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If Frank Lloyd Wright Had Been a GCA.......

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John_Sheehan:
I have long been a fan of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture and his philosophy of design. Having once more been reading some of his autobiography recently, and having also been reading John Conley's thread on "Golf course critics and movie critics," it struck me how Wright's ideas of what he called "organic architecture" are in harmony with what most of us here appreciate in GCA. It also struck me how (IMHO)Wright would have reacted very similarly to the lack of "soul" that we see in the cookie cutter designs, and CCFAD's that are so prevalent in GCA today. He would have railed against their artificiality and their lack of spiritual soul. Mostly Wright seemed to believe that a well designed building (golf course?) should have a transformative spiritual effect on those who lived or visited there. In John Conley's thread, there are references to exposing the "unwashed masses" to ideas, art, and other vestiges of culture.  It struck me that what separates the experience of "viewing a Picasso or a Rembrandt versus a Leroy Nieman" is that transformative spiritual effect.  Cypress Point, Mid Ocean, Pebble Beach, Pasatiempo - and a few other great courses I have been fortunate to play, had that transformative effect on me.Here are some quotes from Wright, and others, on Wright's work and philosophy:“Wright considered architecture to be the master art form. The art form that subordinated all other art forms because contained within it were the visual arts,…sculpture, any kind of aesthetic experience could be brought within a building and in creating that building that building would house a complete aesthetic experience of the universe which for Wright is a complete spiritual experience of the universe. And so, what he tried to do was to bring in all of these elements, control them all, subordinate them to his vision as a way of creating a perfect realization of beauty and his vision of what it would be like to be to live within that beautiful space would be that it would be genuinely transformative. It would make the people different who inhabited that space. And so, his vision is of an aesthetics which serves all of human spiritual life.”—William Cronon, Historian"The philosophy of organic architecture was present consistently in his body of work and the scope of its meaning mirrored the development his architecture. The core of this ideology was always the belief that architecture has an inherent relationship with both its site and its time.
When asked in 1939 if there was a way to control a client’s potentially bad taste in selecting housing designs for his Broadacre City project, Wright replied, “Even if he wanted bad ones he could find only good ones because in an organic architecture, that is to say an architecture based upon organic ideals, bad design would be unthinkable.” In this way, the question of style was not important to Frank Lloyd Wright. A building was a product of its place and its time, intimately connected to a particular moment and site—never the result of an imposed style."Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day's work. I follow in building, the principles which nature has used in its domain." –Frank Lloyd Wright"Form follows function -  that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union." --Frank Lloyd WrightAnd FINALLY (sorry for the length of this post!), here is one especially for Tommy N  “It’s a contemptible retrogressive architecture that we practice domestically in this country now and to my mind, it’s mysterious that that we couldn’t have followed in the Wright course. That we couldn’t have developed something as new as...what it was when Frank developed it... And the plantation house and the English Tudor manor house and all these houses being built in our suburbs are ...false to the intention of the families living in them and they’re false to the hopes of the people who will grow up in them. They don’t bear any relationship to the aspirations that a contemporary American citizen should feel about themselves. Done for. Gone. And the architectural profession consents to it. Foments it, aids it. That’s contemptible.”—Brendan Gill, Writer

RJ_Daley:
IMHO, FLW would have been incapable of designing a playable golf course.  I doubt that he would have any interest in the game, if not contempt for it and those who play it. I suspect that his natural inclination would be to build a 13 hole course about 2100 yards long with only prairie native areas, rockwall outcroppings, scads of trees, and 1000sqft greens that would platform over streams or precipices, declaring that the game was traditionally played all wrong anyway.  And, he'd probably grow weary of the construction and abandon it in mid construction...  I thing a miniture golf course designed by him would be a more suitable project.  My opinion, I could be wrong.

aclayman:
John- Having grown up in Chicago I was constantly exposed to FLW and his influences. The truth is that once he stole the clients from Sullivan he was off and running. An ego out of control in a very controlled time. His personal life was as low as his fame was high. If he were around today and contributing to this site he might have an approval rating slighly higher than Cong. Condit.I do get what you mean though, about the similarity to a prevailing "natural" theme here on GCA. But there are probably some fundemental differences that would lose in any serious close comparison. My initial feeling is that building on the land is completely different than building with the land. So, the size and scope of projects, are by naure, completly different.
I do think that the simplicity of design is not really what FLW was known for, or for that matter, his detail oriented employer, Louis Sullivan.

