Video: John Lautner's Deutsch House - Los Angeles, CA

[DavidC]

Deutsch House by John Lautner, complete overview and walkthrough - (8:05)


David

[juankbedoya]

Personally, Lautner was the best Wright's apprentice, the best architect that the "school of Wright" gave. In fact in some things the student excedeed the master.

[Roderick Grant]

Careful, Juan. Heresy.

[juankbedoya]

Careful, Juan. Heresy.

Nope. And I have my reasons:
- Every Lautner's building are different while a lot of Wright's are very similar, sometimes is boring to see the same recipe.
- One of the greatest problems of usonians are the lack of functionality when Wright used circles, triangles or diamond grids while Lautner's keep beauty and function.
- Wright was too rigid with his grids and geometry while Lautner had a more free hand. Elrod's kitchen hints an oval but is not literally an oval like Wright would have done ( a perfect circle, triangle or diamond). Other great examples are Arango, Sheats, Elrod, Hope, Silvertop. There you have triangles, curves, circles but not in a literal way but in a more free way.
- Lautner achieved some more interesting ways of the famous relationship interior-exterior with Schaffer, Arango, Sheats, etc..

It's not heresy, are facts...

[SDR]

Is neither heresy nor facts, is opinions ?

Not everyone would agree that Wright's grids are limiting. Many designers would unhesitatingly applaud the use of planning grids, which might be likened to the lines on a sheet of writing paper---or the staves on music manuscript paper---and would blanch as the prospect of "going commando": designing on a blank sheet.

I think Roderick had tongue in cheek when chiding you, however. Wright is on a pedestal, here, and we take him very seriously ! And yes, Wright's most successful followers each has his own grammar and vocabulary; Schindler, Lautner and Howe are no more like each other than is any of them like the others (though Howe's work is certainly Wrightian in a way that the others are not).

Finally, Mr Wright drew an ellipse only when portraying a circle in perspective, as on the aerial view of a ground plan. His curves were always circles or arcs . . .

S

[juankbedoya]

Grids made interesting and beautiful designs. The problem is when you use those complex geometries without rationalization then you have strange and weird things like furniture (the beds of Palmer or Kraus for example or the original furniture for offices and consulting rooms at Price Tower) , 5- 6-7 different corners in a bedroom, etc. That is what I mean with lack of function and rigid following his grids. Grids are just one way to design, nor better nor worse. A blank sheet is other, some architects don't like to draw, they go directly to the model. Every of those ways of designing have given amazing architects and buildings. Wright is on a pedestal no doubt, and I take it seriously as well

[Roderick Grant]

Architecture as art should not feel compelled to avoid unnecessary corners and odd configurations. One of FLW's aims was to create floor plans that were in themselves works of art. One of his greatest successes is the floor plan of DD Martin. Without that brilliant drawing, would the arrangement of those brick posts surrounding radiators, with art glass windows above bookcases filling the spaces between have been used to define the major rooms? They are an example of FLW's "extravagant waste of space," as Sam Freeman called it. He may have ended up with the occasional inconvenience, such as the beds in the original master suite of Hanna, but in the plan, the hex-ended twin beds with the bench tucked between fits the plan to perfection.

[juankbedoya]

Maybe here starts personal opinions. I don't consider Architecture like an art but that's my thought. I don't have anything to say about D. Martin house. I'm in love about that house and its floor plan is just delightful (maybe my favorite along with Taliesin I). In the transition from prairie houses to usonian houses, Wright's designs gained some things and lost some others. Prairie houses are very regular with beauty and function with a strong presence from the street but with a lot ornamentation still and limited with its geometries. In the other hand usonians are a depuration and a synthesis. Less materials, less ornamentacion and tons of variations thanks to the "explorations" with geometries like circles, diamonds, hexagons, "eyed-shaped" and many more. But with many lack of function. As you said floor plans were in themselves works of art and everything fits the plan to perfection and that's amazing and that's huge but that's when I mean that he was too rigid with his grids because "sometimes" a bed just needs to be a bed, a couch only a couch or a desk just a desk. As he broke the box in the beginning maybe it was necessary to broke the grids as well. At the end don't forget that somebody is going to live in that "work of art". Architecture is not only for comtemplation like art but also for living and living every day.

[SDR]

All well and good. I'm at the front of the baying crowd critiquing Wright for favoring form over function---from the perspective of the profession and its assumed responsibilities.

But I'm a formalist too, and we just have to let this architect be "the poet," as he professed to be, and admire the strengths of the work and forgive the weaknesses---as I see it.

S