Come again another day

Rain all week according to the N&O. We shall see what gets accomplished. The only deadline we're sort of dealing with is we have to be dried in sufficiently to receive our Sears appliances as well as the Ikea cabinets the second week of December. And this week is Halloween so time is flying by.

We had dinner with a young fellow who had never heard of Frank Lloyd Wright so we mentioned the Ken Burns documentary, which is an excellent introduction.

Here's a taste of it. Apparently PBS has such tight reins on their shows, you can't access them on the web unless it is on their site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G8k3qTpk7g

Here are a couple of negative responses to the show.

http://www.franklloydwrightinfo.com/burns.html

The dogs of war

"It is desperately cold...a damp clammy cold that almost never amounts to freezing or frost, but it is harder to keep warm than anywhere else I have been, unless Italy."

So writes Frank Lloyd Wright in his book, The Natural House. He was actually writing about Tokyo, Japan, but that description just suits our weather today and what is forecast for the rest of the week. A damp, clammy cold... Welcome to the south.

And we have started our annual bickering. Pat turns up the thermostat because it is cold as hell when the rains and wind blow (and I always think of Hell as cold-absence of God and all that) and almost immediately, I race over to turn it down because I get so "stuffy."

Wright's answer to this conundrum is what he calls "gravity heat," or what is more commonly referred to as radiant heat. He became a believer during his stint in Japan whilst building The Imperial Hotel. Froze to death until he was introduced into what his hosts referred to as "Korean Room," which had heated floors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Hotel,_Tokyo#The_Imperial_Hotel

Heat- that physics bound commodity- MUST rise. Therefore, if the floors are warm you've won the major part of the battle in making your house comfortable. Right now, we don't have radiant heat. The house was freezing, Pat kicked in the furnace and now I'm stuffy.

The dogs of war have been let loose.

Jane Russell and cantilevers

When Howard Hughes hired Jane Russell to star in his pictures, he also hired a structural engineer from Hughes Aircraft to design a new bra to "maximize" and support the assets he had purchased.

Perhaps Mr. Wright should have used the same engineer when he built Fallingwater. Frank Lloyd Wright used cantilevers to infinitely extend the lines of his buildings.

If you remember your high school geometry, you will remember that lines and planes are infinite. Hence a cantilever projection out of a house, makes the house appear to go on forever. This is especially true of our little usonian with its cantilevered carport and trellis projections at the end of each wing. The planes of the house are extended forever and simultaneously they seem to hug the earth. However, these cantilevers need to be anchored firmly to maintain their structural integrity.

Unlike Ms. Russells' foundation garments though, Fallingwater's cantilevers began to fail almost as soon as they were built and they underwent a massive reconstruction just before we toured the home a couple of years ago.

Our carport has steel structures to help anchor it in place. AND the steel was fabricated right here in good ole Burlington NC at Piedmont Metals of Burlington... just about spittin' distance from our lot.

Thanks to Wikepedia for the picture of Fallingwater.

Morticia would like these

http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/S79829370

Our floor color ended up being more of an orangeish/brownish with a hint of red, which I actually like better than the Santa Fe Red Mr Wright used.

I had been worried that our greenish/teal oriental rug in the living room would mean we'd be living in a perpetual "Christmas mode" but this will be fine. It also means that we had to rethink the kitchen cabinets and we opted for the brown/black cabinet drawers and doors, which also means we saved nearly half of what we planned to spend down there because our first choice was, of course, the most expensive. And at IKEA, you can opt for drawers rather than shelves inside the cabinet. One of my sisters, BB, has drawers rather than shelves and I have coveted them for years...

I don't know what Frank would think of black cabinets in the kitchen, which he refused to label kitchen in his blueprints, preferring the term workspace.

I find that whenever we talk about doing anything, we spend an inordinate amount of time wondering if Wright would approve of it, and even though he's not here to give his opinion one way or another, we are just like his paying clients. We want to respect his work.

On our tour of the Rosenbaum house in Florence, Alabama, we were all marveling on how tiny the furniture was. It turns out that Wright designed all the furniture for what he considered an "average" person-5'8 1/2"-exactly his height. This would have been fine, except that the Rosenbaums, both mother and father and their sons were all tall... Julia Child tall. But, they used his tiny chairs, squeezed their basketball player thighs under the low dining table and never thought twice about it. When asked why on earth they just didn't get furniture more suitable for their frames, Mrs. Rosenbaum replied, "Mr. Wright wouldn't like it."

I don't think I'd be uncomfortable for 50 years to please the man, but I would like to think he didn't hate the choices we're making.

A correction

I have been reading THE NATURAL HOUSE by Frank Lloyd Wright. In it, he attributes the word USONIA to Samuel Butler. Mr. Butler, a pithy soul, to say the least has many interesting quotes. For your reading enjoyment and as a literate interlude until we get our concrete floor poured which was delayed due to rains, I am inserting this link to some of them.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/samuel_butler_4.html

My favorite one is "Death is only a larger kind of going abroad."

Mr. Butler also wrote THE WAY OF ALL FLESH, which is on my bookshelf awaiting my reading enjoyment.

The soul of the house, with apologies to Will Shakespeare

If eyes are the windows into the soul, then can windows be the soul of the house? I think they are in the case of the Usonians. The entire focus of the Usonians is the thrust of the inhabitants to the world outside. Although the side that faces the street obscures the house from the common passers-by, and the entries are somewhat hidden from view, once one enters a Usonian or for that matter, most of Frank Lloyd Wright houses, the world outdoors is welcomed in through multitudes of well designed and well placed windows.

Windows are the most expensive part of any house, and this one is no exception. We have so many windows that, I think I have mentioned this before, we are using plywood as our framing material as well as 2x6s instead of 2x4s to ensure stability. We have clerestory windows, casement windows, windows that are also doors, sidelights on the door and windows that edge along the fireplace masonry. So, when our still nameless builder called to tell us that if we ordered them today, we'd get a 10% discount from Anderson, we jumped right on it.

The reason we went with Anderson is that they have a good rep, and they also have Frank Lloyd Wright art glass inserts. Later on, when the money all settles out, then we can see about purchasing the inserts for the front door etc.

http://www.andersenwindows.com/servlet/Satellite/art-glass_Frank-Lloyd-Wright_artisan_classic.htm

This is right from the Anderson Windows website.

Usonian

We should hear from the bank this week about the construction loan for the new house we're building. It is based on a Frank Lloyd Wright usonian, the Pope-Leighey Home which can be visited in Alexandria Va.

Here's a link to the original

http://popeleighey1940.org

It didn't come up blue, so it may be best to cut and paste it. If we get the loan then this blog about building an old design that is so radical it is hard to get loan approval, will continue. Otherwise I may have to write about my new old-fashioned broom which I love so much.

Okay, here's a little lecture which is almost straight out of a Lloyd-Wright house tour. The odds are greatly in your favor that at one point you have lived in a house that was directly derived from Mr. Frank... The ranch house common to most post-war suburbs, is a descendent of the usonion. That's it for now. I have to go de-gunkify the stock simmering on the stove.