Frank Lloyd Wright: Midway Gardens

 

Hypnolysis has animated old photographs to produce a "live" photographic walkthrough of Frank Lloyd Wright's European-inspired indoor/outdoor concert garden with space for year-round dining, drinking and performances. Built near downtown Chicago. Midway Gardens was a delight, creating a home for sophisticated pleasure-seeking and playing host to many of the early swing bands like Count Basie and Benny Goodman (who was 'discovered' while playing the Gardens in 1926). 

But the timing was rotten, the complex completed just a few years before the wowsers brought in Prohibition, closing large drinking establishments and handing booze profits to gangsters. 

Wright at least had the satisfaction of hearing that two demolition companies had gone bankrupt demolishing the beautiful structure.

Happy 100th Birthday, Roland Reisley!

 

Roland Reisley turns 100 today! Roland (above) is the last original client living in the house he commissioned from Frank Lloyd Wright.

He attributes his longevity to the house he commissioned nearly 75 years ago — enjoying every day the nature of the design, seeing the seasons change, how the light passes through the home."

I came to realise after many years … a pinch-me realisation, that after many years there had not been a single day of my life, even the bad days that happen in every life, where I was not aware of seeing something beautiful. I always, every day of my life, [am saying] ‘isn’t that lovely’ — whether it’s … in the morning I look up and see the way the wood is mitred in certain places, and how it contrasts with the light through the window which is either nice and green fro the trees or white with snow; and I could go on with similar awareness. “We sit outside (in summer-time) … and look around and say ‘isn’t it beautiful!,’ ‘isn’t it wonderful!’ — every day, every time…
    Neuroscientists have observed … that living with a sense of awareness of beauty brings a sense of comfort, a reduction of stress, and these other kinds of things, that may contribute to physical and emotional health, possibly even longevity. I’m 93 years old! I’m in very good shape for 93 years old. I like to attribute that to this sense of beauty that I’ve lived in all my life.
    It also has made me very conscious, as I talk about this house and the architecture and how it makes me feel, of the importance of the built environment generally. “I remark these days not just to visitors but to architects as well: ’You know, these buildings are just objects. We may like how they look, we may not like how they look, but what matters is how they make us feel. When we’re in this environment, does it feel good, does it [make us] feel better, does it feel enriching. And that may or may not coincide with whether we like the way it looks. I think Wright understood that, and he created environments in which people feel good.

Happy birthday Mr Reisley.

Bastiat’s Buildings: "But will unplanned development be *beautiful*?"

Why are housing prices so high? 'Supply and demand' is true but misleading, because draconian regulation drastically constricts housing supply. In his exciting new nonfiction graphic novel, economist Bryan Caplan makes the economic and philosophical case for radical deregulation of the housing industry. Deregulation turns out to be a bona fide panacea: a large rise in housing supply would raise living standards, reduce inequality, increase social mobility, promote economic growth, reduce homelessness, increase birth rates, help the environment, and more. Combining stunning visuals and careful interdisciplinary research, 'Build, Baby, Build' takes readers to a world where people are free to build―and shows us how to get there.

But many NIMBys will still say 'there are beautiful old neighbourhoods we need to protect,' or 'valuable coastlines that we shouldn't pollute with any building.' In this excerpt, Caplan notes that today’s governments strictly regulate skyscrapers — but the beloved skyline of New York City was largely built under near-laissez-faire conditions. And that today’s planners strictly protect historic buildings, but deny us any chance at something new and unthought of (and instead mandate places like Albany and Manukau, while living in the leafy unplanned inner-city suburbs they now write rules to protect ... )

Bastiat’s Buildings: Why I Wrote a Graphic Novel about Housing Regulation

by Bryan Caplan

The Cato Institute has just published my Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation. The book is a non‐​fiction graphic novel. Think of it as the comic book equivalent of a documentary. Together with illustrator Ady Branzei, I combine words and pictures to give readers a tour of housing regulation, with a focus on how government restricts the construction industry, and what would happen if the restrictions were lifted.

About fifteen years ago, Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe opened my eyes to the high potential of graphic non‐​fiction. Gonick’s books capitalise on the adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” to teach history quickly. They use beauty and humour to hold readers’ attention. And though they look like comic books, they’re carefully researched.

In Build, Baby, Build, I try to emulate Gonick’s virtues. The book distills a vast empirical literature into a few critical lessons. Lessons like:

• US housing regulation roughly doubles the cost of housing.
• Besides making housing much cheaper, deregulation would increase productivity, equality, social mobility, environmental quality, fertility, and safety.
• The standard arguments in favour of regulation are both overstated and one‐​sided.

