http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOmOwlucChE
http://www.goodart.org/flwclub.jpg
Huntington Hartford Play Resort and Sports Club (Unbuilt)
The Day the Earth Stood Still
In a sense, the movie was the first piece of collaborative architecture ever done by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). He was contacted in 1949 by Robert Wise to work on the set design because Wise knew of Wright's interest in flying saucers from drawings in progress using the flying saucer form. Both The Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church (built 1956) and the Sports Club for Huntington Hartford (unbuilt 1947) are examples.
Working with set designers for the movie, Thomas Little and Claude Carpenter, Wright came up with the classic flying saucer profile: the soliton wave or curve of normal distribution. The interior of the ship was "lifted" right out of The Johnson Wax Company Administrative Headquarters Wright had been working on since 1936. The horizontal translucent plastic tubing motif was a perfect foil for the Bauhaus-like control instruments.
The metal that sheathes both Gort and the Thanaton was, as Wright said at the time, "...to imitate an experimental substance that I have heard about which acts like living tissue. If cut, the rift would appear to heal like a wound, leaving a continuous surface with no scar."
http://www.cybercom.net/~gsullivan/bvc/ ... lante.html
Working with set designers for the movie, Thomas Little and Claude Carpenter, Wright came up with the classic flying saucer profile: the soliton wave or curve of normal distribution. The interior of the ship was "lifted" right out of The Johnson Wax Company Administrative Headquarters Wright had been working on since 1936. The horizontal translucent plastic tubing motif was a perfect foil for the Bauhaus-like control instruments.
The metal that sheathes both Gort and the Thanaton was, as Wright said at the time, "...to imitate an experimental substance that I have heard about which acts like living tissue. If cut, the rift would appear to heal like a wound, leaving a continuous surface with no scar."
http://www.cybercom.net/~gsullivan/bvc/ ... lante.html
Before we go any further with this, how well-attested is the claim that Wright did designs for this movie? The Disco Volante site is hardly an authoritative scholarly or journalistic source, and I should think such an undertaking, for such a well-known movie, would have made it into the standard biographies.
In any case, this wouldn't have been his first piece of collaborative architecture. The work he did in the Silsbee and Sullivan offices and the Arizona Biltmore come to mind as counter-examples.
In any case, this wouldn't have been his first piece of collaborative architecture. The work he did in the Silsbee and Sullivan offices and the Arizona Biltmore come to mind as counter-examples.
I Googled Paul Laffoley.
Wikipedia listing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Laffoley
Paul's website:
http://www.paullaffoley.net/
PDF page on Laffoley website to a "timeline" of the "Disco Volante"; it goes from the interesting to the bizarre:
http://www.paullaffoley.net/img/DiscoVolante.pdf
Worth a look...the guy is a talented technician of painting and composition, though the UFO/alien abduction references in the Disco Volante breed skepticisim in me.
It should be noted Wright's Broadacre City renderings depict flying saucer-like helicopters...could seeing these renderings have led Wise to approach Wright? When were the Broadacre renderings published? I saw them in a later edition of "An Autobiography" and the "Disappearing City".
I wonder what the source of Laffoley's Disco is, or if it was "created" by him.
Wikipedia listing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Laffoley
Paul's website:
http://www.paullaffoley.net/
PDF page on Laffoley website to a "timeline" of the "Disco Volante"; it goes from the interesting to the bizarre:
http://www.paullaffoley.net/img/DiscoVolante.pdf
Worth a look...the guy is a talented technician of painting and composition, though the UFO/alien abduction references in the Disco Volante breed skepticisim in me.
It should be noted Wright's Broadacre City renderings depict flying saucer-like helicopters...could seeing these renderings have led Wise to approach Wright? When were the Broadacre renderings published? I saw them in a later edition of "An Autobiography" and the "Disappearing City".
I wonder what the source of Laffoley's Disco is, or if it was "created" by him.
Funny, I was just reading about the Huntington Hartford project in "Treasures of Taliesin." In this book, it says the inspiration for the design was Wright's interest in turning the memorial sculpture he designed for Svetlana at T-West into a full-blown architectural form. I had never thought of that before but in reading about it, it all makes sense.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/greeneyeris/3935253922/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/greeneyeris/3935253922/
ch
Tafel (pub. 1979)
Besinger (pub. 1995)Curtis Besinger says (p 166, "Working with Mr Wright: What It Was Like") that the base was of redwood, carved by Gene Masselink with Svetlana's
name, and that the Sunset Terrace location was near where Wes and Svet had their rooms. One disc contained flowers, another fruit, and the third
water. Gene kept the contents fresh.
Tafel's photo, and Craig's, appear to show a concrete base; the discs are of different sizes in those two photos. So, we have three different iterations of
the monument. . .?
Does the third disc seem to be missing, in Besinger's photo ?
SDR
name, and that the Sunset Terrace location was near where Wes and Svet had their rooms. One disc contained flowers, another fruit, and the third
water. Gene kept the contents fresh.
Tafel's photo, and Craig's, appear to show a concrete base; the discs are of different sizes in those two photos. So, we have three different iterations of
the monument. . .?
Does the third disc seem to be missing, in Besinger's photo ?
SDR
I guess it's just possible that it's showing a bit to the right, mostly hidden by the foliage, and maybe the fruit is heaped on both discs at the left.
I'd like that; there's enough mystery to this piece without one of the discs being missing !
And, I didn't mean to hijack the Huntington thread to this extent. . .but it seemed the likely opportunity to study this little neglected item. I wasn't
aware of two different bases until I copied these photos.
The Italian (?) video linked above is interesting in that some Taliesin artwork is "animated" for the first time. I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more in that vein.
SDR
I'd like that; there's enough mystery to this piece without one of the discs being missing !
And, I didn't mean to hijack the Huntington thread to this extent. . .but it seemed the likely opportunity to study this little neglected item. I wasn't
aware of two different bases until I copied these photos.
The Italian (?) video linked above is interesting in that some Taliesin artwork is "animated" for the first time. I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more in that vein.
SDR
Last edited by SDR on Tue Oct 20, 2009 6:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Jeff Myers
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