That Far Corner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles | Artbound | Season 9, Episode 1 | KCET 

FLW had an acute awareness of America's new establishment within the global playing field that ultimately enabled him to produce vanguard architecture although not without it's faults due to his being embroiled with conceptualisation. A trap all designers need to be wary of.

Thank You SO Much for this video. I'm an art fan but I've never gotten into architecture. This video on FLW really opened a new world of art for me. Thanks again !!!

*I desire to inhabit a Frank Lloyd Wright Creation!* Maybe I should complete a *"GO FUND ME"* for this goal - ??? lol 😉

I'm still enjoying this - Thank You!

@@bethbartlett5692 let me know if you need a house mate...

yes, indeed..very well done Video..good research..seious and methodical, house by house and the overall context ..the storyline..spinning a plausible Yarn backed by Facts..somebody should do a Movie on FLW..what an interesting life..lets get to it Martha Stewart..lol..I know shes a Big Fan of his also...lol

Omg epic, when I travel to Portugal I get amazed at how Intricate in the designs of the cobblestones. knowing it was individually done, my grandfather was a masonry good ones are hard to come by

Admin The Park APP Thank you for telling your story about it. It helps to understand how people can live in his houses. What about every day life? The light, the kitchen, the normalcies of life in the house. I know it’s been a while since you wrote this comment but I’m both fascinated and very curious.

Seems very tranquil to live there. I love the security & privacy they afford.

Lucky You :) Love That!

Wow lucky

I soent time at one of his last houses as well, the Penfield house, as a child and i def understand the huge windows.

His architecture varies greatly by time and location, so to say his homes have all these things in common is unrealistic.

I agree 100%! It’s a beautiful house.

I see your point of view and totally respect that, but having spent time in a Wright house, it does sort of smother you with his intentions and manipulation of the space and it is so total and permeating it is a bit like a voice or sound that is impossible to turn off. So I can not imagine peace in such a space long term. I get why people just could not take it and had to get away either for the technical issues or maintenance failures the houses had and the complexity and totality of how he designed the spaces so utterly there was no where to put your belongings. In fact, he wanted the owners to only use his furnishings in his arrangements and essentially denied them any other option by putting windows or walkways just his hand molding YOU in every square inch- so owners lamented it felt like the house and he were in control of them. It is a sort of totalitarian design approach. But I say all of this with total admiration for his intense creations and hope to get to be inside as many of them as I can. Because they are really elegies and not meant to hold peoples stuff they are truly like temples and I hope as many can be saved and preserved as possible. For me, to spend a day with one is like experiencing a symphony and I walk away enchanted and elevated.

@Thornback Who wants to live in a concrete coffin?

I thought the SAME THING

That's a good way to put it. I highly appreciate the aesthetics and artistry put into his buildings, but many of them are maintenance nightmares.

plan pitz Flw way ahead. He understood the Timeless Way of Building. 😉

But what is a building without emotions?

plan pitz Very well said!

Except his flat roofs are very bad in rain and in the SW it rains very hard when it rains.

@@emsnewssupkis6453 I've always admired the practicality of using the roof as living space. Its so common in many tropical countries. If there's proper drainage what's the problem? Obviously everything has to be sealed. Is there anything else we need to be aware of?

Good thing that Ron Burkle came along & helped restore Ennis. By contrast, even though Wright's Freeman house is owned by USC, it apparently is more in limbo. But Aline Barnsdale donating her Hollyhock house to the city probably protected it. Other than his LA projects, I think only his Falling Water house in PA, Guggenheim in NYC and Johnson Wax bldg in WI stand out to me. The hillside settings of his key LA's properties, plus the larger, more exotic, monumental format of a few of them, help make them more noticeable than his smaller prairie houses in the midwest are. If his Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, however, hadn't been torn town (only a portion of it was saved & relocated), that would be another eye-catching landmark of his. A *Frank* Gehry (& projs like a Disney Hall) has a serendipity quality to *Frank* Lloyd Wright being in LA over 70 yrs before (or, later, his son Lloyd Wright)

Sorry for being dense - what makes his buildings so unsustainable and needing so much maintenance? I don't understand what he did that causes such swift deterioration.

I was a tour guide there in the 90s. Too bad it wasn't open when you were living in LA. It was owned by the City for most of the 20th century and they didn't do much to keep it up, but it's in better hands now, repaired & restored.

