I’ve been interested in Frank Lloyd Wright ever since seeing the Oak Park houses he designed at the turn of the last century. I’ve visited several sites since then, I’ve watched the Ken Burns documentary, and I’ve read a bunch of books by & about him. When I first visited his winter home Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ, I saw this sign…and it struck me like a proverbial thunderbolt:
“The reality of the building does not consist in the roof and walls but in the space within to be lived in.” _Laotse
Thunderstruck.
That’s what I do as an experience architect. Design isn’t the boxes and arrows and lines and shadings that we decide on, but it’s the experience that someone has with the interaciton on that site. I began to pull threads to see what other elements of inspiration Wright held for those of us in the UX field.
So, with that in mind, here’s my proposal for a talk at the 2012 IA Summit, a talk I won’t be giving because, sadly, this proposal was rejected. Lemme know what you think:
“When we said we wanted a house at Bear Creek,” client Lillian Kaufmann said to Frank Lloyd Wright, “we didn’t imagine you would build it ON the creek!” To which Wright replied, “In time you’d grow tired of the sight of creek…but you’ll never grow tired of the sound.”And he was right. Fallingwater stands as the most recognized house in architecture. yet it’s not just a landmark…it was a home. The Kaufmanns loved it. Similarly, owners of other Wright-designed buildings may have struggled with the architect, the implementation may have had flaws, the builders and other constructors may have gone behind Wright’s back to fix perceived design flaws…but they all loved the buildings. The architect’s vision remains inspiration to this day.This presentation looks at three Wright landmarks—Fallingwater in Ohiopyle, the Pope-Leighy house in Alexandria, and Taliesin West in Phoenix—and the experience architecture inspiration they hold for experience designers. I also believe that, through Wright’s examples, we can learn elements that take our approaches to experience architecture to newly useful and inspiring levels for our clients and the users of our work.During this presentation, we’ll take a look at pictures and principles from these three sites. We will explore analogs to our practice through theseelements:
- Context: How does the site selection integrate with user needs and desires?
- Clients: What do Wright’s relationships with his clients teach us? Where did he innovate, and where did he fail?
- Connection: How does the architect connect the lives of the clients with the results of the design? Expect an interactive, question-and-answer format. And lots of pictures.
- Construction: What does the architect need to know about building stuff? We’ll look at how Wright demanded multitalented people in his architecture school, and how he had them engage in building stuff…including their own residences.
