybe that's true in software. I hope to hell that it is not true for homes, cars, roads, bridges, aircraft, and spacecraft.

Durability isn’t free. No reason to build for 30,000 years when needs change over time.

Public infrastructure like bridges are designed to predictably decay over time so they can be maintained or replaced if they are still useful. Just look at the NYC subway system there’s tons of old tunnels that just aren’t useful today, they didn’t collapse but they still became obsolete and that’s inside a major city which kept it’s subway system.

Fallingwater had problems with water leaks from the start. He was essentially the Frank Gehry of his age.

It's called "beauty." If you don't have an eye for it, well, that's your taste. You aren't going to convince anyone with utilitarian arguments, any more than "those shoes are uncomfortable!" will convince anyone to wear sneakers instead of high heels or wingtips.

I've been to both Fallingwater and the Johnson Wax building. They're both beautiful.

> Many of those houses have required work as well

and the owners were quite happy to do that work. I don't think anyone hired FLW expecting to get a regular old tract house.

> Many of those houses have required work as well.

He was constantly pushing the boundaries in materials and technique, so it's not terribly surprising that 100 years later there is a lot of repair needed.

But if you think you don't like his work, then I have something for you to check out. Next time you are in Chicago, walk into the lobby/atrium of the Rookery Building (in the Loop at the corner of LaSalle and Adams). He was hired to do the renovation, and it is magnificent.

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.

> 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...

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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