Lou Kahn: Heroic Genius

Lou Kahn was born today in 1901.

I wrote a little bit about him in this post from 2011.  I don't have much more to add to the volumes that have been written about his work, except to say that he's a personal favorite of mine, and definitely holds a place of honor in my Pantheon.  If documentaries are your thing, you might enjoy My Architect, the documentary film about Kahn, his architecture, and his complex private life, made by his son Nathaniel. It is quite personal and touching, and is one of my favorite architectural documentaries.

Here in SoCal, we are very lucky to have one of the very best of Kahn's masterpieces, the Salk Institute. After Jonas Salk cured polio, he built a massive research institute along the coast at LaJolla. According to the Salk Institute website,

The Salk Institute was established in the 1960s by Jonas Salk, M.D., the developer of the polio vaccine. His goal was to establish an institute that would explore questions about the basic principles of life. He wanted to make it possible for biologists and others to work together in a collaborative environment that would encourage them to consider the wider implications of their discoveries for the future of humanity.

Jonas Salk had a distinct vision for the Salk Institute as he worked with scientists and architects to create a new paradigm for research and collaboration.

In December 1959, Salk and architect Louis Kahn began a unique partnership to design such a facility. Salk summarized his aesthetic objectives by telling the architect to "create a facility worthy of a visit by Picasso." Kahn, who was a devoted artist before he became an architect, was able to respond to this challenge.

Last summer, I got to spend a little time at the Salk, during an outing from OCON.  We spent a leisurely hour and a half or so, wandering around the outdoor passageways and courtyards.  Although the building is most famous for its epic main courtyard and orientation to the Pacific Ocean, I find the most compelling part to be the complex layering of spaces comprising the stairwells and balconies around the researchers' private studies.

So, without further ado, here are my pictures from that day (the first and last were by Eric, and the rest were mine.)

 

John Lautner Tour: Schwimmer House, 1982

Note: Nearly a year ago, there was a big to-do for John Lautner's 100th Birthday (and deservedly so, I must say). I toured 4 of his houses in L.A. and intended to blog about them all, but only 2 posts got finished.  The third post was started but never completed; now I have finished it.

I didn't want to completely re-write the beginning, so I am just appending this note at the top.

To see all my posts on Lautner, click here.

Strange in a Good Way

For the first time ever, in the entire history of the Universe as I have known it, I have a place outside my house where I can go for no other purpose than to do my own work.

My work.

I can't tell you what a thrill this is.

My friend Ana posted on facebook several weeks ago about an upcoming vacancy at Strangeways Academy. Strangeways is a shared studio-workspace in Chinatown that she started with some other graphic designers a few years ago. It's not fancy; it's a small storefront with 6 identical desks, behind each of which is a single Homasote panel for pinning stuff up on the wall. In the front there is a conference table, but that area converts, via some clever moving walls, into a gallery space where they have exhibitions from time to time.

I had gone to some of their gallery openings and events in the past, and had looked longingly at Ana's previous facebook postings of vacancies there. Finally, the timing was perfect. My work has picked up, and and the summer is turning out to be pretty busy for me. In fact, I'm relatively confident that things are even somewhat secure (to whatever extent that word has any meaning at all these days), probably though the end of the year (fingers crossed). So, when Ana posted about the upcoming vacancy, back in May, I expressed interest.  Then I had to go out of town and the whole thing was back-burnered for a bit.

After a few weeks went by and the workspace was still available, I met her down in Chinatown for lunch one afternoon and we went over the particulars. The next step was a meet-n-greet lunch with the other studiomates, which happened on Friday, June 8th.  The following Monday I moved in.  


Some of the Strangeways folk also teach, and some also have other full- or part-time employment or consulting they do elsewhere, so it's rarely a full house. I generally have the place to myself, especially in the mornings.


I'll continue to settle in there over the coming weeks.  I plan to bring these shelves that I made for behind my desk, and I'll populate my Homasote panel with some inspiring images and such. Even without those things, having a place without the distractions of home, where I can just focus on my work, is bliss.  And, I can walk from my house down to the Highland Park stop on the Gold Line and ride it down to Chinatown, where the station is only a couple blocks from the studio.  From there, I can also take the metro to my gym, which is on the other side of Downtown (although I haven't tried that yet).

