Frank Lloyd Wright seemed to echo all of my doings this past summer. When traveling my favorite thing to do is pick out a book at the airport. This summer, on my way to New York, I selected “Loving Frank” by Nancy Horan.
When I saw the cover of this book, the stained glass caught my eye. Obviously designed according to the Golden Ratio I was curious as to which Frank the book was referring to. The book had me at Mamah Cheney, as I read the back cover. Frank Lloyd Wright’s love affair with Mamah was more dramatic then fiction. That’s all I’ll say about that in case you aren’t familiar with the story.
Once I landed in New York, trying to squeeze as much culture as possible into a four day trip, I went to the Guggenheim, one of Wright’s masterpieces. Unbeknownst to me, the museum was curating a large body of Wright’s work. Amazing! I love when life connects the dots, and things seem to make sense and have an otherworldly alignment. Three (w)righteous alignments.
As if that wasn’t enough to confirm my timely obsession, Design Within Reach, my employer, worked closely with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to gain exclusivity and bring a few of his furniture designs back into production. Specifically a couch, recliner, and my personal favorite the barrel chair.
When reflecting on my summer of Frank I ask myself what did good ol’ Frank teach this young lady. Well a couple of things. The most important being that when it comes to greatness, vision and passion far outweigh functionality. For example, Fallingwater, a home designed for Edgar J. Kaufmann Senior, has cantilevered balconies that amaze and astound. The way he designed the structure to interact with nature rather than alienate causes much reflection with the way we tend to handle new construction.
However The senior Mr. Kaufmann called Fallingwater “a seven-bucket building” for its leaks, and nicknamed it “Rising Mildew”. The conclusion? Greatness is not determined by practicality and that’s fine by me. Because the exterior of that building inspired and continues to inspire exponentially more people than the few that were originally permitted to inhabit its damp quarters.
Apparently life had one more strange alignment for dear Frank and I. While fact checking Fallingwater I saw that the preliminary plans were submitted to Kaufman on October 15, 1935. My birthday! Don’t look at me, I’m just the messenger.
Addendum (11/8/09) And another fun fact… from my mother after she read this entry. In 1978 when my mother was pregnant with yours truly, she and my father were looking for apartments in Springfield, Ohio. My father wanted to move into the Frank Lloyd Wright “Westcott House” which had been turned into apartments in 1944. It was the only Frank Lloyd Wright prairie style house in Ohio. However my parents were rejected because my mother was pregnant with me and they primarily wanted to rent to students, which my father was at the time. Can you say discrimination! So close to living the dream…
Roxanne + Design = Love 