Issue 331  November 9th 2022

In Memoriam: Brandoch Peters

Brandoch Peters was born on December 17, 1941, in Madison, WI to William Wesley Peters and Svetlana Peters. Brandoch passed away on November 2, 2022, from complications of dementia, a disease he faced with courage and dignity.

Brandoch was a child of Taliesin, the grandson of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright and the step-grandson of Frank Lloyd Wright. His upbringing by his father, Wes Peters, and his famous grandparents began when he was 4 1/2 years old, following the tragic death in September 1946, of his mother, Svetlana, his brother, Daniel and his unborn sibling, in a car accident near the Wisconsin River bridge, not far from Spring Green. This heartbreaking event colored Brandoch’s whole life.

Brandoch once said “I’ve had a hard life, but I’ve had an interesting life”, and this is borne out by a lifetime of travel, music and too many friends to count. He spent six years at the Juilliard School, studying cello performance under the tutelage of Leonard Rose, whose name Brandoch often invoked with respect and affection. During his 6 years at Juilliard, Brandoch lived in New York City in the apartment of John deKoven Hill, a designer at Taliesin and the former editor of House Beautiful magazine. Following his graduation from Julliard, Brandoch was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and studied at the Ecole Normale/Conservatoire in Paris. He then played the cello for one year in an orchestra in Munich. He also played in musical events at Taliesin. Brandoch later studied for 3 years at the University of Wisconsin School of Agriculture.

Brandoch lived in his apartment at Taliesin until 2004 when he suffered a serious stroke, after which he moved to the Michels farm on the Taliesin estate. In December 2015 a fall and encroaching dementia, diagnosed in 2006, necessitated his move to Ingleside Manor in Mt Horeb. More here.

Click for more details: franklloydwright.org  

Plans To Transform Lake Monona Waterfront

Initial concepts for a major transformation of the Lake Monona waterfront was presented at the Monona Terrace Monday.

The signature park, which will stretch from Blair Street at Machinery Row and include Law Park, the Monona Terrace and Lakeside Street to the south, encompasses 17 acres of public space along Lake Monona. It will include large green spaces in addition to providing a spectacular entrance into Madison from the John Nolen causeway and south Madison.

The aim of the project is to offer better, safer access to the waterfront. It aspires to tie the community together as well as connect to the city’s history.

Visions of a large Lake Monona shoreline park and other architectural marvels have been explored for over 100 years by everyone from John Nolen himself to the Metcalfe family.

In 1893, John Olin led an effort to build a large public boathouse at the foot of King Street. Frank Lloyd Wright was chosen to design a circular boathouse as part of that project. That boathouse was never built due to a depression in 1894.

In 2021, the Friends of Nolen Waterfront, an ad hoc committee made up of 13 members, selected three design teams to present a vision for the area. The project will include funding from both private sector contributors as well as the state, county and city.

The committee will choose the final design, which will be revealed Jan. 26, 2023, during an event at Olin Park. Ultimately, a final conceptual plan will be submitted to City Council and then the plan would go through the regular city government review process, including Madison’s Plan Commission.

The Downtown Master Plan was approved in 2012 and since then the group’s efforts to reimagine the Lake Monona waterfront have continued. It has included working with University of Wisconsin-Madison student teams from civil and environmental engineering, and the planning and landscape architecture departments.

“The Downtown Master Plan’s… number one recommendation was that we need to celebrate the lakes and we need to improve access to the lakes,” said Allen Arnsten, a board member of the Friends of Nolen Waterfront.

The UW students helped develop ideas about how a park expansion could be done logistically.

“They came up with many ideas about how this could be done, not just on the land side,” said Tim Anderson, vice president of the Friends of Nolen Waterfront, “but also on the water side. How can we protect water resources? The fisheries? How can we provide more access to the lakes? So this was very helpful work that they did.”

The formation of the park could present a second chance to showcase the boathouse designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Wright’s 1893 circular rendering that was never built has remained a part of the possible concepts for the expanded park.

“One of the guiding principles is to create a destination waterfront,” Anderson said. “What could be more of a destination than to have two Frank Lloyd Wright buildings a thousand feet apart on one waterfront? What kind of story could that tell?”

Wright designed two boathouses in 1893 as part of a competition run by the Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Association. A boathouse he designed for Lake Mendota was constructed but was demolished in 1926. Some have contended the unbuilt Lake Monona design is even more spectacular.

And to have both the Monona Terrace — one of Wright’s final architectural designs — alongside the 1893 boathouse would be unique, according to local historian David Mollenhoff, who wrote a book about the construction of the Monona Terrace.

“Here within that tiny little piece of shoreline you’d have one of the first and one of the very last buildings that (Wright) designed spanning his entire 66 year architectural career,” Mollenhoff said. “That’s special. There’s no other city that could touch this.” More here.

Click for more details: captimes.com  

The Gardens Of Frank Lloyd Wright's Bradley House

The Daily Journal reports that the Kankakee Kultivators recently gained a broad knowledge of “The Gardens of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Bradley House,” thanks to Marilou Martin, spotlighted speaker for the club’s October meeting. Along with the Kultivators, numerous guests attended, some good-naturedly calling themselves “The Marilou Martin Fan Club.”

Martin — environmentalist, naturalist and passionate gardener with more than 40 years of experience — entertained and educated her enthusiastic audience as she shared her PowerPoint presentation of photographs, which illustrated the B. Harley Bradley House’s progression of gardens from 1900 to 2022.

Martin has done extensive research on Wright’s structural and landscape architecture. This hobby, now a passion, has grown out of her work with Max Michaels, Ray Eads and Kathi Dodds to maintain and develop the grounds of the B. Harley Bradley House, often known here in Kankakee as the Wright House.

Martin, Michaels, Eads and Dodds — all volunteers — have landscaped its outdoor areas for several years now. Almost year round, they have volunteered many hours every week to return this historic landscape to the original artistic principles and vision of its famous master architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. Read more here.

Click for more details: daily-journal.com  

John Lautner’s Pearlman Cabin & Walstrom House Exhibit Opens Nov. 9th

An new exhibition from the OA+D Archives and the John Lautner Foundation with materials from The John Lautner Archives at Getty Research Institute and hosted by the School of Architecture at Arcosanti will open November 9th at Arcosanti.

At the center of each exhibit story is a large scale project model that presents the structures upon their hillside contexts. Selected design drawings, construction documents and photos share many aspects of each of the projects. Lautner was commissioned to design the projects 12 years apart, 1957 and 1969, by families that would keep the homes for all their lives. Each home, needless to say, was deeply personal and an ongoing part of its owner’s family experience even before it was completed.

Both are cabin-like, set on hillsides, constructed of wood secured into and at one with their landscapes. The communities couldn’t be more different — one within the western San Jacinto Mountains, in Idyllwild, CA, a quiet resort community of a few hundred people, where you can count the number of cars on your hands and feet during half the day — the other at the base of a canyon minutes from Los Angeles’ large population, where local activities and daily traffic are continuous nearby.

The exhibition addresses Lautner’s architectural concepts, their time and place, their similarities and differences, their settings and building materials, all of which the architect used innately to express — always uniquely for each project — his organic “Real architecture.” Get more details here.

Click for more details: tsoa.edu