For rent: Aaron Green's Ohta House - Soquel, CA

[DavidC]

(via PrairieMod)

999 N Rodeo Gulch Rd, Soquel, CA 95073 - 5 beds 3 baths 4,166 sqft

999 N Rodeo Gulch Rd, Soquel, CA 95073


David

[Wrighter]

Absolutely stunning. Both the house, and the monthly rent.

[peterm]

Exquisite! There's something refreshing about the use of vertical redwood boards playing against the typical Wrightian horizontality. A deviation from the norm, at least partially rooted in practicality, the price of clear, wide solid wood boards had already skyrocketed by 1965.

[SDR]

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that, among the apprentices who worked in Wright's postwar idiom after his death, Jack Howe and Aaron Green are perhaps the most talented. Like many of the apprentices who grew their own practices, these two brought something new to the mix: Howe's residences are said to exhibit an appealing manifestation of "refuge and prospect," while Green's houses often take the angular plan geometries in new and rich directions.

Aaron Green's work could be contrasted to that of E Fay Jones; while the latter's residences extend strongly upward in space and in detail, Green's houses keep themselves nearer the ground -- if not quite so close to it as Wright would do, on occasion . . .

These men weren't afraid of stone, either, and they made good use of rustic coursed or uncoursed random ashlar. Stone, wood, glass, plaster -- broad and richly-detailed roof planes -- shelter with a capital S, surrounded by a pleasant or even an exhilarating natural environment . . . what more is there ?


Perhaps others will have fresh insights into one or all of these guys.

SDR

[pharding]

Wonderful house.

[Tom]

The stone, as SDR notes, seems very well done.
Makes me wonder how architect and builder communicate about this.

[peterm]

The precedent would have been clearly established by 1965. It seems that a good stone mason would have been able to absorb the concept from carefully studying photographs of Taliesin, Kentuck Knob, etc.

It is well done..

[SDR]

Good question, Tom. While preceding work in a similar vein was certainly available, a factor influencing the mason would be, as ever, the nature of the particular material he was to use. Stones cleave and cut very differently, one from another, and of course the material would be available from the quarry in different thicknesses in each case. This, as much as anything else, must explain the wide variety of appearance found in the various examples of Wright's "tweedy" and rough stonework.

I recall seeing a photograph taken somewhere in Wales, of ancient stone walls; they looked for all the world, to me, like Wright's favored stonework. Maybe the "look" of such masonry was in his blood. Are the walls and piers at Taliesin the first full-blown example of this kind of stonework, for Mr Wright ?

SDR

[Roderick Grant]

To SDR's list, I would add Bob Beharka, Milton Stricker and William Bernoudy. Bob's work is stripped to the bare essentials, absolutely nothing extraneous, closer to a Japanese aesthetic than any of the other apprentices. Milt's abstractions say all that need be said about his architecture, which, like Bob's, is uncomplicated, straightforward and elegant. William may be the least appreciated of the major apprentices, perhaps because he had a feel for the - dare I say it? - common man. There is a gap between Taliesin and the expectations of middle-class Americans which Bernoudy bridged effectively.

As for "Wright-Adjacent," those architects who absorbed FLW's principles without Taliesin's baptism by fire, the obvious ones are Harwell Hamilton Harris and Alfred Browning Parker.

I would not consider John Lautner an apostate, but he did veer off on his own journey, which at times went beyond the fringe, especially in the late years.

[KevinW]

An important Aaron Green project for several reasons. The soul of great client and great architect is palpable.