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Comment by rsanek | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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