Saturday, March 22, 2014

How to Be an Architectural Genius Like Frank Lloyd Wright

Hee hee:


8 comments:

golden geese news said...

Excellent! Now that's the Aaron Clarey that I have come to know and love. This goes a long way towards redeeming yourself from your previous post. Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the MOST OVERRATED people to ever walk the face of the earth. He was a completely immoral bastard,and his only contribution to architecture is the 'Pizza Hut' design. Who knows what Pizza Huts would have looked like if it wasn't for the "great" Frank Lloyd Wright.

Kristophr said...

Evil and iconoclastic.

I approve.

Anonymous said...

Yes, he's 'overrated' and was an 'immoral bastard', as your first commenter said. But...give him credit for two big things.

First, he introduced a better designed floor plan to the greater public. He got rid of the boxes-next-to-boxes floor plan that was all that most people had ever seen in a private home. His new interior naturally influenced the elongated 'prairie-style' exterior look. It is great to be able to stand in your kitchen and look left, over a bar counter height barrier and see the dining room, and then look right, across a similar height barrier to view the living room. It's a wonderful, spacious feeling interior for a family to live in.

Second, he was the first prominent public figure to call 'bullshit' on the abstract painters of modern art. He designed the Guggenheim building where that kind of art is displayed, but he mocked the artists and called their works 'finger painting'.

So good on him for those two things.

Anonymous said...

I,m not sure which documentary you saw but, I think you should watch this one: Frank Lloyd Wright: A Film by Ken Burns & Lynn Novick. It's on Netflix. If you watch this one you will see the man in whole new light, warts and all.

Anonymous said...

Yah! Frnk Lloyd Wright had one talent which you lack: he got paid for making his shapes.

Glen Filthie said...

HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR! JFC! HAR HAR HAR HAR!!!!

Archive that vid and keep it handy, Cap.

I can just see you pitching your consulting company in a posh executive board room with that vid as part of your presentation!

Speaking of which, you should seriously consider marketing. You have real potential.

Keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

Hilarious, made me laugh out loud a lot. Definitely on point there

-Edwin

Steam said...

Western architecture started with the Etruscans and the Greeks, and then flowered for two-thousand of so years up until the early 20th century, when the profession decided to throw out all of the knowledge that had been built up and start over again, from scratch. The result is some of the most asinine "architecture" ever devised.

Contemporary "architecture" continues this nonsense. Such architects will lambast those that like to design in the classical tradition, saying they are being reactionary, regressive, "against progress," etc...but that is incorrect. They are just designing real architecture.

Classical architecture doesn't have yet much in the way of modern styles yet (like a classically-themed building that would be appropriate for an airport for example), but that is because the profession stopped advancing the field in the early 20th century. Had they kept advancing it, with new materials, construction methods, etc...we would have contemporary architectural styles that are very clearly grounded in the Greek and Roman architecture but yet are also clearly contemporary. We'd have a whole 20th century's worth of this stuff and now be advancing it further into the 21st.

There has been somewhat of a backlash against contemporary architecture and a re-rise of classical architecture over the past few decades. This especially started in the early 1980s, when Prince Charles of England called BS on the modernist architecture.

The architectural profession is incredibly snooty about itself though, and likes to look at classical architecture as being just a reactionary phase some are going through. You will also tend to find that those that admire contemporary "architecture" tend to be of a left-wing political persuasion, while those that like classical architecture are of a more right-wing persuasion.

A very interesting phenomenon that I have found is that many modernists will rage about designs done in classical styles as being "Disney-esque" or "utopian." One description I heard of for towns designed in classical styles is "toy town utopia." The modernist movement disdains any kind of architecture that is colorful, upbeat, ordered, etc...to them, such architecture represents a utopian, childish mindset (this is based on their own misunderstanding of the subject). The same is found in art. Note the disdain for Thomas Kinkade's colorful artworks, but drop a cross of Jesus Christ into a jar of urine? Fine art.

The thing is though, is that in everything else, these same leftists are very utopian in their thinking (socialism, government programs can fix everything, everyone can have healthcare, etc...).