Video: Fasbender Clinic - Hastings, MN

[DavidC]

So Minnesota: Hastings building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright -- (2:59)


David

[juankbedoya]

Great... thanks for the video. This is one of the rarest buildings by Wright. Do you know why the clinic has that shell-like roof..? I have been intrigued by that.

[SDR]

Perhaps he though a snowy northern location deserved it; for me it's proof that an idea about form was a good enough excuse to explore it, at the nearest appropriate opportunity, for Mr Wright.

S

[Roderick Grant]

This effort was not the first of its kind, but it was the only design actually built. There are a few houses with similar roofs.

[SDR]

Prout and Waterstreet are likely the houses Roderick refers to. Their roofs are more like each other than is Fasbender to either---but the trio does belong together, it is clear.

http://wrightchat.savewright.org/viewto ... =2&t=10743

S

[Roderick Grant]

Those two, yes, but closer to Fasbender is the C. W. Muehlberger Project of 1947, Taschen 3/138, Mono 7/165. As a commercial building, Fasbender cannot be exactly comparable to any house, but the roof design of Muehlberger is definitely a predecessor of Fasbender.

[SDR]

Ah---how nice to have something unfamiliar to look at ! Thank you.

Taliesin rendered views are remarkable for their ability to capture at least the spirit of the work, and simultaneously to exist as works of art in themselves. I particularly like the red of the shadows on a brick building as drawn (probably, here) by Jack Howe.














© 2009 by TASCHEN GmbH, © 1988 A.D.A. EDITA Tokyo Co., Ltd. and © The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives (The Museum of Modern Art | Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York)

[juankbedoya]

Perhaps he though a snowy northern location deserved it; for me it's proof that an idea about form was a good enough excuse to explore it, at the nearest appropriate opportunity, for Mr Wright.

S

Agree with you but I think he had something in mind, some animal or plant..?

[juankbedoya]

Prout and Waterstreet are likely the houses Roderick refers to. Their roofs are more like each other than is Fasbender to either---but the trio does belong together, it is clear.

http://wrightchat.savewright.org/viewto ... =2&t=10743

S

Prout and Waterstreet are closer to the clinic but Fasbender someway is unique. It's like a shell roof. No other has its design.

[SDR]

Heh. Well, it's possible that he had an armadillo in mind, and I don't have a ready alternative---but I have not seen, read of, or heard Mr Wright refer to any animal form in connection with building design. Granted, he was not given to likening his work to anything not architectural in nature, but we have his word that it was botany, not biology, to which he turned in looking at nature for inspiration.

Buildings are what they are. It is left to those who observe them to invent or imagine parallels, analogs, and similes in their efforts to comment on---ultimately, to comprehend---them. Still, we have to wonder what leads an otherwise rational and logical (if admittedly poetic) designer to issue a roof like the one on the Fasbender clinic.

S

[Roderick Grant]

But for chronology, Fasbender may have been inspired by the costumes Terrance Stamp, Hugo Weaving and Guy Pearce wore in their nightclub act in "The Adventures of Pricilla, Queen of the Desert"
... the lizard costume, not the opera house.