I live in a house inspired by FLW. It was designed & built by "student of a student" of Wright. My wive loves the designs and we've visited a few of his houses as we've traveled. As beautiful as they are, they are not really designed for the occupant. Generally, they lack storage, some spaces are awkward, and they are not very flexible with regard to living areas. They are neat, though, and my wife loves the lines of our home.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kadabujack,

Pictures would be nice

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
So a guy can get a 3,400 sq.ft. , F.L.W . Style home built today, someone could design it.

But!

Instead of that home being
$ 340,000.00 to erect,
The cost could very well be much closer to One million dollars ?

Is this what I am understanding ?

If a generic single-family tract-home in Iowa or wherever commonly runs, say, $150/sqft, anything reasonably resembling a Wright design will probably run you more like $300+/sqft, which comes from a mix of more expensive materials and specialized labor and higher design fees. Just the Landscape Architecture alone adds a lot.

Jethro's Winder Service won't be installing that sliding glass wall... and Bubba won't be the Architect.

Typically.

quote:

Originally posted by Kadabujack:
I live in a house inspired by FLW. It was designed & built by "student of a student" of Wright. My wive loves the designs and we've visited a few of his houses as we've traveled. As beautiful as they are, they are not really designed for the occupant. Generally, they lack storage, some spaces are awkward, and they are not very flexible with regard to living areas. They are neat, though, and my wife loves the lines of our home.

I'd love to see some photos.

He also produced a number of pre-fab kit homes in the early 1900s. They were sold thru dealerships. You picked one out, they brought out parts and put up a house in short order. WWI shortages killed the concept.

There are hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of prairie style ranch homes in this country thanks to FLW.

His influence became so mainstream that you don't even realize it his influence anymore.

Just because something isn't as extreme in it's design features does not mean that it isn't directly descended from him.

Every ranch home a low-sloping roof, wide eaves, casement ribbon windows, or a sunken living room is directly attributable to Wright's prairie style.

And I would absolutely disagree that it costs that much more to build in his style. Building materials matter way more to the cost than the style. You can have cheap ribbon windows or expensive ribbon windows. You can use real stone or fake stone. You can have 6' eaves or 4' eaves or 2' eaves. As I said, there are tons of brick ranch homes in this style. A lot of builders/designers also incorporate prairie style in their craftsman designs, which happens to be the favored style in the country right now. That's because many can't tell the difference... Google prairie style and you'll see a bunch of craftsman style homes.

quote:

Every ranch home a low-sloping roof, wide eaves, casement ribbon windows, or a sunken living room is directly attributable to Wright's prairie style.

That describes my house to a T. My hallways even have lower ceilings which tend to make the rooms the hallways open into look bigger. However, influenced by is not designed by and no one would confuse my concrete block stucco home for one designed by FLW. Building my home with natural materials and cantilevered concrete roofs as well as other FLW elements would cost at least 3 times what it cost General Development Corporation to build it in 1974.

My subdivision was marketed as Frank Lloyd Wright inspired. I think it is the best section, looks wise, in my neighborhood. I think he’s copied more than you think.

Wright's design philosophies were an inspiration for me in my prior life as an architect. Most of that was really due to his stubborn resilience in sticking to his guns when it came to a proposed design; he seldom if ever allow criticism and outside second-guessing to deflect "his vision". That in a nutshell is a designer's dream, to be able to build exactly his or her idea, however unrealistic and rooted in pure fantasy it actually is.

That said, many of his end products proved to be difficult to live in, with compromised usability and limiting functionality primarily due to his undying attention to aesthetics. He definitely would've hated the prototypical modern-day client, where customer whims and desires take center stage in any modern designer's program. FLW was not a man who would allow that to happen; as architects go, he was the proverbial "god" and by all accounts during his life he never failed to let anyone forget that, including and foremost the client.

An example: on the house Wright did for Edgar Kaufmann, the famed "Fallingwater" house, the client expressed concerns regarding the extreme cantilevered decks and overhangs that Wright had designed for home. On at least one deck, Kaufmann went behind Wright's back and instructed the contractor to build an additional support masonry wall to reduce the amount free span of that seemingly uncomfortable overhang. Kaufmann later on during a site visit confessed to Wright about the change he made. Wright then took Kaufmann out to this new wall and showed the client the "finished" product. Wright had himself seen the change previously and subsequently instructed the builder to hold the wall construction down a brick course or two so that this new 'support' wall was never actually in contact with the supposedly questionable deck structure above; all it was doing was supporting air.

Needless to say, the wall was taken down and removed once Wright made the client realize the error in his ways. Never question a god, especially if he's FLW. Fast forward decades later, and it turns out that Kaufmann may have been right all along as it seems that the construction practices of the era really weren't up to the task of doing proper concrete work to those sorts of outreaching structural extremes. There was insufficient reinforcing steel specified, and the manner in which the load bearing walls came down from above causes excessive bending on the first floor slab, causing the building to lean and in turn creating water sealing problems with the skylights and some of the windows in the affected areas. Even with today's standards and practices, it would be quite the challenge to build that structure to last in concrete. Most certainly it would have been engineered differently. But never tell Wright that, else he'd chew your head off and spit it out into the stream below.

