Issue Jun 5th 2024  June 5th 2024

Get Inspired At Cedar Rock: Now Open For The Summer Season

Visitors to Cedar Rock State Park in Iowa will come away inspired and fascinated by this Frank Lloyd Wright designed home in Buchanan County. Located above a limestone bluff along the banks of the Wapsipinicon River, the park is open for the season from May 22 through Oct. 6.

Commissioned by Lowell and Agnes Walter and completed in 1950, Cedar Rock features several Frank Lloyd Wright designed structures, including the summer residence, original boat pavilion, fountain, stately main gate and more.

The Walters made provisions to donate the site to the people of Iowa shortly after Lowell’s death in 1981. Cedar Rock State Park is managed by the Iowa DNR and includes 426 acres of surrounding woodlands and prairie.

Visitors to Cedar Rock State Park will come away inspired and fascinated by this Frank Lloyd Wright designed home in Buchanan County. Located above a limestone bluff along the banks of the Wapsipinicon River, the park is open for the season from May 22 through Oct. 6.

Click for more details: swiowanewssource.com  

ASU Collection Preserves Legacy Of Modern Architects, Buildings In The Southwest

Arizona has a complicated record when it comes to the preservation of historic structures. It’s a place that thirsts for development, regularly churning the old back into the earth so that something new can grow in its stead. However, some architectural gems have managed to dodge the wrecking ball over the years; the Arizona Biltmore, Taliesin West, Cosanti and ASU Gammage are a handful that come to mind.

In addition, a rich archive of architectural drawings, presentation boards, monographs, serials and audiovisual materials relating to the design, development and evolution of modern architecture in the Southwest has also found safe harbor — in ASU Library's Design and the Arts Special Collections.
The collection includes architecture-related items and original source materials from several innovators and leaders in architecture, design and desert modernism in Arizona and elsewhere in the country.

“This is a collection where a diverse but select group of innovative and groundbreaking Southwestern architects are represented,” said Harold Housley, archivist for the Design and the Arts Special Collections, where he is responsible for collection management and development, reference, outreach and instruction. “These were all people who were and are on the cutting edge in their field because they got a clean slate by coming to Arizona; a kind of freedom they didn’t feel in other areas of the country.”

According to Housley, an architecture library was established in 1960 at ASU as the first branch outside of the Tempe campus library. It was built to support the School of Architecture, which had begun offering a Bachelor of Arts in 1957. It later became the College of Architecture in 1964 and the College of Architecture and Environmental Design in 1983, to accurately reflect the depth and breadth of design and planning studies within its programs, such as interior design and landscape architecture. Since 2010, the program has been called The Design School within ASU’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

Housley said the library initially collected books and periodicals but there was some interest by faculty members in the 1970s to establish a special collections component that would include rare books, architectural drawings and letters on the subject. One of the first efforts came about in 1972 when faculty member Jeffrey Cook received a grant to establish a Paolo Soleri archive at ASU that would document the Italian architect’s work. In the early 1980s, there was also an effort to establish a research collection on Frank Lloyd Wright that would include rare books as well as drawings.

As the archive matured and evolved and new building space became available in 1989, this allowed for expansion of the collection to include architectural drawings and files from prominent architects such as Blaine Drake, Albert Chase McArthur, Alfred Newman Beadle, Mária Telkes, Paolo Soleri and William P. Bruder, as well as a solar energy collection previously housed at Noble Library.

Today, there are 40 manuscript collections in the Design and the Arts Special Collections. It’s approximately 1,300 linear feet, and mainly features architectural drawings, along with photographs, correspondence, job files and other items of interest to budding designers, historians and writers.

As well as Paolo Soleri, the Collection highlights Blaine Drake, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s original apprentices at Taliesin, Wisconsin. In 1933, Drake went on to work with Wright at Taliesin West and established his own Arizona architectural practice in 1945. He designed approximately 200 projects during his career, nearly two-thirds of which were built.