T_MacWood:
I don't know if F.L. Wright could have designed a golf-course, I know he was very capable of designing a very liveable home. You make it sound as if he was an extremely unorthodox and impracticle as a designer - I would disagree with that assessment, creative yes, impracticle no. He did design numerous clubhouses and included golf and other recreation within his Broadacre City design. Adam
He did not steal Sullivan's clients. The only thing Wright is guilty of taking from Sullivan was his immense talent. Sullivan designed large public buildings, Wright concentrated on homes. Hell, Wright even designed Sullivan's summer home. You might want to check his design in Carmel, the Walker House, if you are uncertain of his ability to design with the land. What's the difference between building on the land and with the land? As far as his personal indescressions, he had an affair and married a clients wife - I'm not sure if any successful golf-architects, artists or writers have ever done the same.Its difficult to say if he wouldn't have been a successful golf-architect, but he was a creative genius and great advocate of working with nature, he also had much in common with the golf-architects of his era in that they had common influences.

Tony Ristola:
PBS had an excellent documentary on FLW, and has an excellent web site www.pbs.org/flw  with audio and video of the man himself and those who studied under him.I found his Imperial Hotel project in Tokyo quite incredible, a project he personally spent six years overseeing.  The results were dramtic in more ways than one.  Unfortunately the hotel was razed in 1968.   The following illustrates his genius in Tokyo.  Dear Mr. Wright, The first shock was enough to lay many buildings flat, and ... the second shock easily leveled what the first had loosened...Fire billowed from every house and those people who survived the crush and sought places of safety out in the open were killed by the smoke and scorching hot air, roasted by hundreds and thousands. All steel buildings proved fatal, enough to show that our architects were fools. What a glory it is to see the Imperial standing amidst the ashes of a whole city! Glory to you!
Sincerely,
Arata Endo
(Sab Shimono)Six years in Tokyo producing not only beauty, but an obvious structural marvel.  Could it be his time on-site during construction leading the crew was the deciding factor as it is with golf course architecture?  RJ:  I disagree with your take, though I'm certainly, but looking at his structures and what I've read I believe he would have been a great golf course architect. (1) He would have known the game, and clearly known where the line between great golf a gimmickery was. (2) He certainly didn't fight nature, though he did push materials to the limit. (3) He put a considerable amount of thought (mental labour) into the structures and would mentally draw the structures before putting pencil to paper. (4) He wouldn't have damaged his reputation by going overboard.  He would have been a great leader, a great fighter and by his actions would have pushed other architects to elevate their standards, though I do agree he could have become bored with this industry quickly, like George Thomas Jnr. I hope the Fallingwater section has the audio or video from the documentary where his associate explains how the project was drawn. If not, a quick rundown:  FLW received a call from Mr. Kaufmann saying he would be at their offices in three hours to view the drawings.  FLW said no problem, but at the time of the call there were no drawings. He gathered a few underlings, and went to work producing full scale plans.  The wonder of one associate was he had every rock placed in perfect detail... from his brain.  The plans were completed before Mr. Kaufmann walked through the door.I think FLW would have been a great defender of golf's heritage, but would have pushed the design envelope, and the materials envelope, and you would never have gotten a repeat design.  Would he have been Desmond Muirhead or a Golden Ager?  I'd go with the latter, and if he did introduce artificial features they would have fit the environment and would have been unrecognizable as such.  I doubt he would have built a waterfall on any course in So.Cal., and would have pioneered the method for turning the LA River running through Bel Air CC into a natural looking feature.

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