Another plus is that Strangeways is dog-friendly, although I haven't met any of the other studio dogs (except for Ana's dog Gus, whom I had met previously).  Paul and Daisy came here with me one evening last week, and I think that Daisy still needs a bit more civilizing before we make that much of a habit. I found a place in my neighborhood with great Yelp reviews for obedience training, so after I return from OCON (woohoo!) we'll get started on that.

Here it is:

Right next to the herbal foot reflexology joint on Jung Jing Road!  Stop by and say Hi!

Celebrating Frank Lloyd Wright's Birthday, 2012 Edition

Last year I inaugurated my Birthdays of the Great Ones series on this date with Frank Lloyd Wright.  I enjoy the little inspirational boost I get from this series. (Looking back, I guess I didn't post as many of these as I added to my Google Calendar. Hopefully I'll be better at it in the coming year.)

And now a year has gone by, and we're back around to Mr. Wright.  Here are a few links on Wright and his work for your edification and Friday enjoyment.

ArchDaily has a nice little piece on Wright today with a lovely photo of Fallingwater surrounded by colorful autumn leaves.

Here is an enjoyable lecture by historian Robert Twombly, discussing the relationship between Wright and his mentor Louis Sullivan. I listened to this on the plane back from ATLOSCON.  It's about an hour long. As I recall, the audio is a little rough at first, but it gets better after a minute or two. He does an good job of fact-checking a lot of the dates and assertions put forth by Wright regarding his relationship to and work for Sullvan, and has an interesting take on Wright's moonlighting and subsequent firing from Sullivan's office.

Of course there's always Wikipedia's entry on Wright for the relatively brief overview of his long career.

He didn't get a Google Doodle this year, but he got one in 2005, which you can see here. I can recognize the Larkin Building (I think, in yellow), the Guggenheim, and of course Fallingwater. I don't quite see what the little cube next to the red O is supposed to be.

Lastly, you can also check out my posts from last year, where I posted a YouTube video of Wright from the early days of television, and some photos from my visit to Fallingwater a few years ago.

ATLOSCON 2012 Wrap-Up

Over Memorial Day weekend I had a great time in Atlanta attending (and presenting at) ATLOSCON, the mini-conference of the Atlanta Objectivist Society. I also presented a seminar on how modern architecture is much more than just blank white minimalist boxes, which is what I think most members of the general public think of, if they think of modern architecture at all. My talk was both well attended (over 40 people, about half of the total conference attendance! WooHoo!) and very well received.

The few weeks leading up to the conference, I was completely deluged with work, and the week immediately prior, I came down with a bad sinus infection. All of this combined to make getting out of town in any kind of reasonable way almost impossible, and I nearly missed my flight. I gave up on preparing my remarks in advance, and decided to just skip half a day of the conference to do it in Atlanta. That part worked out pretty well, and, combined with the fact that I can stand in front of a room full of people and talk about architecture all day long anyway, meant that I was in good shape by the time it was my turn to present.

But before I get ahead of myself, let's briefly recap the whole weekend.

I flew in on Thursday, arriving at around 3:00. Tom picked me up at the airport and we we went back to our hotel. We had arranged to split a room and a car, which all worked out very well. I needed the car because I had another architectural agenda for the weekend besides my talk: visiting and photographing the Peachtree Center and its adjacent hotels in downtown Atlanta, all of which were designed by the architect John Portman.

Thursday night was the conference meet-n-greet event, and it was like a homecoming for me in many ways.  I had gotten to know many of the ATLOS folks when I was in the area (sort of) building the Tennessee House. That was almost 2 years ago! It was great to see old friends again and begin to get caught up in person (which is so much better than Facebook and the blogs, although they are better than nothing). The highlight of my evening was meeting Lynne Bourque and her husband Stephen. I have known them online for a while, and they are every bit as great in person as I had expected them to be.

