Vessels and landscapes: a special reciprocity

Here was the house, its heavy walls built of the stone of the mountain, plastered over by groping hands – in feeling and material nothing but an artificial reproduction of one of the many caverns in the mountain-side. I saw that essentially all architecture of the past, whether Egyptian or Roman, was nothing but the work of a sculptor dealing with abstract forms. The architect’s attempt really was to gather and pile up masses of building material, leaving empty hollows for human use […]. The room itself was a by-product.(R. M. Schindler)By 1911, Rudolph Schindler had concluded that all architecture in the West leading up to the early twentieth century had been fixated on structure and mass, in stark contrast to the new ‘space architecture’ he championed. His dismissive categorisation of the traditional room as some kind of evolutionary relative of the cave is a reminder of the moment when a strand of Western architecture blossomed from containment into openness; from a predictable past to an exciting and uncertain future – the gift of modern architecture.

Lautner, John Edward (1911–1994)

While the American architect John Lautner may not have considered himself a modernist, he nevertheless made a significant contribution to the branch of modernist architecture that emerged in Southern California during the mid-twentieth century, pioneered by architects such as Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Though he was wary of being seen as an imitator of Wright, under whom he had worked as an apprentice for six years, Lautner’s work does reflect several of his mentor’s architectural principles, such as flowing space, harmony with nature, and site-specific designs. Lautner’s visually arresting buildings, however, took these ideas further than ever before. His ambitious projects, as well as being architecturally innovative, were feats of modern engineering. These daring structures stood in stark contrast to the minimal, machine-influenced International Style buildings that had dominated modernist architecture since the 1930s. Lautner’s residential projects, in particular, gained widespread attention through the photography of Julius Shulman, their appearance in Hollywood films, and their endorsement by the rich and famous of Los Angeles. While contemporaneous critics were divided in their opinions of Lautner’s work, he later achieved international acknowledgment and respect, and is now considered an important figure within the Mid-Century Modern design movement.

Dilemas de autenticidad: la restauración de la Casa Freeman de Frank Lloyd Wright

<p>El artículo expone una breve descripción histórica ilustrativa del proceso de encargo, diseño y construcción de la casa con los bloques prefabricados característicos de la etapa californiana de Wright y de la vida posterior del edificio, centro neurálgico de la actividad de vanguardia artística de Los Ángeles, con sustanciales modificaciones llevadas a cabo por otros arquitectos afamados como Rudolph Schindler, Gregory Ain and John Lautner. En el texto se refleja no solo la tremenda complejidad técnica de restaurar esta casa erigida con un sistema constructivo sugerente pero tremendamente frágil y problemático y la dificultad añadida de su presencia en zona sísmica y los daños sufridos por el terremoto de Los Ángeles de 1994, sino también el dilema que surge a la hora de escoger eventualmente qué fase restaurar del edificio entre toda la estratificación de intervenciones de arquitectos estrella que caracteriza a este edificio.</p>