Talk:Frank Lloyd Wright

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Contents 1 Frank in Japan? 2 suggestions, additions, etc. 3 JR Nikko train station 4 J.R. Nikko Train Station 5 ken burns 6 $80,000 architect's fee 7 Addresses 8 reference style is off 9 Building names 10 Cultural depictions of Frank Lloyd Wright 11 added info but need help 12 influences? 13 A few things.... 14 Structure of article 15 Solar hemicycle 16 Fallingwater $155k price in today's dollars

[edit] Frank in Japan?

Karen Severns and Koichi Mori made a documentary, Magnificent Obsession: Frank Lloyd Wright's Buildings and Legacy in Japan. His chief assistant was Arata Endo. Seems like Wright's experience in Japan, as they claim, could have lifted his profile at a time when it was rather flat. Is it a good idea to add a section on this episode or does it overload an already long article?

PS I believe he didn't just tone his creations in with the landscape but used materials from the site as far as possible in the building itself. This was a nice economy of context as well as the organic thing. Julia Rossi 23:44, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] suggestions, additions, etc.

firstly, by what criteria are we defining a "work?" built or otherwise. by my own standards I certainly consider the present list to be strinkingly incomplete as well as inconsistently populated.

and scant, scant mention of wright's notable (albeit less known) contributions to the development of american city planning and urban design. some would argue these works to be the the apex of his portfolio.

the man wrote some pretty serious heavyweight books about living & place, but the entire article is just about what he built & architected. no mention of wright's favorite dirty word: rent? what kind of bullshit excuse for an article is this anyways?!

Well sir, this is what makes Wikipedia so great, if you do not agree with or like an article, you can change it. If you truly believe that this article is "Bullshit" why don't you find some better reference material, change the article to reflect this new material and cite the reference. Why complain when you can contribute? T.C. 11:22, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

prarie house. ill-defined and understated. Wright was in constant battle with the paradoxical elements of the suburban ideal. the prairie house he sought to ariculate was an elusive one.

and the fireplace. the defining characterisitic of his most noteable homes -- core and focus. important to wright in its expression and also in establishing the direction of the space.

and automobility. great deal of work reflects his efforts to fuse the automobility of cars with the immobilitiy of the edifice. and not only in reference to his obsession with the "auto objective." jacobs carport was the first such allocation of space is residential architecture. also note the cheney garage.

I think that there needs to be a lot more content and information about Wright's later work, after he returned from Europe. Falling Water is but one of many important designs that he completed in this period. Also, the section about his time in Europe and his personal life should be merged more seamlessly with the rest of the article. There are many facts about his personal life that are mentioned more than once or presented in slightly different ways at different points in the article.

[edit] JR Nikko train station

Hard to believe this structure was designed by Wright, unless while working under Silsbee or Sullivan, before striking out on his own. Both the design style and the date of construction are highly suspect. Not at all a good example of his life's work in any case. It's notable that it doesn't appear in William Allin Storrer's catalog of his works either.

Much, much better examples of his work would be the Robie House, the Coonley House, Wingspread, Fallingwater, or the Guggenheim.

[edit] J.R. Nikko Train Station

I agree with the first comment, from June 14, 2004. The J.R. Nikko Train Station has never been considered a work by Frank Lloyd Wright. He was still working as a draftsman for Louis Sullivan in Chicago in 1890, and did not have any substantive connections at that time to Japan. For him to have done a work like this in Japan at that time would mean that he would have had connections, and he would have had to go there, at least once. There is no record of this occurring, and it is accepted that he went to Japan for the first time in 1906. I have never heard that Wright did anything in Japan before receiving a commission for Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, c. 1913. I'm not sure where the author[s] of the article got this piece of information.

[edit] ken burns

ken burns may have named him america's best architect, but i dont think this is relevant information for the -first- paragraph of the article. if we had an interesting facts bit, that might belong there, but one way or another i fail to see the importance of this; even though i agree that FLW was a magnificent architect (and possibly history's best/etc.), there are a -lot- of people who have been named america's best / world's best ___, etc. --shrimppesto

• I don't really know who Ken Burns is, but I guess the phrasing comes about from the Manual of Style's advice to 'Avoid Weasel Terms'. When making a superlative statement such as this, it is generally better to give an attributable source rather than resort to 'some have said that...'. That would be just vague opinion that others may or may not agree with. The statement, 'Ken Burns said that...', is (presumably) true whether you agree or not.
• However, I quite agree it was out of place in the lead para. -- Solipsist 22:35, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Ken Burns is a notable documentary film maker. Kalmia 04:12, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] $80,000 architect's fee

My understanding is that the architect's fee is 10% of the cost of the commission. In which case, if the cost of $155,000 is correct for Fallingwater (I've heard higher and lower estimates), then that would make his fee $15,500. <---10% is correct most of the time but is on the high end of architectural fees.