Add that to the myriad of construction issues and problems that quite a few of his projects had (and previously mentioned in the thread), and it's rather amazing that he is as revered as he is. One of my professors back in architorture school served as a consultant on rectifying water infiltration problems on one of Wright's Illinois homes. I don't recall which one it was because he was bouncing around many problems found over several of his homes and building projects, but I do remember his tirade in class about how poorly detailed the exterior facade was in terms of keeping rainwater out of the building. Apparently proper flashing just upset the aesthetic balance of the roof design, or some such other beautification thing (snarky sarcasm in case you didn't realize).

Nowadays the fear of lawsuits and prolonged litigation will clear most architects of that sort of god syndrome.

Taliesin West has some pretty laughable detailing. Glass that abuts a masonry wall with no frame and a giant bead of caulk that has, of course, failed. Fortunately, it doesn't rain much in Scottsdale.

I lived in a Wright designed house for a year and a half, back in the 90s. Wasn't mine, sadly.

I used to remember how many bricks were in it, as it was carved into bricks in the attic.

I think it's one of those instances where, like tatoos, they look cool on other people but I won't want to be stuck with one.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I enjoyed looking at properties he designed when I lived in Wisconsin. He certainly built in unusual places. I did not realize that he was from Richland Center, Wisconsin. Having worked there, it explains a lot.

I have family in Richland Center, and when I get out that way, can't help but cringe at the A.D. German warehouse.
What a monstrosity, IMO.

On the other hand, he designed a row of houses on Milwaukee's south side that are amazing.

quote:

Originally posted by YellowJacket:
Taliesin West has some pretty laughable detailing. Glass that abuts a masonry wall with no frame and a giant bead of caulk that has, of course, failed. Fortunately, it doesn't rain much in Scottsdale.

Frank Lloyd Wright was far from perfect and some of his detailing was questionable. But, you can't blame all of the caulking at Taliesin West on him. Taliesin was intended as a camp and a lot of it was open air. The roof over he drafting room was originally canvas panels. Since it has turned into a year round facility, a lot of open areas were, "Glssed in" and things like the canvas roof panels were replaced with translucent fiberglass.

quote:

Originally posted by bendable:
Personally , I think his work is astounding and Why aren't people knocking his work off left and right ?

Short answer, it takes time and it's expensive.

Most of his work was very site specific and design intensive. A lot of us will never have the opportunity to afford a custom home so we get stuck with cookie cutter suburban homes that are cheap, quick and easy to build. And quite frankly most people never really think that much about architecture even though they come in contact with it every day.

Most people are not going to pay $5,200 for a single chair when they can buy one a plain mass produced one for a few hundred bucks.

https://www.shopwright.org/collections/chairs

That said, I've been fortunate enough to experience several of Frank Lloyd Wright's works first hand. It is an experience that goes beyond visual and takes in most of the senses. For example, at Fallingwater, one is always aware of the waterfall, even when you cannot see it you can hear it, you can feel it in the natural stone used in the walls and the floors, it really is a total experience.

When I first started in architectural school, I thought Taliessin West was one of the most butt ugly things I had ever seen, kind of like Bedrock on acid. Then I toured there and totally changed my mind. It was an experience where indoor and outdoor spaces totally blend together.

A lot of his designs pushed materials beyond what the technology of the time was capable of supporting. The Johnson Wax Building leaked like a sieve, no one had used glass in a building like that before and there just were not sealants available then that would be effective.

I was also very fortunate in that my first job with an architectural firm was with a small firm whose principal was a student of Wright's at Taliessin. Every now and then on a Friday afternoon he'd break out a bottle of scotch and tell us stories of, "Mr. Wright".

I admire a lot of Wright's work and respect his design ability. I've also been known to have a lot of fun with the docents at Taliesin West on tours when they start pontificating and worshipping him. It's always fun to ask questions like, "How many of his client's wives did he sleep with?"

If you feel like stumping up the $600 per night [for four] you can stay in the FLW house in Silverton OR. https://www.oregonlive.com/lif...s-only-frank-ll.html

We spent some time there having a guided tour and found it very much to our taste [thirty five bucks]. A friend of ours, here in UK, is a very-highly regarded of architect of contemporary housing for those a lot less poverty-stricken than us - his average build is around £2.2M [exluding land], and he looked long and hard at FLW and his contemporaries like Eero Saarinen and Walter Segal whilst studying. He opined that the Silverton house, built to modern codes, could be achieved for around $3.5M, given the land.

Me, I'm a great fan of Walter Segal and his post and beam method - cheap, too. There's a lot of his design actually lived in here in UK. worth a look? Definitely.

Frank Lloyd Wright had no degrees, either Architecture or Engineering.
Might explain some of the issues with his structures.

From Wiki...
took classes part-time for two semesters, and worked with Allan D. Conover, a professor of civil engineering... ...Wright left the school without taking a degree.

During the housing crash a house out in the sticks came up for sale that was designed by either a student, assistant, or coworker of his. It was not subtle either, no room for confusion as to what they were going after.

quote:

Originally posted by cparktd:
Frank Lloyd Wright had no degrees, either Architecture or Engineering.
Might explain some of the issues with his structures.

From Wiki...
took classes part-time for two semesters, and worked with Allan D. Conover, a professor of civil engineering... ...Wright left the school without taking a degree.

Everyone knows Engineers are generally bad Designers anyway.

Just as most Designers are terrible Engineers.

Funny how it works.

One that never got built. A FLW project, to rival Falling Water, that was to be built on a piece of land, Sea Cliff neighborhood,overlooking San Francisco Bay
https://architizer.com/blog/in...ater-2-morris-house/



The parcel was recently bought by the founder of Twitter for $12mil...he also bought the house next door for $22mil