Friday morning I discovered that the local public library was next door to the rec center where the conference was held, which made it extra easy to cut class and work on my talk, while still joining everyone for lunch. The rest of the day I had 3 seminars, which were "What's So Darn Special About Firefly?" with Kelly Elmore; "Design Thinking" with Tim Cheadle and Tori Press; and "Wine and Cheese? Yes, please!" presented by Maggie Roberts. All of them were fun and engaging, and a good time was had by all.

That night I got busy polishing my talk for the next day, and decided in the process to scrap all the slides I had prepared earlier at the library, and devote my entire talk to John Lautner's architecture. I realized that since I had tons of photos of some excellent examples of his houses, both from the tour I took last summer and a couple of events I had participated in since, I would show those. The photos really did deserve a wider audience, and they fit my talk perfectly, which was titled, "Style and Individualism in Modern Architecture". You will be hard pressed to find a more individualistic architecture than Lautner's, and I had around 8 very good examples of his houses (some of which I still need to write up for the blog), ranging from his early career in the 1940s to as late as the '80s. By the time I pulled it all together and appropriately revised my introductory remarks, I finally made it to sleep by around 2am.

Saturday morning rolled around and I was up extra early re-editing and revising, and deciding which shirt to wear for my talk.  Before I presented I attended Miranda Barzey's talk on "The Importance and Value of Personal Style" which I enjoyed, although I was mostly focusing on my notes for my talk, which was next. (We were a little late to Miranda's presentation because Tom let his GPS talk us into going to the wrong Starbucks (#firstworldproblems) which I bring up here in the spirit of not being ready to let him live it down.)

Then it was my turn! The room was packed and I was a little nervous at first, but then I was fine once my own enthusiasm for the work took over.  They audience was responsive and engaged, and asked great questions along the way. I had floor plans for some of the houses, and one person remarked to me that he started to glaze over at first, when the first plan drawing flashed onto the screen, but that when I started pointing out specific features of the house in plan and linking them to the photos too, that it really came alive for him. Also, he observed that others in the audience were having a similar experience. I had many comments afterward that a) my enthusiasm was infectious; and b) that people in general had no idea that modern architecture could be so interesting!

I can't express how happy it makes me that I took a bunch of people who were pretty much ambivalent at best with regard to modern architecture and showed them a beautiful and interesting side to it that they didn't know existed previously. It just doesn't get much better than that.

That afternoon I had 2 more seminars: "The History and Science of Five Classic Cocktails" with Trey Peden and Tori Press; and "Maintaining Rational Optimism" with Paul Hsieh. That evening was the big party at the Casey House, where I had a great time mingling, meeting new people, and talking about the events of the weekend.  It was great to unwind and relax with a great group of folks, once my presentation was out of the way.

Sunday morning I headed to downtown Atlanta to check out the Peachtree Center and its hotels by John Portman. Portman pioneered the big open atrium lobby style of hotel (with glass elevators going up and down in the big atrium lobby).  This model is somewhat common today, but never existed at all prior to his 1967 Hyatt Regency, which is one of the three hotels by him in downtown Atlanta that I got to see on this trip. They were doing work on the roof and skylight but it still looked pretty great:

I also saw the Westin and Marriott Marquis, both of which were amazing, but I have to say that the Marriott rises above amazing to the level of stunning. I'll discuss these buildings in  more detail in the future, since I'm out of time today. Suffice it to say I have my subject matter for next year's ATLOSCON talk, likely to include a walking tour!

The rest of my Sunday afternoon included the OHomos panel discussion with myself, Tom, and Trey; and "Exploring Ayn Rand's Theory of Concepts" presented by Stephen Bourque.  The panel discussion was lively and consisted largely of coming out stories and questions from parents or future-parents about gayness and kids. Stephen's talk was just getting interesting when he unfortunately ran out of time, but he had some interesting observations on the topic.

It's hard to decide which aspect of the conference I enjoyed most, between seeing old friends, giving my talk, and seeing the Portman buildings.  Let's just call it a trifecta weekend of awesomeness.

Big shout out to Jenn, Kelly, Miranda, and the ATLOS-folk who put together such a great and fun conference!

