Form Follows Function - My Ass..

 

 

I took a tour of two Frank Lloyd Wright (FLW) houses in Manchester NH. The houses are owned by the Currier Art Museum which also runs the tours.  I'm not a fan of FLW's work in general. I don't like sharp corners. I don't like cement as a building material. I don't like cramped hallways and doorways. I don't like FLW's uncomfortable-looking furnishings. The Kalil house, the squat, bunker of a building in the image above and below had all these unfortunate attributes in spades..  Ugh. The other thing that really irritated me about the two houses that I toured is that FLW didn't design an enclosed garage for the residents' cars.. The reason FLW gave is that an open car port would give the residents the feeling that they were still outside with lovely vistas to take in.. (yah think?) and - (and) since the owners no longer rode horses (!) the transportation mechanism no longer had to be fully enclosed. I remarked to my friend that FLW probably never got to enjoy a New Hampshire winter, never had the thrill of shoveling out one's car before one could fucking drive it to wherever one was fucking going. I went on to say that if I was the customer for this monstrosity, the first big snow storm of the year would have resulted in me calling FLW, "Frank - Hihowahyah? Good. Good.. Yeah - the kids are all good, thanks. Hey - the reason I'm calling is that we got two feet of snow up here - yah I know, wild isn't it? New Hampshire, go figure... - Yeah, we got two feet of snow and now my cars are buried in the car ports.. Could you come up and help me shovel out brother? That'd be great...."    When I remarked at the cramped hallways and doorways, the docent sniffed "We don't say "cramped" sir, we say "intimate."  Hah. Adorable. When I almost need a lubricant to get through a doorway - it's more than "intimate." The building material for the the Kalil house is custom made concrete blocks.. The docents went on at length about how the mica dust placed in the molds as a release agent added a sparkly quality to the blocks.. Swell... a glitter house. The electrical conduits ran through the blocks via pre-formed channels inside them.. Heaven-for-fucking-bid you had a problem with the wiring down the road - you'd end up needing a fucking jack-hammer to fix it.. One docent breathlessly exclaimed "Do you all feel how sturdy this house is? Where else would you rather be in the event of a nuclear strike?  "Directly under the fucking bombs." I said under my breath.. But this is art executed by a genius, right? We don't (or shouldn't) complain about such pedestrian things like ease of maintenance and not having to use a dollop of KY-Jelly to get in and out of rooms.. or - a roof that didn't leak all the time until we spent tens of thousands of dollars to make FLW's vision water-tight... By the way - when Mr Kalil expressed his displeasure at his leaky roof to FLW, Frank replied that Mr Kalil should just move his desk or chair or whatever out of the way of the leak.

 

 

 

 

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