Things We Said Today

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Mon, 13 May 2013 10:24:48 -0500

pgdigs: Frank Lloyd Wright, the organic architect In 1991,...

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:18:04 -0500

Frank Lloyd Wright: genius at work, Jan. 31, 1988 (Photo by Pedro E. Guerrero)

Wright visits his 1910 Robie House in Chicago, Ill., March 18, 1957 (AP photo)

Frank Lloyd Wright, March 11, 1956 (The Pittsburgh Press photo)

Fallingwater, 2005 (Photo by Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette)

Frank Lloyd Wright with Kaufmann, Sr. (Credit: Unknown)

Building of Tomorrow in Tokyo by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1990 (AP photo)

Frank Lloyd Wright with his third wife Olgivanna, June 8, 1952 (Credit: Unknown)

pgdigs:

Frank Lloyd Wright, the organic architect

In 1991, American Institute of Architects recognized Frank Lloyd Wright as “the greatest American architect of all time.” Talented, radical and passionate about his vocation, Wright was a visionary master. He defied architectural doctrines of his time, challenged the tyranny of the skyscraper and was recognized as a true iconoclast believing that form and function in building should be one, “joined in a spiritual union.”

For Wright, American cities of the 20th century were a bad dream come true: stagy grandeur, disruptive of surrounding environment, flashy structures, dwarfing the human spirit — they represented all those things that he despised. Wright once referred to New York as “a great monument to the power of money and greed… a race for rent.” He didn’t care much for Pittsburgh either. In 1935, he was quoted saying, “If I were remaking this city the first thing I’d do would be get rid of that damned smoke.”

His philosophy of architecture was reflected in the Prairie School movement. The movement focused on the importance of harmony and aesthetic congruence between humanity and the surrounding environment. The philosophy embraced structures that grew organically, shaped by their natural surroundings and the needs of their human inhabitants, buildings that ‘hugged the earth’ and merged with the landscape rather than dominated it.

“Simplicity and repose are qualities that measure the true value of any work of art,” Wright said. Simplicity was his mantra and the ability to simplify, he believed, was the hardest skill for an architect to perfect. “‘Think simple’ as my old master used to say — meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles,” he said. It was exactly for simplicity and elegance of Wright’s creations that he received international praises from Germany to Japan.

Wright designed more than 500 structures, 300 of which survive to this date.

Robie House, built in 1910 in Chicago, Ill., has been recently included in the list of “Ten buildings that changed America.”

But one of people’s most favorite buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright is, of course, the famous Fallingwater. It was built from 1934 to 1937 for the Kaufmanns at Mill Run, Pa. Constructed over a thirty-foot waterfall, Fallingwater is unique; its design defines what ‘organic architecture’ is about.

Frank Lloyd Wright also had projects that were never meant to be. When his plans for a building in Yosemite were rejected, he was unhappy with the government, when Venice tabled his proposal for a glass and marble palace on the Grand Canal, he was mad at the tourists.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal life was tempestuous, filled with adventures, struggle and turmoil. Wright was married three times and fathered seven children. He died in 1959 at age 91.

He mentored a lot of successful architects and left behind many bits of wisdom in books and lectures. One advice he tried to sear into the minds of his apprentices was, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

— Mila Sanina

Virginia May by Gregory Alan Isakov

Mon, 13 May 2013 10:15:25 -0500

Virginia May by Gregory Alan Isakov

Vienna by Billy Joel. Too good.

Wed, 08 May 2013 23:04:41 -0500

Vienna by Billy Joel.

Too good.

American Pie by Don Mclean Quite possibly, the best ever.

Sun, 05 May 2013 10:24:39 -0500

American Pie by Don Mclean

Quite possibly, the best ever.

"I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction."

Sun, 05 May 2013 10:07:33 -0500

“I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”

- Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck

This is amazing. Watch until the end. “I could dance all...

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 10:38:26 -0500

This is amazing. Watch until the end.

“I could dance all fuckin’ day” too, Nana.

Carpetbaggers by Harlem Shakes

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 00:32:43 -0500

Carpetbaggers by Harlem Shakes

Song For You by Alexi Murdoch Always makes everything better.

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 22:27:13 -0500

Song For You by Alexi Murdoch

Always makes everything better.

There comes a time in every book when you know whether or not you’ll ever read it again....

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:13:08 -0500

There comes a time in every book when you know whether or not you’ll ever read it again. I’m five pages in now and know I need to buy a copy for myself.

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, published 1962 American cities are like badger holes, ringed...

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 23:03:54 -0500

John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley, published 1962

American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash - all of them - surrounded by piles of wrecked and rusting automobiles, and almost smothered with rubbish. Everything we use comes in boxes, cartons, bins, the so-called packaging we love so much. The mountains of things we throw away are much greater than the things we use. In this, if in no other way, we can see the wild and reckless exuberance of our production, and waste seems to be the index. Driving along I thought how in France or Italy every item of these thrown-out things would have been saved and used for something. This is not said in criticism of one system or the other but I do wonder whether there will come a time when we can no longer afford our wastefulness—chemical wastes in the rivers, metal wastes everywhere, and atomic wastes buried deep in the earth or sunk in the sea.

He just… gets it.

"They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who..."

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 23:42:27 -0500

“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.”

- A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

Help Me, Rhonda by The Beach Boys

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 15:31:02 -0500

Help Me, Rhonda by The Beach Boys

"There is always something charming in the idea of greatness returning to simplicity."

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:15:00 -0500

“There is always something charming in the idea of greatness returning to simplicity.”

- Willa Cather Death Comes For The Archbishop

Photo

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:15:09 -0500

"Buying a book is the first step towards happiness."

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:26:46 -0500

“Buying a book is the first step towards happiness.”

- Found in “Used Books” - Chicago, IL

gardensinunexpectedplaces: UrbanAir is a project that aims to...

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:11:58 -0500

gardensinunexpectedplaces:

UrbanAir is a project that aims to turn existing billboards into urban gardens, filled with bamboo. Stephen Glassman is the creator and hopes to turn billboards into smart gardens that are wifi enabled and act as sensors to monitor the climate, transforming the suspended gardens into global nodes.

(via Artist Aims To Replace All Outdoor Billboards With Bamboo Gardens - PSFK)

More info on Glassman’s site here.

I started writing our story today but stopped. Why? Because It’s not just mine to write. That...

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:07:34 -0500

I started writing our story today but stopped. Why? Because It’s not just mine to write. That story has run its course and who’s to deem whether or not it should be immortalized in print or pen or hieroglyphics? I stopped because I have a future. I stopped because it is the past. The past that has brought me to who I am but will not define who I become. I do that. Just me.

Hello My Old Heart by The Oh Hello’s

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 01:20:00 -0500

Hello My Old Heart by The Oh Hello’s

From 'Naked' by David Sedaris

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:06:53 -0500

The more places I went, the more I realized I didn’t matter to anyone except the family I left behind - and who knew them besides their friends and neighbors in a town just as pointless as this one? Raleigh would be granted a larger dot on the map, but when seen as a whole, the multitude of strange towns and cities conspired to nullify my shaky myth of self-importance.

135, planet of the apes