The Auditorium Building - Additional Images & Tour Info

Since it's less than two weeks until the Big Tour of the Auditorium Building, as well as the Louis-Sullivan's-Birthday-Edition of my talk on Viollet-le-Duc, Sullivan and Wright, and I'm in full-on final prep mode this week. I'm also very excited!

If you have no idea what I'm talking about with this tour, here's the deal: I'm leading a tour of one of the greatest extant works (the Auditorium Building) by the Godfather of Modern Architecture (Louis Sullivan), on Friday, September 2nd, starting at 2 pm.

The Auditorium Building is now owned by Roosevelt University, and we will be visiting several spaces that are part of Roosevelt that aren't generally available on a walk-in basis to the general public. We will also be seeing some spaces that are viewable on a walk-in basis, as well as visiting the Auditorium Theatre in a private, specially-arranged group tour.  All in all, we will be seeing as complete a picture of the entire building as one can have, and we will see Sullivan's architectural genius on full display.

To kick off the week, I thought I'd post a few additional pictures of the Auditorium Building from my visit there last month.  Let's start off with some of the Roosevelt University portions of the building that are not part of the Auditorium Theatre itself.

John Lautner Tour: Harpel House, 1956

The next house I bring you from last weekend's Lautner Tour is the Harpel House.  Nine years after the Jacobsen House, we can see that structure is clearly a major theme in John Lautner's work. Harpel displays his ongoing interest in developing a fully integrated and expressed structural system, for each project, as an important architectural value.

Harpel is located a few miles west of the Jacobsen House, just down Mulholland and on the opposite side about a block. From the road, there is a long driveway that goes uphill to a level pad where the house sits. You can get a pretty clear picture of the siting of the house from the Google Satellite view:

The Harpel House is the white bar at the lower right.  The octagon to the left is Lautner's famous Chemosphere, aka the Malin House. The small white circle just below the Harpel House is a Futuro which is apparently being restored by the Harpel's owner.

We weren't allowed to photograph inside the house, so I'll give an exterior tour and describe a few things I liked about the inside, using the floor plan for visuals.

John Lautner Tour: Jacobsen House, 1947

Last weekend I had the wonderful treat of participating in the special tour of John Lautner-designed homes that was jointly put on by the MAK Center and the John Lautner Foundation.  The whole thing was done in celebration of what would have been Lautner's 100th birthday on July 16th of this year.

I present them here in the reverse of the order in which I saw them on the tour, for a couple of reasons. First, by reversing the order, I will roughly present them in a chronological sequence from earlier career to later, which I think makes sense with this particular group of projects. Second, it makes little sense to lead with Sheats/Goldstein, since everything is pretty much anticlimactic after that.

One more introductory note: the MAK and Lautner folks who organized the tour did a great job, and produced a booklet for the tour with information about the houses. In my blog posts in this series, all the images are my own photographs, with the exception of one or two archival photos from the booklet, and the Lautner drawings which I scanned from the tour booklet.

The Jacobsen is on Multiview Drive, just below Mulholland Drive, overlooking the San Fernando Valley above Studio City and Universal City.  Multiview is a pretty good street for architecture; Schindler's wonderful Kallis House, with its butterfly roof and quirky stone fireplaces, is nearby on the same side of the street.

This is an early-career project for Lautner, dating from 1947.  According to Wikipedia, he had left Frank Lloyd Wright's employment and gone off on his own by that time, although he did not finally obtain his own architecture license until 1952.

So, this house is the work of an unlicensed individual who would have found himself in violation of California law had he have claimed to have been an architect. Ahem. Don't get me started.

The other houses on the tour were better concealed from the road; this house reveals itself pretty directly to you as you walk up the driveway:

A Little Pre-tour Lautner Fun at Curbed LA

I had a look at Curbed LA this morning to see if there was anything on there about the Lautner Tour, and I wasn't disappointed!

Curbed rarely disappoints.

Earlier this week they posted a neat little video of appearances by Lautner homes in movies. It's good fun, and they even included the sort-of appearance of the Chemosphere house on the Simpsons. Two houses from the tour are shown here, the Jacobsen and Sheats/Goldstein houses.



They have more info about the houses in the video over at Curbed.

