I recently read an industrial design masters thesis by a Pratt graduate named Byron Morris on the subject and history of design for weapons and warfare. I neither recall the title nor the date of his thesis— poor citation— but it was fascinating. Somewhere in the middle he showed contrasting images of Frank Lloyd Wright's work and concrete bunkers built by the Nazi's along their Atlantic Front. I'll let him do the talking:
"Although Fallingwater was constructed before the Atlanitc Wall, many later designs of Wright continued to bear this remarkable similarity to military bunkers... [in part] because he was was always very fond of reinforced concrete.... Wright strived throughout his career to design buildings that followed the mandate of modern architecture, "form follows function." It is interesting that buildings with such drastically different functions have the same form. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say, "form follows materials" in respect to modern architecture."
As an aside, the above picture depicts the view from which people most commonly shoot photographs of Fallingwater. Interestingly, I've heard that after Wright completed the house and saw similar shots, he said he never really expected that the house would even be looked at from that angle, let alone that it could be shot so successfully from that angle. I'm sure the Germans had similar thoughts.
No comments:
Post a Comment