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If there’s one thing we all know about the TARDIS, it’s that it’s bigger on the inside. But what I was horrified to learn recently when Irene and I visited two famous Frank Lloyd Wright buildings is that whatever the man designed was smaller on the inside.
Irene and always wanted to see Fallingwater, and so last week we took a vacation day and traveled there, also taking in the nearby Wright home Kentuck Knob. Up until our tours, we’d only known of these places from their beautiful exteriors. So we were stunned on Friday to discover how uncomfortable, unfriendly, and positively inhuman the interiors of these properties were.
What first disconcerted me when we moved inside Fallingwater was that there wasn’t a single spot in which I would feel comfortable simply sitting and reading a book … except outside on one of the terraces, and then only during daylight hours. Inside, all of the lighting was indirect and of low wattage. In one of the bedrooms, the tour guide actually told us that it was Wright’s intention that when you entered that room, you’d feel closed in, and your gaze would immediately be drawn outside. So these rooms were being made intentionally uncomfortable in some insane bid to bring one closer to Nature.
The interior of Kentuck Knob was, depressingly, even more unfit for human habitation. Dark, dreary, with some of the corridors only 21″ wide. While a few of the rooms in these houses were bearable, none of them seemed warm or inviting. I continually felt a sense of oppressiveness as the walls and ceilings pressed down upon me.
When I remarked that one of the chairs Wright had designed for Kentuck Knob seemed quite uncomfortable, our tour guide replied that, Oh, Mr. Wright didn’t believe that chairs should be comfortable. After all, if they were comfortable, company might be encouraged to stay too long. I tried not to roll my eyes at this, but I don’t think I succeeded.
And so, though the buildings were beautiful, they were beautiful to look at. The decks of the homes were a wonderful place from which to look back at the exteriors, or to look out at the woods from, but there was nowhere inside either house where I would have felt comfortable living.
This astonished me. (I was pleased, however, that Irene and I turned out to be in total agreement as to the livability these homes.)
One further observation of the dictatorial nature of this architect who put his philosophy before actual human beings. Evidently, Wright would occasionally later visit the homes he’d designed, and if he happened to discover that furniture had been rearranged from the positions in which he had placed them, he would put them back and chastise his clients.
What can I say? Frank Lloyd Wright … was an idiot.
This has been a complaint about “geniuses” for every. Steve Jobs has rightly been compared to Wright for the Steve’s way or the highway attitude about his products.
I find this entry extremely amusing and apropos as I’m in the middle of a Dr. Who classic marathon (series 16 currently) AND I’m in the middle of designing another house building project with a nod to pre-war architecture. What timing!
Wright is an example of art improperly studied as architecture. His buildings are notoriously problematic. While Wright did some things right, like asking nature what’s appropriate in a place, not asking the same question about the intended inhabitant does seem idiotic. Architecture is not simply an artistic expression – alone. Architecture actually builds human environment for use and function as well. Aesthetic is important too and that’s something we’re losing in the modern world.
Wright’s also encouraged a severe misapplication of form. Taking flat roofs that work well in dry conditions like the US West, for example, and building them in wet conditions, like Pennsylvania, was a terrible idea, especially since he didn’t have the architectural know-how or the appropriate materials/technology to execute them. It’s just as lame as stick framing today’s houses in areas where adobe would be more appropriate (or vice-versa).
Geniuses, as you say, aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be. And they’re fewer and farther in between than we like to admit.
Thought provoking, thanks!
Thanks for the comment. I think you’ll find this other post relevant to Wright:
Was there ever an architect as insistent as Wright that the comfort of the building’s inhabitants really didn’t matter?
karen wester newton
Our tour guide said Wright was going for a cave-like feel. I didn’t find the inside oppressive but then I am probably 6 inches shorter than you, at least. One thing I noted was that unlike some Wright houses that quickly became museums, Falling Water was lived in every weekend for years. The furniture was even worn-looking. I asked about the giant red sphere at the end of a swing arm in the fireplace and was told that while Wright had designed it to serve warm mulled wine, it actually took forever for the wine to heat up so they heated it on the stove and then poured it into the giant red sphere so the guests could serve themselves. Likewise, the clerestory windows required a servant to come along with a long pole with a hook on the end to open or close them. Practical that house wasn’t.