But what finally convinced me to make this book a non‐​fiction graphic novel was my realisation that what drives much, perhaps most, support for housing regulation is aesthetics. Economists focus on cost‐​benefit analysis, but normal people are more likely to ask themselves, “Will development be beautiful?” — then confidently answer, “Absolutely not.”

Faced with such attitudes, economists tend to facepalm in frustration. My reaction, though, is remember 19th‐​century French economist Frédéric Bastiat’s classic essay, “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.” Writing in 1850, Bastiat explained that people focus on the obvious direct benefits of government, while ignoring the severe yet non‐​obvious harms. When government subsidises universities, for example, people rarely ponder, “What else could have been done with the money?” When government denies permission to build, similarly, we never actually see what would have been built if permission were granted. This makes it easy for critics to visualise the ugliest possible outcomes.

The epiphany that convinced me to write Build, Baby, Build: Instead of trying to argue people out of their aesthetic pessimism, I should use the graphic novel format to fight aesthetics with aesthetics — to show readers the beautiful unseen world that government forbids. And that’s why the fifth chapter of the book resurrects the great Bastiat as a co‐​narrator. After we explore his classic insight on “the seen versus the unseen,” Bastiat joins me on a guided tour through a deregulated world. Which lets me showcase a world that is not merely richer than the status quo, but more aesthetically pleasing as well.

For example, regulators often forbid construction in areas famous for their natural beauty. But why assume that construction would tarnish natural beauty rather than amplify it? Take a look and see for yourself:

To my eyes — and hopefully yours — the bottom panel is more, not less gorgeous than the top panel. And while you can fairly point out that these are fantasy drawings, they are inspired by real life. Who really aesthetically prefers the largely desolate California coastline to the awe‐​inspiring towns of Italy’s Amalfi Coast?

Or the decidedly pleasant but anadorned Bear Run River to the same river with a house by Frank Lloyd Wright showcasing its beauty, and now hosting hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.

The same lesson holds for so many of forms of housing regulation. Today’s governments strictly regulate skyscrapers. But the beloved skyline of New York City was largely built under near‐​laissez‐​faire conditions. Today’s governments strictly protect historic buildings. But construction of these historic buildings often began with the demolition of an earlier beloved building. The original Waldorf‐​Astoria Hotel really was destroyed to make room for the Empire State Building. That’s what I call building “the history of the future.”

Built in 1936

In a critique of my first book, philosophers Jon Elster and Hélène Landemore accuse me of being willing to use almost any rhetorical strategy to get my points across. While they overstate, they’re on to something. Once I’m convinced that my arguments are sound, I strive to sell them. Straightforward logic and evidence are fine, but so are thought experiments, appeals to common sense, humor, and beauty. 

False modesty aside, I think Build, Baby, Build is a beautiful book. If you like the visual samples I’ve shown you, I think you’ll agree.

* * * * 

Bryan Caplan is an American economist and author. Caplan is a professor of economics at George Mason University, research fellow at the Mercatus Center, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, and former contributor to the Freakonomics blog and EconLog. He has published in the American Economic Review, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Law and Economics, Social Science Quarterly, the Journal of Public Economics, the Southern Economic Journal, Public Choice, and numerous other outlets. His book, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (2007), was published by Princeton University Press and named "the best political book this year" by the New York Times. Bryan posts frequently at his blog, Bet on It.

His post first appeared at the Cato at Liberty blog.

Buy his comic book at Amazon in both paperback and e-book.

“Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.” #QotD

Frank Lloyd Wright in 1938, presenting a model of his Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma

“Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.”

~ Frank Lloyd Wright, America's greatest architect, born 153 years ago this week [hat tip Price Tower]
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"Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall." #QotD

"Bureaucrats: they are dead at 30 and buried at 60. They are like custard pies; you can't nail them to a wall."
          ~ Frank Lloyd Wright

[Hat tip Jeffery Small.]

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"Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.” #QotD

“As we live and as we are, Simplicity - with a capital "S" - is difficult to comprehend nowadays. We are no longer truly simple. We no longer live in simple terms or places. Life is a more complex struggle now. It is now valiant to be simple: a courageous thing to even want to be simple. It is a spiritual thing to comprehend what simplicity means.”
          ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, from his book 'The Natural House'

[Hat tip Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple Restoration Foundation]

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QotD: "The complete architect is master of the elements: earth, air, fire, light, and water. Space, motion, and gravitation are is palette: the sun his brush. His concern is the heart of humanity."

"The complete architect is master of the elements: earth, air, fire, light, and water. Space, motion, and gravitation are is palette: the sun his brush. His concern is the heart of humanity." 

