Frank Lloyd Wright on the Unbuilt Buildings

Unfinished symphonies…

Fallingwater

Frank: Many artists produce works that are never performed. Music that is never performed, for example.

Ken: True. Paintings that are never displayed, novels that are never published, buildings that are never built. Undiscovered works.

Johnson

Frank: An architect can only be judged by the buildings that were ever built. I designed more than a thousand buildings but only half were built. It is those I regard as my works.

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Voice-over

Guggenheim

Frank Lloyd Wright: performance artist in many arenas. Oversaw structures more durable than pavement chalk. Made pronouncements more confident than contrite. Strategized maneuvers which triumphed over tragedies.

…

From messaging to e-books: Channels and editing

No house should ever be ON a hill.  It should be OF the hill.

Two fusty but feisty academics rue the demise of edited writing.

Ac 01: "I went looking for a quote on architecture. There was the usual wisdom from the greats, like Frank Lloyd Wright saying, 'No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill. Belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.' Then there was a bunch of quotes from celebrities, there was one from a some singer who was quoted as saying 'Architecture? Yes, that’s something I like.'”

Ac 02: Huh. I know what you mean. A banal spoken aside gets listed as a famous quote just because it came out of a mouth that thousands of teenagers go to see at a rock concert?

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Voice-over

Dredging through the amount of banal spoken speech recorded as written speech is becoming daunting.

Was something lost when we stopped deciphering the squiggles of print and instead began squinting at digital flickers?

And in writing, does a thrown together salad count for more than a measured slice of sashimi? Is the contemporary digital-driven preference for the short and sharp the victory of the Spontaneous over the Rehearsed?

Perhaps it just depends on where you are looking.

The table below suggests a continuum: informal to formal; short to long, staccato to smooth, bullet points to reasoned argument and creative writing… The medium shapes the message.

message	email	microblog	blog	website	e-book
private	private	public (private)	public (private)	public	public
SMS, WhatsApp, LINE	@gmail, @yahoo, Outlook	Twitter	blogspot	.com	-

Frank Lloyd Wright plate

...

Two mallards chat after finishing a plate of duck weed.

Mallard 1: Nice plate.
Mallard 2: Nice plate. Who do you think?
Mallard 1: Designed it?
Mallard 2: Frank Lloyd Wright. Everyone knows that.
Mallard 1: Everyone? I didn’t. How come you knew it?
Mallard 2: Oh, I just knew it. From somewhere.

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Voice-over
The airy way that that Mallard 1 says he knew it is (a) self-aggrandizing (“I know more than you ha ha,”), (b) a way of putting down Mallard 2, and (c) reinforcing his top of the roost position yet NOT admitting he learned it from Wikipedia.
We’re all a little guilty of this sometimes.

Comment on the plate: A little over designed perhaps? Unlike FLW's organic architecture!

...

Frank Lloyd Lamp

The bulb in Frank’s lamp flickers erratically.

…

Olga: The bulb’s on the blink, Frank.

Frank: That’s a technical problem. Not a design problem.

Olga: Need we call a man?

Frank: Look at it this way. The electrician won’t come tonight. And he probably won’t have the right bulb.

Olga: I’ll try screwing it up, there, that seems to have fixed it.

Frank: Well, I’ll be blowed.

 

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Voice-over

How many architects does it take to change a light-bulb?

Choose one from the following options:

A: None. They can't get planning permission for the new one.

B. Just one, but he has to coordinate ten other professionals who are doing this quiet complicated task.

C.   Four. One to criticize light-bulb design, one to sketch a new light-bulb design, one to call in a consulting engineer, one to bill for professional services.

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