Results tagged “hollyhockhouse”

Hollyhock House is a wonder wrought by Frank Lloyd Wright for our fair city. Though old Frank was a dick in person, he was unquestionably one of the more prominent architects of the twentieth century. Usually associated with his midwestern "Prairie Houses" (very influential in the arts and crafts movement, they were extended, low buildings with sloping roofs and deep terraces and overhangs. These, incidentally, were also an early example of "open plan" homes, the obsession that has driven many a Los Angeleno to alter fine old homes for the worse), or his later usonic homes which made middle class housing out of geometric shapes, he also believed in organic homes, that were in harmony with the land and other natural features that surrounded them.

THURSDAY

Both despite and because of many intense past, current and future battles to retain it, Angelenos are increasingly aware of our city’s architectural heritage. This category ranges from the missions to faux Norman castles to austere minimalist spaces. We’re presently living a renaissance era for modernism – a critical mass is more than ever enthralled with the work of largely émigré architects for whom Los Angeles was an ideal environment in which to experiment with built forms and new materials, blissfully free of historic precedent.

Anyone who’s logged onto google today (i.e. just about everyone who uses the internets) knows a little something about Frank Lloyd Wright. Whether or not you esteem him to be the Greatest American Architect of All Time, the prolific master, who died at the age of 92 and would’ve turned 138 today, designed a gorgeously innovative -- if often structurally flawed -- building or two or few hundred.

Frank Lloyd Wright-designed residences in Los Angeles are few yet unforgettable. His genius doesn't come without a price in the long term, though. While Wright is widely considered to be the most influential architect to emerge from late nineteenth and twentieth century America, his realized projects for Los Angeles were at times impractical indeed. This stubborn brilliance and his miscalculations means that his local repertoire -- including the Hollyhock House, Freeman House, and the Ennis-Brown House -- pose serious challenges concerning maintenance, rehabilitation, and preservation.