Maginel Wright Barney Cottages
Maginel Wright Barney Cottages
I read in Curtis Besinger's book, "Working With Mr. Wright" a reference to 3 cottages designed for Maginel Wright Barney probably in the summer of 1948. Does anyone have any info on them? Especially plans or elevations?
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Roderick Grant
- Posts: 11815
- Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:48 am
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Roderick Grant
- Posts: 11815
- Joined: Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:48 am
Roderick, is there evidence of more than one design for Maginel ?
Unlike BBP, Besinger lists Maginel Wright Barney under B.
"Summer 1949," p 202: "Mr Wright had designed three one-room cottages for his sister, Maginel Wright Barney, the previous summer. Each was based on a different geometry. The triangular one interested me the most. So I decided to try to work out a design for the [Howard] Anthonys based on this thirty-sixty design . . ."
SDR
Unlike BBP, Besinger lists Maginel Wright Barney under B.
"Summer 1949," p 202: "Mr Wright had designed three one-room cottages for his sister, Maginel Wright Barney, the previous summer. Each was based on a different geometry. The triangular one interested me the most. So I decided to try to work out a design for the [Howard] Anthonys based on this thirty-sixty design . . ."
SDR
How do we know that this is design C ? Where is that shown ? It's a start . . .
Besinger goes on to say that he did a design for Anthony, that Jack Howe "looked at my plan and suggested a few changes, which I made. When we showed the drawings of this plan to Mr Wright he changed the flat roof over the cooking are and carport into a pitched roof and made the hipped roof which I had drawn with equal slopes into one with unequal slopes." This was a current interest of the architect; we have already looked a Mathews and several other designs of the period with two pitches, one typically twice as steep as the other.
Then Besinger moves on to Neils. "Steve Oyakawa was assigned to work on the drawings . . ." When they were shown to Mr Wright, "he didn't sign them. Instead he revised the design. He made many changes simplifying it."
"An important change in the house was the change from a hipped roof to a gabled roof which had unequal slopes. With this change the door-height soffits at the eaves of the roof were eliminated. The roof became one simple, asymmetrically folded plane. These door-height soffits had helped to produce many characteristics of the so-called prairie houses: the intimate scale, the horizontal layering of the space, its spatial contrasts, and alse the spatial continuity between the exterior and interior of the houses. The openness of the gable and the elimination of the eave-height soffits as well as the simplification of the setting of the glass enclosure gave a new sense of openness and freedom to the occupants of this house. It also eliminated the horizontal layering of the interior space and gave it increased plasticity. But it also made problems in the structural framing of the roof. Gone was that space between soffits and roof joists in which horizontal structural members could be concealed. Any structural reinforcement of the roof -- with steel beams or channels -- now had to be handled within the roof thickness. Framing of this roof became an intriguing problem. Several of the houses at this time had this characteristic."
One would think that if the architect had a concept of how to structure this roof -- and what designer would draw something whose structure was a mystery to him ? -- but we don't hear of word from Mr Wright to his assistants, on this matter -- ever, to my recollection . . .
S
Besinger goes on to say that he did a design for Anthony, that Jack Howe "looked at my plan and suggested a few changes, which I made. When we showed the drawings of this plan to Mr Wright he changed the flat roof over the cooking are and carport into a pitched roof and made the hipped roof which I had drawn with equal slopes into one with unequal slopes." This was a current interest of the architect; we have already looked a Mathews and several other designs of the period with two pitches, one typically twice as steep as the other.
Then Besinger moves on to Neils. "Steve Oyakawa was assigned to work on the drawings . . ." When they were shown to Mr Wright, "he didn't sign them. Instead he revised the design. He made many changes simplifying it."
"An important change in the house was the change from a hipped roof to a gabled roof which had unequal slopes. With this change the door-height soffits at the eaves of the roof were eliminated. The roof became one simple, asymmetrically folded plane. These door-height soffits had helped to produce many characteristics of the so-called prairie houses: the intimate scale, the horizontal layering of the space, its spatial contrasts, and alse the spatial continuity between the exterior and interior of the houses. The openness of the gable and the elimination of the eave-height soffits as well as the simplification of the setting of the glass enclosure gave a new sense of openness and freedom to the occupants of this house. It also eliminated the horizontal layering of the interior space and gave it increased plasticity. But it also made problems in the structural framing of the roof. Gone was that space between soffits and roof joists in which horizontal structural members could be concealed. Any structural reinforcement of the roof -- with steel beams or channels -- now had to be handled within the roof thickness. Framing of this roof became an intriguing problem. Several of the houses at this time had this characteristic."
One would think that if the architect had a concept of how to structure this roof -- and what designer would draw something whose structure was a mystery to him ? -- but we don't hear of word from Mr Wright to his assistants, on this matter -- ever, to my recollection . . .
S