Also don't forget to keep an eye on my live tour update posts, starting in a couple of hours, by following me at:
(pick one)
twitter.com/earl3d
earl3d.tumblr.com
facebook.com/earl3d.

I may even throw in some good stuff that's not even part of the tour!

Follow my Live Coverage of the John Lautner Home Tour

I'm very excited about the tour I'm participating in tomorrow, of 4 private homes designed by the great modern master John Lautner.

For the benefit of you, my readers (and because its fun!) I'm going to be covering the event with updates and photos throughout the day, through the magic of social media:

Twitter: follow me at twitter.com/Earl3d for updates with links to photos.
Facebook: friend me at facebook.com/Earl3d
Tumblr: Check out my new Tumblr blog for photo updates throughout the day at earl3d.tumblr.com.

I'll be posting the same updates to all 3 sites simultaneously, so don't feel like you have to keep track of all 3.

The Tumblr blog is going to be a bit of an experiment for me. Thus far, I'm thinking of it this way: Creatures of Prometheus is going to remain my primary blogging outlet for more thoughtful analysis, carefully written essays, photo essays, and the like; whereas I'll use the Tumblr blog for briefly captioned mobile uploads and live-tweeting (live tumbling?) or live-blogging of events that will benefit from lots of photography.

I also plan to take my trusty Nikon D-90 on the tour and get lots of 'good' photos of the houses too, and write up separate blog posts for each one, as I described the other day. One thing that throws a little wrench into this plan is that they have forbidden any photography at the Harpel House. Perhaps they will allow some exterior photography there. In any event, I can bring my sketchbook.

I got my ticket and wrist band in the mail today,

and my itinerary is as follows:

11:20 am- 12:00 pm Sheats/Goldstein House
12:05 pm - 12:45 pm Schwimmer House
1:35 pm - 2:05 pm Harpel House
2:15 pm - 2:45 pm Jacobsen House

Also, the Schindler House on Kings Road will be open all day, with free admission for tour-goers, so I'll likely stop by there after the tour, on my way home. That should be a great way to decompress, collect my thoughts, and contemplate the events of the day.

Touring Louis Sullivan's Auditorium Building at COS MiniCon

In the period of a few years between 1887 and 1889, a 30-year-old Louis Sullivan, aided by his 18-year-old assistant Frank Lloyd Wright, conceived and built the Auditorium Building at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Congress Parkway in Chicago.  The building is a tour-de-force of Sullivan's genius, and is generally considered to be among his greatest works.  I'm thrilled to be presenting a special tour of the building as part of the Chicago Objectivist Society's MiniCon, this coming Labor Day weekend.

The Theatre was (and is) renowned for its acoustical perfection, among other technical innovations that amazed theater goers when the building was new. It was the first building to employ a system of central air conditioning, the first to be lit exclusively with incandescent light bulbs, and and it is often cited as the first mixed use building, as it contained not only the Auditorium Theatre, but also a hotel and rental office space.

When most people (of those who are aware of it) think of the Auditorium Building, I would venture to guess that their minds typically go straight to the Theatre, and rightly so.  The Theatre itself is the crown jewel of the building, after all. But, there is a lot more to the Auditorium Building than just the famous Auditorium Theatre.

Mid-year Accomplishments for 2011

It's good to stop what you're doing periodically and review the positive accomplishments in your life.

A couple of months ago I posted on how I was finally feeling back to my old self after a period of months of unforeseen setbacks and troubles.  Well, as it turns out, it wasn't as easy as just 'snapping out of it' and going back to my previously robust self.  There have continued to be good days and bad days.  But, overall, I've managed to gain and/or keep the upper hand for the most part, and the stock chart of my life has, in fact, continued in a generally bullish trend.

Now that the year is slightly over half over, and lest anyone (I'm mainly talking about myself here) think the first 6 months of 2011 were a wash, I want to stop, take a timeout, and acknowledge some of my actual positive accomplishments from the first half of the year.

(This is the part where I get all fidgety in my seat and want to go to the kitchen for a snack or bottle of water or something.  Maybe I should go let the dogs out to run around in the front yard.  In fact, maybe the plants on the front porch need watering while I'm out there.  And while I'm at it, the tomato plants on along the driveway need some attention too.  See?  I could just go on all day like this.)