[edit] Addresses

Do you people think it would be good to add the addresses next to the buildings for those that would like to go by them? A disclaimer noting that some are private residences should be added too. Many of his buildings are located within 40 miles of where I live. I could list some. Kalmia 04:15, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reference style is off

Okay, so the individual facts don't link to their references. I'm going to add some friendly tags to this effect, and we'll all work it on out. This doesn't mean that I think the facts are untrue, it means that if I were looking for a source to write a paper, I wouldn't be able to figure out which fact came from what reference. 63.231.154.244 20:01, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Building names

In the list of Wright structures, is there a standard reference used to decide the names of the buildings? I started the page for the Charles Weltzheimer Residence, since that is what is used on Wright's bio page, but the house's official name (according to Oberlin College, its owner) is the Weltzheimer/Johnson House. Are the names used here drawn from the Wright archives?

I put in a reidrect from Weltzheimer/Johnson HOuse to Charles Weltzheimer Residence, but I'm not completely sure it shouldn't be the other way around. Douglas Anders 16:54, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Storrer's book, The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion, is considered the gold standard for Wright enthusiasts looking for a system of organizing his works. It has a numbering system (e.g. S.230 is Fallingwater) and naming convention that is very useful. - David Sides October 31, 2006 at 22:56:04 UTC

[edit] Cultural depictions of Frank Lloyd Wright

I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on in popular culture information. I started that last year while I raised Joan of Arc to featured article when I created Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc, which has become a featured list. Recently I also created Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this as a model for the editors here. Regards, Durova 15:41, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] added info but need help

I added information about Wright's association with Adler & Sullivan, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to cite a non-electronic source; I know Wikipedia provides directions, but they read like stereo instructions. Minaker 16:25, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] influences?

Does anybody know anything about Franks's influences regarding Mayan architecture and Japanese architecture, prints and motifs. The article did not say anything about this.

[edit] A few things....

The details of Frank Lloyd Wrights many personal difficulties are WELL known and documented in his own autobiography, in several books including Many of Many Masks by Brendan Gill and the new Book on the Taliesin Fellowship (although that book makes HUNDREDS of unsupportable claims)

Architects fees in Wrights time ranged between 5 and 7 1/2 % with wright this also generally included HIS structural engineer, but not your own and not the survey of the land. In those day projects rarely needed mechanical engineers, title 24 reports and on and on.

Presently Architecs fees range between 10 and 15% for a residence and usually DO NOT include structural engineers, title 24 engineers, mechanical engineers or engineering for "green" systems. This is not a result of declining ability ofr many in the Architectural field, but mostly of the litigation environment, one that Wright never seems to have faced.

[edit] Structure of article

Ive made some changes to this. I think it is difficult to get the right mix of personal life and architectural qualities. Basically i think the thing is to alternate sections of his personl life at the time and his architectural work at the time, and then put the 'legacy' and 'career concept' stuff after his death. But we have pitifully little in this article on many large periods of his life (eg. the textile block houses are missing altogether), so Its not really able to form cohesively yet. If anyone else has a better idea on the structure though, please post it here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Miscreant (talk • contribs) 13:54, 31 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Solar hemicycle

Although it deals in detail with the prairie house genre and to some extent with the the Usonian houses, why does the F.Ll.W. article make no mention of the solar hemicycles (e.g., Herbert Jacobs II)? They are a discrete and readily identifiable style which encompassed much of the work from the '30s to the '50s. 139.130.36.190 05:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fallingwater $155k price in today's dollars

Per the consumer price index inflation calculator at http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl , the house would cost $2.25M in 2006 dollars... interesting enough to add to article?

—Hobart 11:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that figure is very accurate because the CPI isn't very accurate considering it excludes some things. Has real estate and construction costs ever been a part of it? Average residential rents are a bit different. --Kalmia 15:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

In my area of the country, using the CPI to predict future housing costs would significantly underestimate them (though this may not really be relevant, as the CPI would be off for any single item). I do think it would be helpful to make people aware somehow that $155k then is vastly different from $155k now. (It is much more different than people think it is, so in one sense even stating $155k without qualification is misleading.) -DoctorW 20:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)