Wright Chat

I've had the pleasure for the last 4 months to fill in as my municipality's Acting Heritage Development Officer ( www.saintjohn.ca/heritage ) and I have had the opportunity to review hundreds of projects for the exact reasons as we are discussing here. In addition to a municipal bylaw and local cons...

My apologies to the Bairds, I guess... ...but, Wright did encourage homeowners to do some of their own work. Did Wright ever make a post construction visit to Baird to witness the masonry? Is it really as bad as I think it is? Being there in person always has a different feel than the pictures might...

Agreed. Seeing the inside of Baird is a nice treat; I've always admired in plan the little piano alcove combined with the double-sided fireplace that separates the sanctum from the living room. Looks very cozy. Baird has been restored more in the inside than on the outside - with plans to continue i...

Correction -- Fay Jones' Thorncrown Chapel was listed by Deborah Berke and Calatrava's Turning Torso building was mentioned by Daniel Libeskind. A single mention for each out of some 200+ selections is hardly a strong showing, however. On a side note, did anyone notice how many times some of the &qu...

The wood stops make for quite a handsome detail. The change is dramatic!

Although I cannot recall the name of the exact brand we used, there are readily available wood conditioning products on the market that can be applied to woods like poplar to even out the absorption of the stain. We recently stained some birch (which can be equally difficult to stain) with and witho...

Wright's 1910 sojourn (self-imposed exile?) to Italy with Mamah Cheney seems to be an area in Wright's life that doesn't seem to be discussed in great detail. Is there much known about Wright's time in Europe? Does anyone know of any pertinent details? Are there any books on Wright's European advent...

Bamboo is reported to be 30% more durable than maple when used as flooring, according to one of my suppliers (but he sells it, so he is likely biased). I've never used it as countertop, but maple is a popular choice for butcher block so, given the above, I would assume that the bamboo would also sta...

Further to SDR's point:

http://textualrevolution.blogspot.com/2 ... y-ass.html

Here is a detail I have referred to on a few occasions on this forum that adds a second layer of glass to the mitered glass window and provides marginally better thermal performance.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48418400@N ... 278948450/

The NxNW house makes a brief animated appearance in a parody episode of the Family Guy called "North by North Quahog" which was on, coincidentally, this evening. In this episode Peter impersonates Mel Gibson while on a second honeymoon with Lois and steals Mel's only copy of his yet-unrele...

Here's to SDR -- the greatest Wright Chat contributor ever -- having just rolled over the 3000 mark for well illustrated, well written, throught provoking posts! SDR makes Wright Chat work and I look forward to reading his posts every day!

Thanks SDR for all your contributions!

Hmmm... good to see these turned out reasonably well. A little plain for my taste, however, particularly on the sides of the building -- they look great from a distance in context but seem lacking up close. Stern is designing a controversial new world headquarters for Irving Oil here in Saint John o...

Well, yes and no. Remnants of 50's and 60's modern architecture vocabulary remains today but not as much of the modern architecture theory as a movement has remained. The modern architecture movement was the pinnacle of the age of Science and Reason where everyone believed that science and buildings...

You are probably right -- Pruitt-IGOE probably wasn't THE demise of modern architecture, just the straw that broke the camel's back. It just so happened to be a really big straw... that people warned shouldn't be built... yet it was built... and subsequently torn down only a few short years later to...