mid century romantics?

[lang]

Greetings to everyone on Wright chat! I am a neophyte Wrightian / Wrightophile! ( not sure of the correct term! ) I recently became interested in architecture, and was immediately enthralled with the work of Frank Lloyd Wright!. I am delighted to find an active forum still discussing his work and ideas . Wright's work for me has an essential human quality, a romance that i find lacking in many other modern architects. Many examples of modern architecture seem too severe to my eye, oftentimes sterile. Wright's work seems more human to me somehow. I suppose my questions to the forum would be this: What other modernists should i be looking at? Are there other modern romantics or have i missed something vital in what seems austere?

Langdon

[peterm]

Welcome to Wright Chat!

From your description of the qualities which you admire in Wright's work, I would suggest you start by looking into the work of these others:

Though not midcentury: Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright's mentor

Rudolf Schindler, a Viennese born architect who worked for Wright in the 20's and went on to design amazing architecture on his own...

Alvar Aalto from Finland

Harwell Hamilton Harris

E. Fay Jones


This is obviously a short list, but I think these are architects who embraced the humanistic aesthetic which Wright mastered, and did not slavishly copy his work.

[Paul Ringstrom]

I think we should add Alden B. Dow to the list.

[John Donnelly]

Welcome to the board!

While I don't have another architect to recommend to you, I would take the time to look at the "California Case Study Homes", many that were built are famous, seen in film, and probably familiar to you even though you didn't know what they were when you saw them.

Taschen has a great book on them.

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalog ... houses.htm

-John

[jim]

Another excellent book is "NorCal Mod – Icons of Northern California Modernism" by Pierluigi Serraino. Chronicle Books. 2006. This one goes into the differences between the SoCal Case Study houses and the more romantic Bay Area style (and whether it really exists), and perhaps most interesting, what happened to Modernism.

[Roderick Grant]

A couple of Norwegians: Wenche Selmer (1920-1998), whose work is published in "Norwegian Wood" by Elisabeth Tostrup; Sverre Fehn (1924-2009) with an eponymous book by Christian Norberg-Schulz. Both employed modern architectural vocabularies (Fehn was a close friend of both Aalto and Corbu; Selmer founded the school of architecture at the University of Oslo) combined with vernacular materials and building traditions (especially Selmer). The use of brick and wood in their work, as well as the thoughtful siting and environmental concerns, call to mind similarities to the work of FLW's later periods.

Italian master Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978), whose work is largely overlooked in this country, is represented in a "Complete Works" publication by Francesco Dal Co and Giuseppe Mazzariol.

Books on John Lautner, E. Fay Jones and William Bernoudy cover three successful FLW apprentices.

[lang]

Thanks for the wonderful suggestions!