        ~ Frank Lloyd Wright, 1949

[Hat tip to and photo from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation] 

Happy Christmas -- from Frank Lloyd Wright and us!

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright used to send out his poetic Christmas message every year. So I do too. 
He called it “Man the Enlightened Being.”  “The herd disappears and reappears," says Wright's message, "but the sovereignty of the individual persists." What better time of year to take time out to reflect on that.* 

 Literature tells about man. Architecture presents him. The Architecture that our man of Democracy needs and prophecies is bound to be different from that of the common or conditioned man of any other socialized system of belief. As never before, this new Free-Man’s Architecture will present him by being true to his own nature in all such expressions. . .
    With renewed vision, the modern man will use the new tools Science lavishes upon him (even before he is ready for them) to enlarge his field of action by reducing his fetters to exterior controls, especially those of organized Authority, publicity, or political expediency. He will use his new tools to develop his own Art and Religion as the means to keep him free, as himself. Therefore this democratic man’s environment, like his mind, will never be style-ized. When and wherever he builds he will not consent to be boxed. He will himself have his style.
    The Democratic man demands conscientious liberty for himself no more nor less than he demands liberty for his neighbor. . .
    Whenever organic justice is denied him he will not believe he can get it by murder but must obtain it by continuing fair dealing and enlightenment at whatever cost. He will never force upon others his own beliefs nor his own ways. He will display his social methods to others as best advantage as critic or missionary only when sought by them.
    His neighbor will be to him (as he is to himself) free to choose his own way according to his own light, their common cause being the vision of the uncommon-man wherein every man is free to grow to the stature his freedom in America under the Constitution of these United States grants him.
    Exterior compulsion absent in him, no man need be inimical to him. Conscience, thus indispensable to his own freedom, becomes normal to every man. . .
    Remember the men who gave us our [American] Nation. We have ‘the Declaration’ and our Constitution because they were individualist. Great Art is still living for us only because of Individualists like Beethoven. We have creative men on earth today only as they are free to continually arise as individuals from obscurity to demonstrate their dignity and worth above the confusion raised by the herding of the common-man by aid of the scribes and Pharisees of his time—quantity ignoring or overwhelming quality. The herd disappears and reappears but the sovereignty of the individual persists. . .

Read on here for Frank Lloyd Wright's full message: “Man, the Enlightened Being,” and have a great individualistic holiday season.

And remember this useful advice about responsible holiday drinking: Don’t underestimate when you’re at the bottle store. When there’s serious celebrating to be done, it would be irresponsible to run out.

See you next year!!

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* [Note that by the word ‘Democracy’ Wright did not mean “a counting of heads regardless of content”; what he meant by the word was simply: Freedom.]

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Quote of the Day: 'Why It's Okay To Like Ornament'

"Sullivan’s ornament never feels as though it is imposed from without. It does not feel applied.
Instead, his ornament really does manifest what 'organic' is actually supposed to feel like, 'as though the outworking of some beneficent agency had come forth from the very substance of the material and was there by the same right that a flower appears amid the leaves of its parent plant.'”
~ Barbara Lamprecht, from Part IV her book/article 'Why It's Okay To Like Ornament,' quoting Michael Lewis

"This greatest feature of his work was esoteric. Is it any the less precious for that?
    "Do you realise that here, in his own way, is no body of culture evolving through centuries of time but a scheme and 'style' of plastic expression which an individual working away in this poetry-crushing environment ... had made out of himself? Here was a sentient individual who evoked the goddess whole civilisations strove in vain for centuries to win, and wooed her with this charming interior smile -- all on his own, in one lifetime too brief.
... Although seeming at time a nature-ism (his danger), the idea is there: of the thing not on it; and therefore Sullivanian self-expression contained the elements and prophesied organic architecture. To look down on such efflorescence as mere 'ornament' is disgraceful ignorance. We do so because we have only known ornament as self-indulgent excrescence ignorantly applied to some surface as a mere prettification. But with the master [Sullivan], 'ornament' was like music; a matter of the soul..."~ Frank Lloyd Wright writing in his book Genius and the Mobocracy about the only man he ever called his Master

Frank Lloyd Wright, and the importance of the built environment

Listening in this weekend to the Wright Society Virtual Summit (you all could be too, you know), I'm really enjoying hearing Frank Lloyd Wright's clients talking about their homes, and their lives in and around them.

Roland Reisley was just 26 years old when he joined a housing cooperative in Pleasantville, New York, able to commission Wright to design the community and several of the houses, including their own. "We didn't dream of approaching Frank Lloyd Wright, ordinary people don't do that," smiles Reisley today, 67 years later. But when the community founder showed Wright the site thus began "a wonderful, long, productive and happy relationship with him."