Poetic, Thank You🌹

You haven't tried to live in any of them, or even spend any time in them, I'd wager.

ide love to live in them: altars to the gods....fascinating.

not bad for somebody that didn't go to a college

Daniel Zambrano Go live in one. If you can afford a FLW house and it’s maintenance, you can afford the house next door to it to store all of your stuff, like the Closet for my clothes for starters, or the blender, washer/dryer, jet ski, surfboard, suitcases, oh yeah, where are the kid’s rooms again? Where can I put their toys. And if you are elderly, well, you had better be handi-capable, because his houses have treacherous l/dangerous elements at times. The maintenance alone will break anyone who wants these houses. So, anyway, live ling and prosper.

I mean love ling and prosper.

nowhere as impressive as the ennis house though.

@@notyourfriend-li7rq One can’t compare an artist’s creations thus , appreciating each piece as owning its personal and wonderful eventuality.

Wow. I hadn't made that connection. So interesting!

Which fits perfectly with this video’s thesis.

Fallingwater was also an abject failure. Unlivable

I agree totally. So many experts weighing in on these odd houses, mausoleums, if you will. Very odd that nobody seems to want to live in them.

I also agree. I've never seen his work presented so well.

Same here. I’ll never look at FLW the same way again; how his life has bled through and blended in so expressively with his building.

They are a mix of ancient temples and tombs.

Vogel that is Wright.

beautifully put- I agree I hear more brutal designs often dismissed as dystopian- I think they speak to the quality of human endurance and collective subconscious and like you mention, grief and strength

Completely agree

I agree, the Holly Hock home is gorgeous!!! If the earthquake wouldn't have destroyed the one overlooking Highland, it would still be a masterpiece...

Best description of FLW’s work I’ve ever read. Yes!

I like his interiors.... but the exteriors are often hideous. Like this one. First impression is... oh that's a mausoleum in a creepy Gothic manner using Meso-American motifs... not a family home.

That's such a great description - futuristic but down-to-earth

My favorite house of all time it's definitely number 1 it's so beautiful it just draws you in it's so inviting it's like it calls to your soul the beauty of it the way dining room / lounge with the doors open is like being outside but inside and yet inside but outside it's delightful I'd love to see it in person myself to feel it soak it in I have dreams about that house if I had money it would be mine 😍 I wish 🙌✨

I understood she's the daughter of FLWs partner/ mistress / associate ... Granddaughter ??? FLWs Grandson is 88 years at this time !?? 😮

...and that was 5 years ago 😳

Yeah! How do I get that job?

He didn't like arches. He also made flat roofs popular which then leak easily in thunderstorms.

"a brilliant structural engineer" Perhaps bold and willing to experiment, but some of his engineering didn't have the best longevity.

@@vidcas1711 Very true. Part of that poor longevity and extensive maintenance issues is due precisely to his daring and the technology and materials of the day just not being mature enough to stand up to his experiments - but we also shouldn’t forget that he had no formal architectural training, and quite simply clearly didn’t know how to do some pretty basic things, like create windows and roofs that didn’t leak, doorways tall enough that even short people don’t hit their heads, and hallways wide enough for an average-size person to walk straight through without having to turn sideways. (If you’ve ever been to Fallingwater, you will understand when I say that the experience of parts of that house is, quite frankly, akin to crawling through a tight cave. I’m all of 5’1” and was still wearing petite sizes when I was there, and even I was very cramped.) His genius just simply did not extend to such practical matters - although admittedly he didn’t care about them, either, and held his clients’ quite understandable concern for them in great disdain. According to some books I’ve read, he was actually quite unsuccessful overall for most of his career, owing in no small part to practical issues like these, as well as great difficulty getting along with people, at least until Fallingwater, which of course he built very late in life. What he did produce was unquestionably genius, but it’s a surprisingly small body of work for as long as his career was.

Not well spoken at all. It should be "She's also buried in Los Angeles.

Agreed.

Love that! No worries on the Commas lol. Artistic license to a crazy dramatic awesome subject or just a typo lol but who cares. We get the awesome reference note 😍

@@TheresaPowers She's also buried, in Los Angeles. IMHO

@Annabel Lee just, use, one, after, every, word. Sorry, but you're wrong. There are rules about commas. She's also buried in Los Angeles.

Wholeheartedly agreed, I grew up in Glendale just a mile from one of the Cinder Block homes which I believe was put on the market recently. Got to tour the Ennis Brown home in the 90s, and there is such a protective, serene, even spiritual quality within - and that multimillion dollar view!! The homes exterior required major restoration due to damage to the cinder blocks, and I fervently hope the new owner allows tours again.

