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Abandoned Frank Lloyd Wright – Tour of Shams Palace, Iran
- hinkley 8y agoMy dad likes Frank’s work but it drives me nuts. We went to the Talliessen tour and that killed what begrudging respect I had left. The man removed a load bearing wall from his sister’s house for pity’s sake. Others had to redo the work later when the house started to sag. Two of his students added a concrete lintel to a crooked wall to stop it from falling over. His theories often created the sort of existential crisis (especially chronic water damage, one of my personal bugaboos) for the buildings that I find negligent. I get bristly about programmers who behave the same way. The beauty of their creation is what’s important, not the utility to the inhabitants. As far as I’m concerned the man was a menace. Usually I keep this opinion for off-the-rails software engineering meetings or anecdotes over beers, because I get that it’s not that popular, I’m kind of a downer for tearing down an inspirational figure. But shag carpet next to a goddamned pool was my tipping point. What the fuck.
- morkfromork 8y agoFrank Lloyd Wright died in 1959. Article says his son-in-law responsible for it.
- Upvoter33 8y agoPretty strong commentary about an architect who clearly created many beautiful and lasting works - not sure where the vitriol is coming from. His houses are absolutely artworks, and should be treated as such, despite their maintenance woes. Have you ever been to Falling Water? It's had huge problems -- recently mostly remedied -- but is an inspiring and magical creation.
- GalacticDomin8r 8y agoSomething about "lasting" and "maintenance woes" doesn't quite belong. Op did acknowledge the artistic value, so not sure why your response is simply an appeal to artistic value.
- p1necone 8y agoI'd agree with you if he was just creating artworks meant to be observed from the outside, but he wasn't. He was designing buildings that were also intended to be lived in or used for some functional purpose by people.
- TylerE 8y agoThat's why we have structural engineers.
- gumby 8y agoHe was also a nutter who would break into houses he'd designed and rearrange the furniture back to the way he had intended it. What a control freak.
- paulryanrogers 8y agoThis sounds pathological. I wonder if we are more tolerant of criminal behavior by 'visionaries'.
- twblalock 8y agoThere are plenty of ugly run-of-the-mill houses with the same issues. Wright was not worse than his contemporaries in terms of quality of construction. I know people whose houses were built ten years ago and have similar problems.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoWright went out of his way to design things in a way that greatly reduces longevity and complicates maintenance for little additional benefit. When engineers do that with cars we call them German.
- dang 8y agoKeep nationalistic swipes off HN, please.
- hyperpallium 8y ago> when the Editors of the Guide were sued by the families of those who had died as a result of taking the entry on the planet Tralal literally (it said "Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal for visiting tourists: instead of "Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts often make a very good meal of visiting tourists"), they claimed that the first version of the sentence was the more aesthetically pleasing, summoned a qualified poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty and hoped thereby to prove that the guilty party in this case was Life itself for failing to be either beautiful or true.
- TylerE 8y agoCan we get a title change? This is NOT a work of FLW, but of his successors after his death.
- reneherse 8y agoFYI the building described in TFA was designed by William Wesley Peters, not Frank Lloyd Wright.
- chrisbennet 8y agoYeah, but no one is going to click on the article without “frank loyde wright” on the title...
- chrisbennet 8y ago”Nezam Amery was the indispensable link in the Frank Lloyd Wright/Iran/Shams Palace story – and his father had been assassinated by the father of his client, Princess Shams.”