Asked what he has learned after a lifetime of living in and enjoying his Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian home — enjoying every day the nature of the design, seeing the seasons change, how the light passes through the home, Reisley sums up with a very important observation about what essentially makes good architecture:

I came to realise after many years … a pinch-me realisation, that after many years there had not been a single day of my life, even the bad days that happen in every life, where I was not aware of seeing something beautiful. I always, every day of my life, [am saying] ‘isn’t that lovely’ — whether it’s … in the morning I look up and see the way the wood is mitred in certain places, and how it contrasts with the light through the window which is either nice and green fro the trees or white with snow; and I could go on with similar awareness.     “We sit outside (in summer-time) … and look around and say ‘isn’t it beautiful!,’ ‘isn’t it wonderful!’ — every day, every time…
    Neuroscientists have observed … that living with a sense of awareness of beauty brings a sense of comfort, a reduction of stress, and these other kinds of things, that may contribute to physical and emotional health, possibly even longevity. I’m 93 years old! I’m in very  good shape for 93 years old. I like to attribute that to this sense of beauty that I’ve lived in all my life.
   It also has made me very conscious, as I talk about this house and the architecture and how it makes me feel, of the importance of the built environment generally.     “I remark these days not just to visitors but to architects as well: ’You know, these buildings are just objects. We may like how they look, we may not like how they look, but what matters is how they make us feel. When we’re in this environment, does it feel good, does it [make us] feel better, does it feel enriching. And that may or may not coincide with whether we like the way it looks. I think Wright understood that, and he created environments in which people feel good.

Not a trivial point.

[Pics from the Wright Society Virtual Summit Guide, and The Weekly Wright Write-Up]
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Lykes House, by Frank Lloyd Wright

Officially the last house that Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed, this 280sqm house for the Sonoma Desert in pre-airconditioned Arizona was completed after his death by apprentice John Rattenbury, working from the master’s sketches — and adding both a pool, and an upstairs office.

The lounge, this great space, looks over the desert to what is now the city of Phoenix, its lights twinkling in the distance of an evening.

And it’s all yours (well, it could have been) for just $3.6 million.

[Hat tip The Wright Attitude. Pics from Aguilera + Guerrero and Marc Leslie Kagan]

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Question of the Day: What is organic architecture?

"Organic architecture is an architecture from within outwards — in which entity is the ideal. … Organic means, in a philosophic sense, entity. Where the whole is to the part and the part is to the whole. Where the nature of the materials, the nature of the purpose, the nature of the entire performance becomes a necessity and out of that comes what significance you can give the building as a creative artist."
~ Frank Lloyd Wright, from his interview (above) with Hugh Downs

Frank Lloyd Wright | HOW TO SEE the "American Home"

More from Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s’s important ‘Unpacking the Archives’  exhibition, unpacking the 150 years of archives of architect Frank Lloyd – this video (part of a series) unpacking yet another delightful series of artefacts.

This snippet: a brief introduction to Wright’s presentations, over several decades, of systems for ‘The American Home.’

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Frank Lloyd Wright | HOW TO SEE Davidson Little Farms Unit

More from Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s’s important ‘Unpacking the Archives’  exhibition, unpacking the 150 years of archives of architect Frank Lloyd – this video (part of a series) unpacking yet another delightful artefact.

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Frank Lloyd Wright | HOW TO SEE his Mile-High Tower

As part of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s’s important ‘Unpacking the Archives’  exhibition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work comes this video, part of a series …

Examine the original drawing of Frank Lloyd Wright's Mile-High Tower (the drawing itself measuring over eight feet long!) with MoMA curator Barry Bergdoll, and learn why clues left on the drawing have led Barry to view this piece from the archives as the great architect's last autobiography.

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Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: ‘Unpacking the Archive’

This to me is far more important than any election: Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) celebrating the work of Frank Lloyd Wright 150 years after his birth.

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the most prolific and renowned architects of the 20th century, a radical designer and intellectual who embraced new technologies and materials, pioneered do-it-yourself construction systems as well as avant-garde experimentation, and advanced original theories with regards to nature, urban planning, and social politics. Marking the 150th anniversary of the American architect’s birth on June 8, 1867, MoMA presents Frank Lloyd Wright at 150: Unpacking the Archive, a major exhibition that critically engages his multifaceted practice. The exhibition comprises approximately 450 works made from the 1890s through the 1950s, including architectural drawings, models, building fragments, films, television broadcasts, print media, furniture, tableware, textiles, paintings, photographs, and scrapbooks, along with a number of works that have rarely or never been publicly exhibited. Structured as an anthology rather than a comprehensive, monographic presentation of Wright’s work, the exhibition is divided into 12 sections, each of which investigates a key object or cluster of objects from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives, interpreting and contextualizing it, and juxtaposing it with other works from the Archives, from MoMA, or from outside collections. The exhibition seeks to open up Wright’s work to critical inquiry and debate, and to introduce experts and general audiences alike to new angles and interpretations of this extraordinary architect.

