Opinions on Frank Lloyd Wright? - Genius innovator or lifeless modernist?

[George Lucas]

I’m fascinated by the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, if only because he’s American, and so few American artists are as well-respected as their European counterparts.

There are aspects of his architecture I find fascinating, and other aspects that infuriate me. For one, his idea of using natural light is fantastic. But in practice, large picture windows create allow cold and heat to enter and make the environment less comfortable and more expensive to condition. His use of horizontal space is beautiful, but at the same time wastes space and leads to a requirement for more hallways. The exterior look of his houses are generally clean and angular, but can end up clashing with nature with their lack of curves.

I feel that he was a pretty good architect with interesting ideas, but not a genius, and many of his designs were ultimately flawed. There are things to like about him, but overall, he was too modernist yet fixed in the style of his time for his works to truly become timeless.

 

[The Ugly One]

Buildings that fail in their fundamental purpose because they spring leaks easily, can't be heated or cooled effectively, and fall apart, yet are held up as genius works epitomize everything wrong with mid-century architecture.

 

[888Flux]

Buildings that fail in their fundamental purpose because they spring leaks easily, can't be heated or cooled effectively, and fall apart, yet are held up as genius works epitomize everything wrong with mid-century architecture.

there are tens of thousands of architects who have contributed much more to the entire field yet have no name recognition. It is a cargo cult effect.

Humanity is undergoing a neural dampening ricochet collapse into cascading alterē failure and commodification of the mind

The end goal is to eliminate introspection and nullify quailia. From understanding your thought processes, or meta cognition, is the root of how you can change your behavior and habits. It’s the root of discipline as well. Without some sort of auxiliary thought process you cannot change your behavior.

This isn’t optimal for creating seamless economic units. Sociopaths and psychopaths don’t have this. They want algorithmic psychopathy.

In most people’s head there is just nothing. Flashes of picture that appear and are gone. Like thermal byproducts of dendrite activity. They do not think. They are the materialist’s archetype.

With no meta cognition comes no free will. And with no free will you are susceptible to any exogenous factors. An algorithm could control your life better than you could and you would never know.

This is where the status quo leads to. A great silence.

 

[Otterly]

I don’t like his stuff. It’s not got human proportions to it. The windows are completely impractical on any northern setting where you need to block the light during long summer days. The ceilings appear low and oppressive even though they’re not.
Give me an Oxfordshire parsonage of Georgian proportions.

 

[NevskyProspekt]

I think his attempts to create a truly American architectural identity - coupled with his organicist influences - were very interesting, and pleasantly contrasted with the hyper-minimalist and placeless white boxes of Le Corbusier or the outright fugliness of Brutalism. His works did often lack a certain practicality and elegance that truly vernacular American possessed. I admire his efforts however and his ideas were pretty innovative given the period in which he spent the bulk of his career.

 

[Otterly]

Those horizontal windows high up the wall.
Look lovely, but how do you put curtains on them? Don’t need curtains? No in anywhere northern you need curtains, or you’ll be going insane in summer when it’s light at 10:30 and light again at 4. Your adorable children will awake with the light and bounce into your room and insist that ITS MORNING MUMMY THE SUN IS UP and when you explain about seasonal day length and the tilt of the earth they will laugh and demand breakfast.
Anyone putting those high up small windows is a menace who has no business designing houses. They’re as bad as the ones who design houses with no pantries, laundry rooms or broom cupboards

 

[George Lucas]

Those horizontal windows high up the wall.
Look lovely, but how do you put curtains on them? Don’t need curtains? No in anywhere northern you need curtains, or you’ll be going insane in summer when it’s light at 10:30 and light again at 4. Your adorable children will awake with the light and bounce into your room and insist that ITS MORNING MUMMY THE SUN IS UP and when you explain about seasonal day length and the tilt of the earth they will laugh and demand breakfast.
Anyone putting those high up small windows is a menace who has no business designing houses. They’re as bad as the ones who design houses with no pantries, laundry rooms or broom cupboards

FLW would rely on exterior elements to block light, like trees. You can see this in his designs. Bedrooms face away from direct light, but have a lot of windows and rely on trees and other features to provide shade. He was from the Midwest so would have been familiar with long summer evenings. He was from a time period where candle transitioned to electric lamps, which at that time were dimmer than they are now. People relied on the sun more and were used to how it changed through the seasons.

 

[The Ugly One]

I think his attempts to create a truly American architectural identity

We already had one.


American identity is English rights + a dash of French daring + a lot of German work ethic, scattered across an endless frontier with oceans of space. Our architecture captured that perfectly before Frank Lloyd Wright showed up with his idea that "American" should be about cool-looking but useless piles of shit.