Oh reallY? Have you ever heard of the Black Dalia?

GMAMEC I think the L.A. concrete block homes are his attempt at bringing light and resolution to his own state of being. How so? He confines his design to the limitations of a concrete block system. Sure, at first it seems like an efficient and effective way to build. But I think it says way more about him, too. He was left with a cold world to deal with after the death of Ms. Cheney. That comes through in wanting to work with the cold material of concrete. Then, he must have also felt limited in his own life on how to fully have joy and love in his life. This I think comes through in his usage of a limiting system using a not-so-warm material. Look at the difference in Falling Water. That house is alive and warm, lovingly embracing it’s surroundings and the people that will live in it. The concrete block homes do feel morbid, and play off of a culture that would execute innocent people in a very gruesome fashion. I think that all made some kind of connection to him during that period of his life. I think it was inescapable for him to design like that, then. Maybe even therapeutic, in a sense, though not even realized as such by himself at the time. We are interconnected to all things around us, more than we know. Evidence of such is in FLW’s L.A. concrete block homes.

​@@thefrontporch8594 The Hollyhock House had nothing to do with the Black Dahlia Murder, that's the John Sowden House which has that reputation and was built by his son, Lloyd Wright.

Huh? "Gilded" age was 1870s, Hollyhock was built around 1920, just when Mies van der Rohe started to build the 1st glass sheathed skyscrapers, Perhaps you meant "Art Deco". Wright is beyond category.

I had a art piece on display at Barnsdall Park museum, display room, in 1969. I was only 12 and had I had known it was a Frank Lloyd Wright property I would have spent more time checking it out. The LA school district display was open at night, so no chance of checking out the house! So beautiful! We had a very modest Frank Lloyd Wright that was built a mile down the street on Tampa Blvd. in the SFValley, we all loved it, everyone still inquires about it at class reunions! No Sale. The owners and family know what they have, it is a small home too, but will never sell!

@@lauranardoni5626 What wonderful opportunities! Your family’s home was no doubt one of his Usonian houses, and they have become very popular indeed.

Yep 👍🏽👍🏽💒 What a terrible tragedy! God bless.

Which is considered art my friend, "it's provocative"!!!

Well stated. One of the best FLW documentaries but ends with the wrong conclusion. The piano teacher was right.

Yes it's, how are you doing Barbara?

What is it about his work that gives us such feeling?!! Isnt it strange that these buildings stir something in us? Incredible.

@@fleaflicker1451 The main things that produce these feelings are that he designed pretty much everything on one sort of grid or another, and he was a master of proportion. Sometimes those grids were triangular or even circular or octagonal, not always rectilinear, and he pushed and pulled at them all over the place, often to the point that the casual eye simply couldn’t discern what the system was or where its lines were, but at core, they were always highly orderly systems regardless of the specific forms, and expressed in 3D and through every single element in the buildings. You can always trace them through on his drawings - and feel them when physically in his houses or even just looking at pictures. Of course, that grid is particularly literally expressed in this group of houses thanks to the concrete blocks. He also designed every single element in all of his buildings, including the light fixtures, so each was a particularly cohesive work. His work in Japan influenced him tremendously, though, and he made great use of tatami mat proportions in particular in many of his buildings thereafter, also in 3D, not just in plan. Those mats have particularly pleasing and calming proportions (which is a big part of why Japanese houses always feel so peaceful), and that element also permeated every aspect of his designs, right down to the stained glass windows, furniture, and even the light fixtures. The Robie House is probably the most understandable, human-scaled, and fully-developed expression of this specific device, but our minds are simply wired to prefer such proportions, at any scale, especially when carried into full 3D. I’d have to sit down with a set of drawings and a scale to be sure that the tatami mat proportional scale is what’s operating in these particular houses, but it’s a reasonably good bet, although in early form.

@@wendyannh Wendy!!!! Thank you so much for breaking that down for me! You must be an architect, engineer or probably a professor since you did that so well. Ive been fascinated since I was a child seeing his work in books. There's the home with the waterfall, I would just stare, imagining its my treehouse. Maybe thats why his work is emotional to me? I go back to those times subliminally? I dont know but wow, still makes me pause anytime I see his work. Again THANK YOU! I hope you teach in some capacity, you are excellent at explaining something so complex without losing my pea brain. 🤓👍👏👏👏

@@wendyannh *Fantastic* comment, internet stranger. That is a perfect analysis, in my opinion, of what is soothing in these designs, even when done in such hard materials.

