Some museums just aren’t meant to be. For reasons of being too complicated, expensive, or just too out there to exist, many architects’ plans for museums have been unrealized.
Frank Lloyd Wright
The Shocking Demolition of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Park Avenue Showroom
It’s shocking that a building designed by the biggest architect of the past century could disappear so quickly and quietly, but last month Frank Lloyd Wright’s auto showroom on Park Avenue was demolished and the architectural world is just now feeling the reverberations.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unrealized Skyscraper Dreams
While he achieved the construction of unusual designs for the spiraling nautilus shape of the Guggenheim Museum and the waterfall-spitting Falling Water, Frank Lloyd Wright never really got to build the towering spires of his dreams. One of his skyscraper designs would have dominated the lowlands of the East Village: three angular towers designed to cluster around St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery in 1930.
Threatened Frank Lloyd Wright House Is Saved
While most of us don’t believe in Christmas miracles, this story may come close. Two and a half months after a story about the potential destruction of a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Phoenix, Arizona, appeared on the front page of the New York Times, a deal has gone through to buy the building from its current owners and preserve it.
Frank Lloyd Wright House Escapes Demolition for Now
A few days ago, we asked whether the New York Times could save a Frank Lloyd Wright house in Phoenix from demolition. The answer, it appears, is yes — at least for now.
Will The NY Times Be Able to Save a Frank Lloyd Wright House?
A stunning spiral house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in Phoenix, Arizona, faces potential demolition as soon as tomorrow. Wright built the house in 1952 for his son David, but the property is currently owned by a developer called 8081 Meridian, which is threatening to destroy it.
Required Reading
This week, architect Frank Lloyd Wright talks about the corner window, which he says is “an idea conceived early in my work that the box is a fascist symbol,” the mess that Mark Rothko’s suicide created, the first signs of street art about the UK riots, discovering work from the master of correspondence art, even the treat of death won’t deter copyright infringement, Doris Salcedo on memory in art, more detailed plans for Apple’s new HQ and a geographically accurate map of the London tube.
Required Reading
This week, Geronimo’s eye, classic New York art dealer profiles, did arts reporting save the Rose Art Museum, in defense of bare walls, Uffizi’s new iPad app, artist suppression, Frederick Law Olmstead on the US South, Marshall McLuhan speaking to high school students (circa 1960s), a video tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and photographs at the Library of Congress that include the photographer’s shadow.
Required Reading
This week’s Required Reading examines how copyright law impacts images by animals, art’s LGBT problem, a history of English, China’s political prisoners, against reviews and Frank Lloyd Wright’s dislike of intellectuals.
5 Awesome Modernist US Homes Turned Museums
Next month, the very first sunken conversation pit will open to the public as a museum. The Indianapolis Museum of Art plans to open a private residence designed by Eero Saarinen for industrialist J. Irwin Miller as a design and architecture showcase, featuring interiors (and the conversation pit) by Alexander Girard. To celebrate, we’ve collected the best of American’s modernist houses turned museums, magnificent private residences now made public. There’s Philip Johnson’s Glass House, of course, but also Richard Neutra’s Neutra VDL, Louis Sullivan’s early Charnley-Persky House and Richard Meier’s epic bachelor pad, the Rachofsky House. Get ready for real estate envy — but take heart, you can go visit any of these homes.