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Oct. 7th, 2004 07:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mojosmomI've just been to a lecture at the Art Institute -- Eric Lloyd Wright, Frank's grandson -- one of the best lectures I've been to in ages. He is a proponent of "green architecture", using materials and technologies that minimize the environmental impact on the site, and using alternative energy systems. He began by talking about designs found in nature, and then showed how these shapes were used by his grandfather and other architects in their buildings. He then went on to show us the work of contemporary architects (himself included) who are organic in their designs.
We got to see a very short clip of FLW (restricted access film, so only about five minutes). It was rather amusing, as FLW told a bit of a story on himself. He, of course, believed that the design of the interior space defined the exterior. This was his philosophy, which he thought he had invented. Then someone gave him a copy of Kazuo Okakura's The Book of Tea, and he discovered that, five hundred years earlier, Lao-Tze had said that a building is defined not by its walls and roof, but by its interior spaces.
It strikes me that it must be a very difficult thing to be a grandson of FLW and be an architect (or a son, for that matter: Eric's father, Lloyd, was also an architect). Eric also studied with his grandfather. People will always be comparing you, and you will live and work in the shadow of that genius. ELW seems, though, to have found his niche and not to resent FLW. One wonders what he must have had to work through.
We got to see a very short clip of FLW (restricted access film, so only about five minutes). It was rather amusing, as FLW told a bit of a story on himself. He, of course, believed that the design of the interior space defined the exterior. This was his philosophy, which he thought he had invented. Then someone gave him a copy of Kazuo Okakura's The Book of Tea, and he discovered that, five hundred years earlier, Lao-Tze had said that a building is defined not by its walls and roof, but by its interior spaces.
It strikes me that it must be a very difficult thing to be a grandson of FLW and be an architect (or a son, for that matter: Eric's father, Lloyd, was also an architect). Eric also studied with his grandfather. People will always be comparing you, and you will live and work in the shadow of that genius. ELW seems, though, to have found his niche and not to resent FLW. One wonders what he must have had to work through.