Omnihil, I couldn’t agree with you more about the feeling of “everywhere something to see without being surprised” or startled. It’s almost meditative or dreamlike in that way.

CoderatheGreat that means rich globalist own it. That’s a bad thing.

@@thebluedan No, it doesn't.

Triumphant is the correct descriptor. Well said.

Well said. It is precisely the fact that they *are* funereal and the polar opposite of the typical American home, as you say, and not at all “homey,” that many people do find off-putting, though.

Me too. The piano teacher got it right.

You will do well designing tract homes with flat roofs on zero lot lines.

Donde Fact, not at all ! I have been fortunate to design/ build several hundred million dollars worth in luxury residential and commercial. I frown on Flat roofs personally. Prone to leak in the long run. Good luck with your flat roof track home though.

Most homes still around from that era are, to be fair, money pits. It’s part and parcel of “antique“ home ownership. When you consider the electrical and plumbing that was standard at the time… a home of that age would’ve by now likely needed to be completely re-wired and re-plumbed three times over. Then there is the installation of HVAC systems in structures never designed to hold them, and air quality issues that simply weren’t a factor when built. That’s in addition to normal wear and tear, settling, etc. in homes that were not built with any sort of codification. It’s daunting to maintain *any* older home, but I can only imagine the pressure seems **so** much more intense when dealing with a property designed and built by America’s most famous architect, and having to abide by any standards enforced by local historic registers. With many old homes, to save on costs and logistical headaches, you could gut them down to the studs and modernize them, while still maintaining the “feel”… but with a Wright property, you just wouldn’t want to do that, (even if the materials used allowed for it) due to who built it. Obviously the unsealed concrete just adds to all the above exponentially. (Edited for clarity)

A big reason that FLW's buildings on the Florida Southern campus haven't received much attention is a legal issue. Apparently, they never paid all the architectural fees, so they were forbidden from promoting it in conjunction with FLW. Now that's been cleared up. The tour is wonderful.

Thanks for the reply. My sister & her family have lived in Lakeland for the past 35 yrs. Been to that campus many, many times. Still one the most beautiful campuses in the country. She got the Tri-Delta sorority chapter there & is the advisor for the sorority! ☺

Irene DP These "intellectual" documentaries must always take us to odd places in the mind and speculate on the subject's psychology, even if the person who wrote the script or did the research has no psychological training. I ignore most of it. But the murder of your soulmate & her children at your home by your servant would make anyone grieve & want to get away to a restorative place.

Yes, Wright's tragedy was horrid, no doubt.

Waskelwee Wabbit I agree with you on the crypt-like aspect, but other than the warehouse, and the Freeman's place which i will come back too. The other buildings in L. A. look well maintained, or at least well looked after. As they in all rights should be. I do feel perhaps like you may...a bit sad there are none of life's sounds resonating off those walls. I am certain the Freeman's thought there would be no better entity than the University of Shouthern California, to donate their dream home too. After all both the University and the School of Architecture would be able to scrape the money together in order to repair things in a timely fashion. And if by some chance, they were unable to come thru with the needed repairs as expected. Then certainly no entrusted Dean would ever be allowed to have his little puke future son in law and his "i am Elizabeth to him" daughter. Have the 'benefit' to live in the Freeman's house that now felt in 'ruins', and rent free I'm sure. However he wasn't just the School of Architecture's Dean. He was a father, and as such he was able to acquire the funds for some tarps and squeegees to bring over for the kids. Used as a tax write-off i bet. You can almost hear Elizabeth say "condemned building"as she describes their living there. Never mind Trudi Sandmeier, Director of USC and her bullshit "complicated knit sweater" comparison. All the while putting on her please believe me face. Samuel and Harriet would be appalled with their home being used as an example of a crumbling building to future architects ...and disgusted with the attitudes displayed by those they trusted . Its a shame really. In all seriousness now. A big thank you to Chris Hawthorne

With few and modest exceptions, the Wright houses were all trophy houses, where even the wealthy who commissioned them visited, rather than lived.

@@shirleeeyyy Wow! Tell us how you really feel...

Waskelwee Wabbit... I was expecting all seriousness here, but you charmed me with your screen name! Thanks!

@@normaevett Wabbits wike architecture too yanno.