Exciting!

Here's the lecture/interview celebrating what’s been and being unpacked.

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Rivendell et al, by Laurie Virr [updated]

 

Architect Laurie Virr has lived and worked in Canberra most of his life, where he has been something of an apostle for organic architecture, especially that practiced by Frank Lloyd Wright.

His first house in 1969 was (and still is)

an unusual Canberra example of the late twentieth century organic style of architecture based on a triangular module. The house was Laurie’s first commission in Canberra and displays the themes he would explore in his residential projects over the next three decades: the use of massing, geometric forms and deep roof overhangs in an energy efficient, solar house.

His own house, dubbed Rivendell and designed in 1975,

is an outstanding example of the late twentieth century organic style with its massing, use of geometric forms, deep roof overhang and energy efficient design. The successful implementation of a complex geometric plan based on a hemicycle is unusual if not unique for a mid-century Canberra house. The house has been published many times, in the U.S.A., Europe and Australia. Inexplicably, it is relatively unknown in Canberra.

The roofs and brick masses of Rivendell, looking north towards the Mount Taylor Nature Reserve

 

Convinced that government-financed housing had been a disgrace rather than a grace to the Canberra landscape, he set out to prove what was possible --

to design a house no larger in area than welfare housing of that time, 102.4m²,  but one in which the siting, the exploitation of space, the massing, the concern for the environment, and the details, expressed in unequivocal terms what I considered to be architecture.

Dining area of another Laurie Virr hemicycle, at Valla Beach, New South Wales

 

Taking his brief from his wife (no architect should deliver his own brief, he reckons) and allowing the site to suggest the house that could deliver it, he began a study of hemicycle houses, first designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the second Jacobs House, and designed this passive solar masterpiece for him and his growing family. Taking his cue from Louis Sullivan’s edict to “take care of the terminals and the rest will take care of itself” he held the public spaces of the hemicycle between the orthogonal cavity brick masses housing retreats, servicing spaces and study.

The French doors and stationary glass on the north face of the house encompass an arc of 90^o [he explains], making it an architectural expression of the problem. This is also exemplified by the walls that define the terrace and mark the extent of the glazing.

Courtyard of Laurie Virr design at Murrumbatemen, New South Wales

 

Built with his own hands, he has lived and worked there –very comfortably -- ever since.

There are just two people living in the house at this time and it is comfortable for us, but there was an occasion when 56 folk gathered within and there was room for all.

Beautiful!

[Images from Laurie Virr’s site, Canberra House, and Wright Chat. Cross-posted at the Organon Architecture Blog.]

NB: UPDATED 15 Jan to add corrected captions.

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Fallingwater

 

Does this animation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s ‘Fallingwater’ (set to Smetana’s ‘Moldau’) ever get old?

No, I don’t think it does.

 

Fallingwater from Cristóbal Vila on Vimeo.

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Aaron Lee Ward House

 

Frank Lloyd Wright apprentice Aaron Lee Ward designed this house for himself, north of San Francisco, almost fifty years ago.

A nice place to be.

Yours for just US$2.25 million.

Story by Curbed. Photos by Sotheby’s International Realty, where for a short time only you can take a virtual tour.  (Try it – see how many things you can find that would be illegal today!)

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Rose Pauson House, by Frank Lloyd Wright

 

One of my personal favourites designed by Frank Lloyd Wright is the delightful little desert house he designed for Rose Pauson that was sadly destroyed by fire not long after its creation.

It does make a beautiful ruin, but a tech whiz at the Hooked on the Past blog has reproduced it virtually with the aid of AutoCAD and a bit of trickery. What you see here is not reality, but his rendering:

Wonderful!

Head here to see it all, including the story of the virtual creation.

[Pics by Hooked on the Past, Wright Chat]

UPDATE: A comment at the Save Wright site describes my own response:

Is it only the "lost" status of this house that attracts me ? I don't think so. A wood and masonry vessel, romantic and strange, angular and alive, with a timeless approach and a unique means of ingress. . .it speaks to me. The separation of functions, the interior pathways, the elevation of dining above the living level, the uncanny canted lapped board construction. . .

It’s an evocative little number. Subsequent comments at the site try to understand why.

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