Norman Foster Series

I have decided I will be done with the Norman Foster Series. Notice the difference between him and Frank Lloyd Wright:

• Foster designed pretty much exclusively large buildings and projects
• Wright designed anything you could think of, as I showed in This Post

Now I will be posting on random buildings.

School/Architecture

I got to do an architecture post for school! Here it is:

This is his children's playroom. (Notice the painting over the fireplace; it is from the Arabian Nights)

   Frank Lloyd Wright’s House and Studio

    This house is a classic Frank Lloyd Wright House.  It was designed in 1889, when Wright was only twenty-one years old. It is located in Oak Park, Illinois. He built it as a home, later adding a studio and may other additions in the next twenty years. It was later converted into separate two living spaces, and was rented out.

    The house styling is a mix between Victorian and Art and Crafts, and contains many details that Wright later used in many of his houses. Some of the include using natural overhead lighting, the lavish use of art glass, prominent fireplaces, and a horizontal emphasis.

    The house also characterizes the use of natural materials and dark colors. Some of materials used are unstained wood, exposed brick, painter’s flax, and stone, and hearth tiles, and a
wood-shingled outside. This house is a wonderful example of a definition of Wright’s characteristic architecture.

All the buildings I have posted on

• Commerzbank Tower
• The Swiss Re Building
• Beth Shalom Congregation
• The Johnson Wax Research Center
• The Emil Bach House
• The Imperial Hotel
• The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
• Burj Khalifa
• Taipei 101
• Burj Al Arab
• Hagia Sophia
• The Minnesota Capitol 
• John Hancock Building
• Turning Torso 
• Westminster Abbey
• Walter Chrysler Building
• Notre Dame

In all, 17 buildings.

Frank Lloyd Wright Series

I am now done the Frank Lloyd Wright Series. 

Here are the five buildings I posted on:

1. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

2. The Emil Bach House

3. The Imperial Hotel

4. The Johnson Wax Headquarters

5. Beth Sholom Congregation

I hope it was enjoyable.

To close it out, I will include some facts about Frank Lloyd Wright.

He was married to three different wives at different times during his life.

He first designed in America, than eloped to Europe, then later moved back to America.

He has designed many different kinds of structures totaling 415.

Some of the types are (some are plural, some singular):

1. Houses

2. Apartment buildings

3. Hotels

4. Research Headquarters

5. Synagogues

5. Churches

6. Service stations

7. Cemetery buildings

8. Windmills

9. Pavilions

10. Yacht clubs

11. Fountains

12. Museums

13. Office buildings

14. Banks

15. Factories

16. Libraries

17. Chapels

18. Country Clubs

19. Bookstores

20. Inns

21. Playhouses

22. Gardens

23. Bridges

24. Studios

25. Shops

26. Car dealerships

27.  Golf clubhouses

28. Convention centers

29. Boathouses

30. Spires

#5 in the Frank L. Wright Series: Beth Sholom Congregation

1. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

2. Emil Bach House

3. The Imperial Hotel

4. Johnson Wax Headquarters

5. Beth Sholom Congregation

This is the whole building from the front

This is the whole building from the back

This is a detail of the roof decoration

This is a Jewish synagogue built in 1954-59.

It it a very striking building, designed in Mayan Revival Style, (like the Imperial Hotel), making look like a ancient temple. It is a large synagogue, holding at the most, 1,120 people! There are two different sanctuaries, the larger one, holding 1,020 people on the second level, ( to make people feel they are closer to heaven), and the second one, holding 100, on the first level. Most of the roof is fiberglass and plastic, letting in light into the building during the day, and glowing with interior lighting at night. 

It has a large fountain that people can wash there hands at before and after the service 25 ft. in front of the building. The building is owned by the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic Society, so the congregation can't change anything without their approval! As a result, the main sanctuary is very cold in the winter.

This is the only synagogue Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed, and one of his most expressive places of worship. 

#4 in the Frank L. Wright Series: the Johnson Wax Headquarters

1. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

2. The Emil Bach House

3. The Imperial Hotel

4. Johnson Wax Headquarters

This picture shows the tower that towers (no pun intended) over the rest of the Headquarters.

This is a picture of the "Great Workroom" (as Wright called it) were all the secretaries worked

This work utilizes streamlined building. Examples of this are shown in the rounded tower edges, and the curves all over the building. The Headquarters has over 2,000 kinds of curved red bricks decorating the outside and inside of the building. The two main colors for the Headquarters are red and cream. The outside of the Headquarters has mostly red on it, but in the parking garage, and the "Great Workroom" and elsewhere in the building the mortar and all the pillars are cream. A lot of the floor is also red.

The pillars shown in the picture above are like most of the other pillars in the building being dendriform (formed like a tree). Pyrex glass tubing is used in the roof and windows. 

The Headquarters layout was built first, and later the tower. Johnson, (the owner of the Headquarters) really liked the Headquarters, so had the tower built, and then had a home built for himself that used the same material as the Headquarters. The tower is no longer used because of fire safety rules.

The building is entered through the parking lot/garage. The parking garage is supported by the same pillars as the "Great Workroom", but is low, so when you walk into the "Great Workroom" that is two stories tall it really seems open and large.

Wright designed the furniture for the building like usual, but Johnson did not like the chairs. They had three legs, so, Wright reasoned, you would have good posture, having to sit with both feet on the chair at all times. Johnson supposedly asked Wright to sit in one, and when he fell down, agreed to design new ones.

#3 in the Frank L. Wright Series: The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo

1. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

2. The Emil Bach House

3. The Imperial Hotel

This is a drawing by Wright of the Hotel

This is a painting of the Imperial Hotel. 

Why I have a painting and a drawing is because in an earthquake in 1923, It was hardly damaged, but after that, it slowly started to settle in the the muddy ground it was built on. It had no deep foundation because Wright had decided that he would "just have a wide flat foundation and let it ride the earthquake like a battleship rides the ocean" As a result the foundation was not deep enough. After time it deteriorated and it was demolished. 

This was the second Imperial Hotel built in Tokyo.

This is the first one:

And this is the third, current one:

A lot of change!

It was one of Wright's biggest works, built from 1915-23.

The style is Mayan Revival though it does remind me of his prairie style homes with the brick and almost flat roofs and overhangs. 

The main materials were poured concrete, concrete block, and carved oya stone.

All in all, a very impressive building!!!

#2 in the Frank L. Wright Series:Emil Bach House

This is the second building in the series. I will be posting on a large variety of buildings.

So far I have posted on:

1. The Solomon Guggenheim Museum 

2. The Emil Bach House

        

        

It is characteristic of Wright with the cubes and rectangles intermingled and the flat, overhanging roofs;

This is the style that he helped very much to progress: Prairie Style.

Prairie Style is an organic type of architecture that is supposed to be more natural.

It was built in 1915. It has 2,700 square feet of space.

It is the only Prairie Style house designed by Wright left standing in Chicago.

It was designed for Emil Bach, who was an admirer of Wright. It was just for his family, and has 2 stories and a basement. When it was built, it was considered a country house, and had a view out onto Lake Michigan, but Now it is completely surrounded by other houses and apartment buildings. 

Since 2003, it has been sold several times, each price being over a million dollars. And at the present it is still inhabited by a family.

I included this house in the series because it a great example of his prairie style houses, but not as famous as Falling Water. If I had posted on Falling Water, then some people wouldn't have learned anything.

I really like this house.

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Scroll down to see the post I did on the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum!