¡Colores!; 809; Building Harmonies: Frank Lloyd Wright in the Southwest; Taliesin Interview Tom Casey 2

But that's what Frank Lloyd Wright did his entire lifetime. He kept saying the same thing in slightly different ways over and over and over and over and over again. So you just have to accept the fact that you, that's the only way you will get people to listen is just keep saying the same thing and sooner or later maybe well something will happen. That's right. Okay. I am rolling. So about the battery house, what do you think about the fact that they built it in Santa Fade? I have to say I've never really actually seen it but I'm certainly very familiar as matter of fact I did a good deal of the structural engineering that went into that house. But in general my idea is that any time you can build an unbuilt Frank Lloyd Wright design and come close to it's close enough to its original concept you ought to do it. Even if you have to find some way to make some kind of adaptation of it in terms even of to a certain degree of materials because they're beautiful designs and they're beautiful

ways to live and they're wonderful spaces and I'm, I come down on the side of if there's ever an opportunity to do them to do one, let's say that's an unbuilt design I would take that opportunity but as a matter of fact I'm doing it right now in Michigan a man has come and made a search in the archive and chosen an unbuilt design and we have to make some modifications in that design. The side is a little different, his budget's a little different but we're going to do our very best to give that man the space that's in that house and some of the materials are going to be a little bit different than those. And one of the ways it seems to me you can take that liberty is that if you studied some of the things that Frank Lloyd Wright did for, okay I'm rolling whenever you're ready go ahead. Well the materials will be slightly different and I think this is a liberty that you can take because if you study some of the early designs of Frank Lloyd Wright especially

for houses you'll find that even that during the development he proposed different kinds of materials for different houses and even say this particular house that I'm dealing with right now has several different versions I mean it was the plan was shown one way at a time and then a mirror image it was shown in a mirror image another time it was shown with stone at one time it was given as to someone else as a possibility very close plan in brick so even he was certainly willing to modify the use of materials to adapt to particular circumstances and I feel that we have the same liberty to deal with these houses in that fashion because we're giving somebody a beautiful space in which to live we can revise let's say in this again I come back to the house we're dealing with right now we're making a different kind of plan for the bedroom wing because this man's requirements are slightly different than the original but we're simply moving some partitions around

the idea of the house won't change but we're simply purporting the rooms a little differently but we'll do everything we can to maintain that the integrity of the spaces as places in which to live but we'll modify them to suit the particular person who's building it now and I think this man will have a beautiful house and I will be pleased with the opportunity to build and not build design because there are so many of them there are hundreds why shouldn't they be built I mean no one has ever given me a really good solid reason why you shouldn't be building those buildings and I would jump at the chance to build any one of them any time I had an opportunity to because I think like all good works of art they deserve a place in our real world other than just on paper it wouldn't surprise me of some day something very like it is built because buildings keep getting taller

I was just looking a few days ago at the tallest building is going to come in Shanghai China it's going to be the third tallest building in the world it employs a certain kind of structural principle it makes it tall no one yet has taken up the idea of the structural principle behind Mr. Rice Ma Hai as a matter of fact he even said you know you don't have to build a mile high you can build a quarter of a mile high if you want but the important thing is to recognize what is the structural principle which is the tripod that supports this building and use that to fashion your tall buildings because it's one of the most stable forms you can put together so that was that's the essence of the idea of the mile high as it's a very stable form you need a very stable form to go high so it wouldn't surprise me at all and I'd be very willing to participate in the project if it came along I think last question would be this is a question it's kind of all together so difference or miseride the innovation or miseriding the architecture today what is it and about

democracy brought anchor this is a very broad question but about the philosophy of architecture it's about how well of course yeah it's it's a complex subject it's used for three years yeah and I was very I had a very integral part in putting that exhibition together well that very idea of how how do you approach this very complex idea of architecture that Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned and we tried to do that several years ago in a large exhibition we called in the realm of the title the correct title was Frank Lloyd Wright in the realm of

ideas and this exhibition was put together on a little different scheme it was not a it was very comprehensive but it was not a sequential kind of exhibition about in time it was an idea that had some main divisions about ideas and the ideas you could follow from early works of Frank Lloyd Wright to the very latest works of Frank Lloyd Wright because the ideas and how he contrived the or designed the outcome of those ideas adhered to some particular line of development throughout his whole lifetime and and these ideas we put this were were manifest in this exhibition by showing different examples of development through his career and we carried that exhibition around to 10 different locations in the United States over a period of three years the interesting part above it was we had marvelous photography we

had models we had original drawings in each place it was a very large exhibition the indoor part of the exhibition was had to have a minimum of 8 to 10,000 square feet to do so it was a good size exhibition but the most I think comprehensive part was after you toured the indoor part of the exhibition then you went outside in some nearby connected venue and there you visited a full size replica of a house and that was my part of the exhibition to put this full size model together how did I how do we engineer this so we could put it together and take it apart and move it from a place to place and still represent a full scale house that you could then you had the full experience of because he always taught us that in his times in the past during his lifetime whenever he had an exhibition if he didn't give you

some idea of the full size scale people would misinterpret the size of things he was he was designing he felt this was very true at the very first time he published in Europe he felt that many people misunderstood the sizes of things that he was designing so he always wanted to have a full scale experience for you so we took an unbuilt design of an idea for a system house and we made a full scale model of it and we carried around each of these 10 places and set it up so that after you saw all these ideas in representations of drawings or models then you could come and go through a full size experience and that was extremely popular and as a matter of fact a million people went through that house in those and it ended up here in Scottsdale and each time we move it and it was always a race against time to get it take it down move it put it together again but it worked very well and many people then began to connect more

immediately to the many ideas that he was trying to to get you to understand in his design drawings and the ideas of changing the scale of some of your living quarters so that you aren't always in the same size of rooms you know and you find it here as you walk around Tellius and West you find it any frankly right building you come across there's always this modification of the scale of the size there's a variety of values and spaces of heights of widths that that immediately impact on you you know they give you a sense of something about these houses that is special and I of course my own theory of much of that is that they're all based on a very disciplined grid or unit system as we call because whether you perceive it immediately or not things that are very orderly do impact you in some fashion and you come away feeling tita that was the space was so nice that you can't quite put your hand why was it that way

well you're not sure it was that way but my idea is because there is a sense of order in these things that becomes that comes to you almost subconsciously or unconsciously and you react to that and there and I believe the human condition is always to seek some kind of order not disorder I think you're most successful on your most fully developed in within some kind of orderly circumstance I mean not that has to be rigid you know not I don't mean a straight jacket but I mean some you perceive senses of order and things are beneficial to the human condition and well what's the greatest disorder of all this war wartime isn't it I mean it destroys all order and that's where you the you in humanity becomes almost well becomes intolerant so that you can't continue these kinds of things you have to get past it in some way and I'm convinced that here comes here comes

a tour do you think we've done enough yeah I think so or if we're missing something okay we're ready to go let me say that I think one of the most important things we're doing on talisman is a continuation of the school of architecture because it's still based very much on experiential kind of learning I think the future of architecture will depend more and more on that that kind of learning I represent the school in the arena of what we might call higher education and so I have opportunity to see and experience some of the kinds of activities and other schools of architecture and I perceive that there from time to time there are elements of hypothetical kinds of philosophical exploration that don't have much connection with reality and I think

the future of architecture depends on youngsters who will learn from experience or through an experiential mode let me get rolling here and we're ready whenever you're ready well I think the future of architecture will depend greatly on young people who have had an opportunity to learn through experience one of the important parts of the program here is the experience of actual construction there again that's difficult for very large institutions to do I think that's one thing we can do in a small institution we can give young people a chance to have a firsthand experience with construction and as we go around in the world of construction that's one of the things we hear from the people who are building is the fact that architects come to them who have little or no experience with actual construction and therefore the things they want to do are

difficult to achieve because they don't have a direct contact with reality while the development is going on so the kind of program we have I think is is crucially important for the future of good successful buildings in the environment that that we see in the environment that we face on a day-to-day basis and we have now over the past decade worked very hard at seeking recognition for this program within the field of higher education and we've now achieved that level so that this school is a recognized school that young people who want to make their way into the profession will have the proper credentials out of this program to be able to take an examination in the state and become a licensed architect I feel that was a very important step as a matter of fact Mrs. Wright initiated in those final years of her life initiated that direction that recognizing

that after the term of the founder we oh yeah Mrs. Wright had initiated this direction to seek recognition broader recognition in the field of higher education because she recognized that after the time of the founders the ideas must be supported by some institutionalization otherwise they will simply die out and you know there were many people who said well tell us and we'll never last Frank Floyd Wright has gone certainly it won't last well it did last and then they finally said well now of course Mrs. Wright has gone this surely it won't last well okay we're now 11 years past the time of Mrs. Wright we now have for the school a recognition in the field of higher education and especially in architecture comes another aircraft you can't find a better place

to be certainly in this country you can't find maybe in south of the equator you might find something but we are in the best possible place right here in Scottsdale or Arizona sure okay well I was trying to just try to summarize by saying that Mrs. Wright recognized the importance that propel the idea beyond the founders you must find another form of recognition there must be some institutionalization of the idea to carry it beyond the time of the founders who were both very charismatic people who attracted attention to their ideas by their own devices as time goes by any idea no matter who's it is if it's going to succeed if it's going to project itself into the future has to find a way to do that and I think we found one of the important ways to do that is that our school is now accepted as a place where young people may come to study architecture and

have the proper kind of credential to be able to take a licensing examination and get into the field and so far our record is that of our graduates who have our our accredited master of architecture degree now every single one of them and there are 24 of them now in the over the last few years every single one of them is employed directly in the field of architecture and I just did a survey early this year to find that out and it was very reassuring to me that all of these young people are finding their way into the profession after their experience here and I think that speaks for the program and that we will continue that program in that way and people will make their way into the profession and sooner or later they will have a greater effect. Whoa that's perfect