Where was I?  Oh, that's right.  My actual positive accomplishments from the first half of the year.

Let's see.

Celebrating John Lautner's 100th Birthday

Periodically, I sit down and avail myself of the Googles and Wikipedia to find birthdays of great architects and designers I admire.  I add them to my calendar, with the intent to blog my own little celebrations of them as they roll around throughout the year.

If you have any suggestions for me to add to the list, please feel free to chime in, in the comments.

There haven't been any for a few weeks now (of the ones I've added to my list thus far). Today we have a big one to celebrate.  Today marks the Centennial of John Lautner's birth.

Lautner was one of Frank Lloyd Wright's more illustrious proteges, and has a special place in my personal Pantheon. Lautner wasn't just another good architect.  He was an incredible visionary and innovator.

Rather than go on at length about Lautner's career, as the Wikipedia article linked above does, I'm keeping it short today, but don't worry, there's much more to come.

This summer, the John Lautner Foundation is holding a whole series of events to celebrate, including a tour next weekend of private Lautner homes in the L.A. area.  I bought my ticket this morning, and couldn't be more excited.  The tour is a little pricey at $100 but worth every penny, IMO.  You can get yours here.  Join me for the tour!  I'll have my camera with me and expect to take lots, and lots, and lots of pictures.

I plan to do a separate post for each house on the tour.  The tour includes (links are to Google image searches for each house) the Harpel House (1956), Jacobsen House (1956), Schwimmer House (1982) and Sheats/Goldstein House (1963/1989).

Stay tuned!  And raise a glass to the genius of John Lautner today!

Lou Kahn + Some Thoughts on Drawing

Architecture.  Making buildings.  Hopefully, with enough effort, the building will be worthwhile in the end. I'll stand there and admire it, and hopefully get to take a few photos of it, before turning it over to the owner. Maybe I will get to return and visit from time to time. Sometimes projects are far away, and you may not get the opportunity to go back, ever.

When you look at a particular building, all you can see is the finished product. There are no semi-erased lines on the floor showing where the walls would have been, before the architect revised the plans. Architecture is a process that leads to a product. To the viewing public, there is only the product. But to the architect, it is all about the process, and once the process is complete, the architect moves on.

One of the things I enjoy most about teaching drawing to young architects is that the process of creating architecture is fundamentally based on drawing. It's what we do. Novelists write, painters paint, architects draw.

Drawing is the primary means by which we communicate our ideas. When the students pin up their final designs for critique at the end of the semester, I think it's important to point out the examples of students who have design concepts that are beyond their ability to depict via their drawings. This gives me the opportunity to give one of my favorite mini-lectures: That your ideas are only as good as your ability to communicate them. It doesn't matter, in the end, how brilliant your ideas are, or how brilliant you think they are. If you can't communicate them with the world in an intelligible way, you fail. 

We also draw to study the world around us. This type of investigative drawing is similar to, but distinct from, design drawing. There is an exhibition running through July 1 at Lori Brookstein Fine Art, in New York, of some drawings by the great architect Lou Kahn.  The drawings on exhibit are sketches from his travels, of the 'investigative' type.  They strike me as being much more about the process of investigation and discovery, than about having anything to do with making a picture to be framed and hung on a gallery wall. The gallery has the exhibit available online; I encourage you to click through the link and check it out. Better yet, go see it for yourself if you can.

I think if more people saw drawing as a process of investigation and discovery, and less about trying to make a particularly nice looking picture (and by whose standard, anyway?) you would see more people out and about with their sketch pads and pencils in hand.  Drawing is a language of communication -- whether you are projecting your own fantasies to show others, or privately exploring the world around you. Each of us has a unique, individual voice, which can only be discovered by taking pencil or pen in hand and doing the work.

Imagine how the world opens up to an adult who is illiterate and then learns to read and write. I would argue that there is a similar expansion of one's life available to the person who is willing to make the effort to discover his own visual voice, and learn to use it to express himself.

Strange Architectural Dream #541

Last night I dreamt I was touring around in, and investigating, a small Gothic cathedral.  In the dream, I was disappointed to discover, upon careful examination from all angles, that it was not Notre Dame de Paris.

The cathedral portion of the dream was depicted entirely in sepia tones.

Also, there were hot tubs and bad guys involved at some point.

That's all I can remember.

Frank Lloyd Wright on What's My Line

As we continue our celebration of Frank Lloyd Wright's birthday:  Here is a clip of Wright that I found on YouTube.  Wright appeared on the game show What's My Line on June 3, 1956.

It's a little long but very fun to watch.  I love how he signs his name on the chalkboard at the beginning.

Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was born today in 1867.

Wright's design philosophy was heavily influenced by his association with Louis Sullivan, as well as the writings of the French architect Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.  These two originated the idea that architecture must be grounded in, and exemplary of, the highest and best aspects of the technology and culture out of which it arises.  

Viollet-le-Duc came first; Sullivan further developed his ideas, originating the well-known formulation, "Form Follows Function".  Without their fundamental guiding principles, Wright might have been a talented designer, but would not likely have reached the heights he did in his career.  I describe the philosophical link shared by these three giants in the talk I gave recently at ATLOSCON, and which I will give again at the Chicago Objectivist Society's conference this coming Labor Day weekend.

As a celebration of his fabulous contribution to my very Top Value, I offer a few snaps of my visit to one of his greatest achievements, Fallingwater.  The house was completed in the late 1930s, while Wright was in his late 60s.  When most people would be at retirement age, Wright was in his prime.

The Pantheon, Rome

Another great building that I could write a whole extensive field trip post about, and may yet do someday, is The Pantheon in Rome.  It has such a rich history, and is one of my favorite buildings.

For today, I'm just posting a single, composite picture of the interior of the Pantheon.  I took this on my last trip to Italy, in 2004.

Click to embiggen, and enjoy!

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power

Los Angeles is a city in a desert.  It's easy to lose sight of that fact.  Given the context, however, it's pretty easy to see that, in such a place, Water and Power are pretty much synonymous.  Years ago I thoroughly enjoyed a book called Rivers in the Desert, which is an historical account of the land-and-water-rights grab perpetrated on the people of the Owens Valley, and subsequent development of the aqueducts by William Mulholland.

I am rather sympathetic to Mulholland, inasmuch as he was a self-trained, uneducated man, who eventually achieved tremendous feats in the area of hydraulic engineering and civic infrastructure.  Of course, the above mentioned land grab was an abhorrent violation of the property rights of the people of the Owens Valley, and I don't mean to diminish that.  But I digress.

Sometime in the '50s and/or '60's the LADWP built a lot of really nice looking modernist facilities all around town.  The iconic DWP Headquarters was built around this time, but there were also a number of substations and the like constructed, that have a coherent visual identity all their own.  Said identity includes smooth concrete walls, thin stacked modern brickwork, and bronze lettering set off of the face of the building on posts.  If you do a google image search under DWP station, or DWP substation, or DWP distributing station, you can see a few examples (although I was disappointed that there weren't more.  I should get out there and take more snaps of these).  Some are more modern, some are more neo-traditional, but almost all of them share the bronze lettering in common.

If you pass by just at the right time of day, you get this:

or this:

or even this:

One of the lovely things about Los Angeles is that, even for all the smog, we do have fabulous light.  *sigh*

Sullivan Sketches

Tonight I fly out and leave L.A. behind.  This weekend I'll be in Atlanta for ATLOSCON, where I'll give a talk about the origins of modern architecture.  One of the central figures of my talk, and indeed of modern architecture itself, is Louis Sullivan.  Frank Lloyd Wright is also in my talk as is Eugene Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc.  I greatly admire all three, but I have a special place in my heart for Sullivan these days.

Why is that?  It seems that Sullivan finally formulated the fundamental theories that Viollet-le-Duc was just beginning to shed light on.  Wright wouldn't have been possible without Sullivan.  Wright applied and perhaps expanded upon Sullivan's ideas, but he didn't particularly revolutionize architectural thinking like Sullivan did.

I'm not sure anyone has since.

So today I bring you a few sketches in Sullivan's own hand.