people

• Frank Lloyd Wright newsbites

  

  Bits and pieces of Frank Lloyd Wright ephemera, some new and some only newly brought to my attention:

  • Cliff Hickman, a Santa Barbara-based architect who builds contemporary homes (often on hillsides) very strongly influenced by Wright’s later work;
  • the companion site to the PBS / Ken Burns & Lynn Novick Frank Lloyd Wright: Life and Work film;
  • a film documenting the restoration of Wright’s Heurtley House is finally available on DVD;
  • a DVD which includes a number of never-before released interviews with Wright – speaking to none other than a young Mike Wallace in 1957 – is available from PBS; and
  • Wright’s take on the Southern plantation – South Carolina’s Auldbrass, now owned by movie producer (and Ultimate Frisbee inventor) Joel Silver – will be open for visitors for only two days on this coming November 12 and 13 (read a reprinted New York Times article hosted on the University of Missouri – St. Louis site regarding its restoration).

  pictured: Google’s special Frank Lloyd Wright logo, made for his birthday (June 8).

• Edwin Lutyens

  

  A greatly admired craftsman whose masterworks contrasted – at least in the public imagination of the time – with his somewhat unorthodox public persona and his terrific sense of humor, Edwin Lutyens was an architect, furniture designer, populist and great joke-teller. Often said to be the single person most responsible for the planning and construction of New Delhi’s entire city center (and the master plan that was followed in that city well into the 1970s), Lutyens is perhaps best known today for the Viceroy’s House, a particularly impressive landmark which is now the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of the President of India. Lutyens is also responsible for St. Jude’s, one of the prettiest churches in the UK . Dozens of his finest structures still stand today in London and elsewhere. His influence to the Arts & Crafts movement is, unfortunately, often under-reported. His skill at integrating monumental scale and classical motif with the simple and straightforward, and his tremendous respect for the craftspeople who worked under him and a very strong belief in the importance of craft and handwork frequently made its way into the details of his buildings. Candia Lutyens continues the family business with her design firm in London today; she specializes in building many items of furniture designed by her grandfather, work that was shadowed by his more well-known skill as architect.

• ellsworthstorey.com

  Born in Chicago in 1879, Ellsworth Storey grew up to become one of the most important architects of Seattle. He was influenced very strongly by the Arts & Crafts movement (Frank Lloyd Wright’s own Chicago Arts & Crafts Society was instrumental in Storey’s early socialization as an architect), but integrated a a wide variety of European and North African styles into his work. The strong influence of the Swiss chalet-style home is especially noticeable in many of the Seattle residences he designed.

  Recently, Hillel decided to document his own passion – the Ellsworth Storey house he owns – and his recent hobby, the life and work of the man who built it. If you live in the Northwest, you probably already know about Storey’s influence and have seen some of his houses; if not, take a few minutes to visit ellsworthstorey.com and learn about a tremendously underappreciated American craftsman.
   

• Wright’s Carr Home Destroyed

  On November 8, an 88-year old Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house in Grand Rapids, Michigan was demolished to make room for a new single-family home. The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy would have preferred to save the home from demolition, but not made aware of the demolition plans until after the building had been torn down. According to Wright scholars and others who examined the property, however, the house was in especially bad shape and restoring it would have been a very serious undertaking. William Allin Storrer, author of The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion, said of the property:

  The building deserved to be torn down,
  and crying over its destruction brings to mind the story of the
  shepherd boy who cried ‘wolf’ once too often. We must
  preserve that of Wright which truly represents his organic
  architectural principles, and the W.S. Carr house did not even when
  built, though it had the master’s signature on the plan.
  

  photograph: Kevin Byrd / Associated Press / Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy

• A new Frank Lloyd Wright unveiled

  All you FLW fans can now buy your own space in the Blue Sky Mausoleum – completed just 76 years after the fact.

• Wright’s Imperial Hotel, Tokyo

  

  Lowell Prescott has a few very nice large images of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs for his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (built 1915, demolished in the ’60s) at this page.

• Experience Wright This Fall

  
  When it comes to Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture nothing takes the place of visiting in person and experiencing his environments first hand. I will never forget the first time I visited Fallingwater after years of studying photos and models. It’s the scale of the buildings that is most striking. I maintain that any Wright building you have seen in pictures is about 60% the size you think it is.

• Two Tours

  When I lived in Berkeley, there was a big storm one night. The next day I noticed that a huge branch had fallen off one of my favorite oak trees in a place called Live Oak Park. City workers were cutting up the beautiful piece of wood, which was at least 5 feet in diameter at the widest point, into cross sections using a chainsaw. It seemed a waste of such a great piece of wood. I asked them if I could have a few sections, they said sure, so I loaded a few chunks into my truck.

• Remembering Fay Jones

  We have noted the passing of E. Fay Jones last week at age 83. I was deeply saddened by the news  and full of memory of my one brief encounter with him (read on below).

• E. Fay Jones

  E. Fay Jones, FAIA died yesterday at his home in Fayetteville, Arkansas at age 83.

  Born in 1921, Euine Fay Jones studied architecture at the University of Arkansas and at the University of Houston. He apprenticed under Frank Llloyd Wright in the Taliesin fellowship before starting his own Fayetteville practice. He was the recipient of the AIA Gold Medal in 1990. Jones was probably best known for his elevating chapels assembled out of numerous thin pieces of wood, such as the Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas and the Pinecote Pavilion at the Crosby Arboretum in Picayune, Mississippi.

  A good biography with links to books and other sites is available in his Wikipedia entry.