Quote: 'Why It's Okay To Like Ornament'

"[Louis] 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 of her book/article 'Why It's Okay To Like Ornament,' quoting Michael Lewis

"This greatest feature of [Louis Sullivan's] 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

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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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A Cathedral of Sport

How to begin designing a stadium? An early concept sketch here by Daryl Jackson for the Great Southern Stand at the MCG reveals the inner structure of this Cathedral of Sport.

"There should,” he says, "be a sense of arrival at the outside ticket box, a celebratory progression to one's designated seat, and the anticipation of spectacle."

And so there is ....

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. See: great architecture appreciates.

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

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Q: 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

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Quote of the Day: "I finally got why architects spend as long as doctors getting an education"

Burridge-Read Residence designed by architect David Boyle

“People say ‘location, location, location.’ They never say ‘design, design, design.’ I finally got why architects spend as long as doctors getting an education. They do something really magical. They don’t save lives but they enhance them.” 

~ Tim Read, owner of the Burridge-Read Residence (above), quoted in the article 'Selling architect-designed homes: real estate agency that markets on architectural merit not location'

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