“Frank Lloyd Wright was a very persuasive man.”
That really interested me when Sidney Robinson said that. The tour of Taliesin and the history of Frank Lloyd Wright really intrigued me. The house was so intricately decorated and had a lot of valuable artifacts. All the history that I learned about F.L.W. made me understand the man better. He is a very interesting man and in some ways I feel that I can relate to him on the things that he did and ways that he worked. He was mostly always in charge and mostly I am too, yet Wright believed in being democratic. He showed it in is buildings but not in the way he ran his school.
Sidney discussed what nature meant to Wright. He was never literal, because he knew that, that was the trap. Being literal was the trap, and according to Sidney that’s what made him a great architect. This really made me think about the way that I work and design. It made me think about the reasons why sometimes my designs didn’t really work, it was too literal. Sidney gave us an example, he told us about a man who was inspired by this straw hat and his building looked exactly like a straw hat. It made me think of the way we (students) design. Most of us get inspired by something but it really is just a replication of our inspiration and Krisann also added on this, that we need to take it to a deeper meaning. Sidney then said that the man didn’t really accomplish anything and I understood what he meant.
Wright was all about being abstract; to get what was behind the obvious. Sidney explained to us that nature to Wright was not just a tree but the pattern behind a tree. Nature is not just what we see, is the characteristic pattern. This was really strong to me. It made me understand Wright Design in a completely different way. Now when I go into Hillside I can see what Sidney meant. His pattern is carried out throughout the whole place, even though he didn’t design it at the same time. The pattern is not just in the structure of the building but also in little details, like the carvings on the wall, the design and repetition of the windows and the design on the ceiling. I can see where his inspiration came from. This has opened my mind and creativity in a new direction. Learning this and understanding it has made me think deeper about what inspiration should really mean.
Posted on July 1st, 2009 at 3:18 pm by publicworkshop in Our Work