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.

Amusing UK Signage Graphics Part III: Danger!

Today we close our series of Amusing UK Signage Graphics with Part III: Danger!  All of these were taken by me during my trip to the UK in the Fall of 2009.

There's something oddly specific to me about this. 

This reminds me a bit of the ones we have on jetways

that warn you of the tripping hazard.

The image of the guy tripping and flying through the air

always makes me chuckle.  Of course,

I probably won't be laughing when it's me

that falls on his ass, but still.

(Actually I might laugh at myself in such a circumstance.)

Danger of Death! 

Enter these premises and God himself may very well strike you down!

Consider yourself warned. 

This one was my favorite. :)

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!

Amusing UK Signage Graphics Part II: Fashions

Today I present Part II of my series of Amusing UK Signage Graphics, from my trip to the UK in late 2009. Our topic for today is Fashion. Sort of.

Part II has fewer pictures but I'm fond of them nonetheless.

Bowler Hats Required Here!

Don't forget your fashionable footwear.

OK, so it's really a safety helmet. 

But what a smart looking helmet it is!

That's it for today's installment.  Part III is a little longer, and includes my favorite one out of the whole series.  

Look for it on Friday!

Welcome to Los Angeles. Prepare to stop.

That is all.

Amusing UK Signage Graphics Part I: Moving About

A couple of years ago, whilst in the UK, I encountered a number of don't-go-here, stop-or-you'll-get-hurt, type of signs that I found particularly charming.  The style of these graphics is amusing to me simply because they just somehow seem so, well, polite compared to their US counterparts.  In other cases, they seem to just have a sense of style that indicates someone, somewhere, put that little extra effort into making them look just so.

I just now realized I have too many of them to blow on one blog post, so this will be the first of 3 in a series.  Here we go!

I love how she holds his hand. 

You may encounter flamboyant personages

as they sashay about the vicinity.

Take your flamboyant personage elsewhere

if you intend to sashay about.

(Notice how the pose of the figure is

identical, save for the arm.)

Noooooooo!!!!!

One could almost read this as "No Stopping!"

Do you notice this sort of thing when you travel, or is it just me?

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*

John Herman Dersch

My Grandpa Dersch would have been 101 yesterday.  He died in 2005, just shy of his 95th birthday.

Here he is with his first pickup truck.

It is a 1937 GMC 1/2 ton, with 6 cylinders under the hood.  If this was taken around the time he bought it new, that would make him 27 or 28 in this picture.

He was a farmer in Southern Indiana.  The house behind him was their farmhouse where he and Grandma lived, and where Mom and her brother were born and raised.  He was very innovative in the way chickens were raised for market, and along with his brothers, developed a very good chicken business.  Later, he and Grandma built a big chicken house and went into the egg business.  They also had cattle, pigs, and grew corn on their farm.  He and his brothers were well known and highly regarded in that part of Southern Indiana for their innovations.

He could fix anything that broke and do anything that needed to be done on their farm; that had a big influence on me as a kid growing up.  I think of him often.  He was an amazing man.

Happy Birthday, Grandpa Dersch!  I miss you, but I know you would be proud of me today if you were here.

A Sullivan Detail for Today

I took this picture last December at the Art Institute while I was in Chicago visiting my sister and her family.  Somehow, I didn't write down exactly what it was (or photograph the description tag, which is usually what I do in such a situation).

It's definitely Sullivan, and I'm pretty sure it's part of the elevator grillwork from the Chicago Stock Exchange.  Although, now that I'm thinking about it and writing this up, I think it could also be an air grille from that or another building.

It's fun to bring images like this into CAD or some vector-based drawing program and analyze them in terms of their fundamental geometry of lines, circles, and arcs.  Hey, that gives me an idea for another whole post!

But now I have to go teach, so that's for another day.  Cheers!

Delayed Moonrise

As I was watching and waiting on Monday evening for my friend Cathy to come over for dinner, the full moon rose from behind my neighbors' house across the street.  I ran for my camera and caught it just in time!  I had forgotten I had taken pictures of it until just now.

Since I don't want this blog to be only about long essays, I decided to post it.  Enjoy!