Designed in 1935, built in 1936. Before rockets exist, 30 years before NASA and 60s futurism, 40 years before Star Wars.
So I went on Mid-Century Modern architecture binge in the past few days. Lloyd Wright (crazy life!), the prairie school, the Case Study Houses, Wright’s disciples like John Lautner, Rudolph Schindler or Richard Neutra.
I adore that modern style. I always loved futurism but what makes me crazy is that some of these houses have been designed almost 100 years ago (1920s), built a little bit later and still, in 2013, look super modern! It blows my mind.
We have Wifi and devices we could not imagine even ten years ago and we live in houses and buildings that look like we’re in 1800s. Even compact or mid-size cars have beautiful design today so why don’t we do that with housing? House design really demonstrates how we suck at big scale change.
Melvyn Maxwell and Sara Stein Smith House. Usonian as fuck. I can’t stop contemplate.
Despite designing houses to a ridiculous level of detail (up to furniture and knobs), which would often double the budget decided, there were not that perfect. Wright’s iconic flat roofs were often leaking after a couple of years and although he used locations to get as much sun as possible in the house –passive heating- or very innovative radiant floors, a lot of these houses were/are hard and expensive to maintain, too cold and too hot.
The thing is today we have the technology to have those problems solved. Wright’s didn’t have triple pane glass for example, which solves the glass problem (lets the sun go through as much as the cold) entirely. Leaking flat roofs? We have rubber technology for that now or even better, green roofs. I’m surprised Wright wasn’t into this, he seemed to love nature and the technique is as old as Vikings are but maybe he didn’t want to think about any old building technique, he wanted to disconnect entirely from Europe and the Old World.
Super fascinating stuff to me. Wright’s focus on harmony and structure talks to me, bassist-composer-passivehaus-lover.