Oh So Boring…

Much to the astonishment of many a high-school or college student, us old folks like to attend lectures for fun.  And since I am old…

That’s right, tomorrow night I am going to a lecture on Frank Lloyd Wright at the Pope-Leighey House, one of his Usonian houses on display here in Virginia (moved to the site of Woodlawn).

The lecture is being given by Thomas Schmidt, Director-Emeritus of Fallingwater, usually considered Wright’s masterpiece–and rightly so. (One of these days I’m finally going to tour Fallingwater, though its distance from me is just enough that I’d probably have to make a weekend of it. It’s about a 4-hour drive from DC to southwest PA, which isn’t bad, but if I tried to do it in one day…hoo boy, that’s a lot of driving.)

When I saw this come up, I thought it’d be fun to attend.  As an architecture fan, and a fan of Wright, it was a no-brainer.  Wright is not my favorite architect (that’d be Niemeyer followed by Salmona–discovered at an exhibit I attended here in DC), but he is way up there.  I’ve always had a dream of living in a Wright house, even if I’d be whacking my head on every doorframe and ceiling. The “if I had all the money in the world” Wright house for me? The Ennis House, Wright’s textile block apotheosis, which would be a money pit to restore, but it’d be worth it.

And, yep, give me textile block over the Prairie or Usonian Wright works. (I also like his commercial works like Johnson Wax more than most of his homes.) In fact, that’s probably why I’m so enamored with Salmona, who was a master of using bricks. Something about that sort of modernism-meets-solid-stone that lights my imagination and wonder.