Albert Chase McArthur was another Wright disciple. He worked at Wright’s studio in Oak Park, Illinois, between 1907–1909, and then opened an architectural firm in Chicago with Arthur S. Coffin in 1912 before moving his practice to Phoenix in 1925. That’s where he designed his most famous work, the Arizona Biltmore Hotel at 2400 E. Missouri Ave. in Phoenix.

The collection also pays tribute to the work of Mária Telkes, a Hungarian-American biophysicist, inventor and pioneer in the field of solar energy design. Her notable inventions included a solar distillation device for airmen and sailors used in emergency medical kits during World War II to extract salt from seawater through the process of vaporization.

“Her groundbreaking contributions to the field of solar energy earned her the nickname ‘The Solar Queen,’ reflecting her dedication and leadership in harnessing solar power,” Housley said.

The Mária Telkes Collection includes correspondence, research notes, reports and photographs. Recently, it was used by a researcher for a PBS American Experience documentary on Telkes’ life and work.

The Design and the Arts Special Collections is not just a repository for future designers and architects to conduct research; it’s also a training tool.

Lyndsay Hertzig worked as a student archives assistant at the Design and the Arts Library from October 2018 to May 2022, helping Housley care for the Design and the Arts Special Collections.

She said working under Housley’s supervision and handling the collection helped shape who she is today.

“Handling this archive taught me the importance of preservation and documentation,” said Hertzig, who is now an archives specialist with the Arizona Historical Society. “It honed my research skills and deepened my understanding of my historical context of Arizona. I am excited for a future dedicated to celebrating our architectural heritage and ensuring these materials are accessible to future generations to be inspired by and learn from them as well.”

Click for more details: asu.edu  

9 Wright Homeowners Share Their Honest Experiences Living in the Architect’s Creations

When Katherine McLaughlin first moved to New York, she made just one stop while trekking from Indiana to Brooklyn: Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. Arguably the most iconic of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, most of the tour was spent admiring the cantilevered rooms, listening to the sound of the waterfall below, and wondering what it would be like to live in a home designed by the American architect. Though her experience was confined to a 1.5-hour tour, even in that short period, she felt like something shifted. Imagining what his work would inspire when it became part of one’s daily life.

For some people, this is their reality. Every morning and night, Wright’s work shelters and comforts them—and has profound impacts on the ways they view the world. Architectural Digest spoke with nine homeowners about living in one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses and how the experience has shaped them.

An example is Andrea Kayne’s favorite memory of living in the Laura Gale House—which she bought with her now husband in 2017—was the day they got married. “It was just us, our kids, and my really good friend who married us, and I felt like the house was this container that just brought us all together,” she says. “There’s something about the windows and lights…it was super special.” Both Kayne and her husband, Andy Mead, had been previously married, and when looking to combine their families, the Laura Gale House felt like a picture-perfect scenario. “I remember Andy and I took a walk along the street and we passed the house and thought it would be a dream to live there.”

Lucky for them, the property hit the market soon after, and the pair were able to scoop it up. Located in the Oak Park neighborhood just west of Chicago—a unique enclave full of multiple Wright designs from the early years of his practice—the home is often regarded as one of his most influential Prairie-style houses. Featuring cantilevered balconies and roofs, Wright later described the home as a progenitor to Fallingwater. “We just loved it,” Kayne says. “There were rooms for all our kids—it’s actually much bigger than it looks on the street—and we loved the cantilevers.”

Since moving in, the family feels at peace in the property. “We don't have any window treatments because the windows are so magnificent…and they really bring the outside in,” she says. “It makes you appreciate every kind of sky, every kind of light.” The drawbacks of the home are more minor inconveniences than major considerations. During bad weather, Kayne says she sometimes wishes they had a garage, or when the whole family is gathering it would be nice if there was a bit more elbow room in the kitchen. Of course, there’s also maintenance—but that’s true for any home. “I don’t mind the work,” she says. And though Wright houses are sometimes critiqued for not meeting the standards necessary for modern-day living, Kayne explains that the house is extremely comfortable for their needs. “I know people say [Wright’s] houses aren’t practical, but it doesn’t feel that way for us. We live in every square inch of the house, and it works really well.”

Click for more details: architecturaldigest.com