Herberger House 1955

[Tom]

Gheeze George Jetson
Has always seemed odd to me that all of Wright's domes have no oculus.

https://library.artstor.org/#/asset/286 ... 1105681955

[SDR]

A la the Pantheon, you mean ? The domed skylight of the Guggenheim might be called an oculus . . .? The skylights of the Larkin building, Unity Temple and his own Oak Park studio are his answer to overhead natural light---but those aren't domed structures.

There's a cupola atop the dome of building next door to the Call tower rendering (see Call model thread). That's as near as Wright came to including such a feature on a drawing.

Wright was into pure form---square, circle, cube, sphere, etc. He didn't interrupt a plane unnecessarily, nor introduce an historicist element without re-imagining it. There is something elemental about a hole in a dome, but it speaks as much to letting smoke escape as to admitting light---historically. Wright seems to have preferred that modern upstart, the chimney . . .

S

[Tom]

Yes, exactly like the Pantheon.
It strikes me as perfectly elemental.

[SDR]

Yes, I guess so. Yet different architectural artists will see the same things differently. Look at the fantasies of E-L Boullée:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Étienne-L ... oullee.jpg

We might imagine this to be in Wright's wheelhouse---yet he could as easily have shown a lack of interest or even contempt for it. I'm sure there are better or more interesting examples . . .

S

[Roderick Grant]

The Pantheon oculus serves a purpose: it gathers rainwater for a cistern and also evacuates excess hot air. Even though the patters of the dome interior are not circular, a circular oculus seems eminently appropriate. Whoever designed the Pantheon was equal to FLW; it is by far the greatest design of ancient Rome ... and of the Italian renaissance.