Frank Lloyd Wright on Forms Of Architecture and His Son's Houses | Omnibus With Alistair Cooke

and now from one city red rebel to the perpetual rebel of american architecture mr frank lloyd wright the man who called interior decorators inferior desecrators he remains at 84 years of age a perpetual rebel and the perpetual pioneer who believes that democracy has not yet made anything like ample use of the new forms that are proper to it i'm going to question him about some of these things this afternoon now he was once asked what is your greatest achievement and he said the next building i'm bowling we happen to have a model of it here but before that i'd like just to suggest to you that if we any of us were asked from the from seattle to miami new york to san francisco what are some of the things that are the essentially typical characteristics of modern architecture i think a lot of people would say well uh picture window setback skyscraper ranch type house air conditioning these are only a few of the things that frank lloyd wright has inaugurated uh i think now let's take a look at this next building he's building it's a skyscraper the price tower and it's being going to be built in battlesville oklahoma let's take a good look at it by day now the ground has been broken and i'd like to remind you that this is in battlesville oklahoma mr right my first question my first question has to do with the fact that here is a skyscraper in oklahoma why out on the plains why in oklahoma well don't you understand that a skyscraper to be ethical must cast its shadow on its own ground i didn't know until now but now i'm very humbling you see unaware a skyscraper has no chance to develop its character any more than a tree would if it stood too close to other trees it can only develop a top but here it has a chance to become a complete thing in its own right so you don't approve of skyscrapers in cities skyscrapers and cities increase congestion they were devised originally to hold concentration where it is and they've proved to be the death of the city or will eventually if they keep on building them in cities this particular one appeared on the cover of time mag no new york times magazine about 40 years ago the identical design not identical but the scheme the general design because this has been perfected something that uh that our viewers can't see uh and once for a couple of years is that this is in is blue now why why the blue color because copper has been used very largely in these shades for the glass glass is merciless unless you shade it and it also helps the air conditioning of the building keeps the sun off sun glare off the glass and this is the first time that a skyscraper has been divided vertically one quarter in uh duplex apartments oh this is not entirely an office building not entirely oh that's something centralization missed i don't know why and around three quarters is opposite well now is the idea that people after a hard day can just slump right into their apartments is that it well it can work in so many different ways it's hard to predict how it will work but you can imagine how a doctor or a dentist would have one of these apartments here's his uh sleeping quarters down below here well it's a balcony living room there's the balcony and these are the bathrooms and kitchens running up here and this is occupied by the price company at the top uh talking about the top mr right they're preeminent at their own expense they're not impinging upon an enabler what about the the uh the top that looks i thought that that was supposed to be a very uh naughty feature of modern architecture when they put frescoes and and greek uh pediments and and that looks like a gothic spire up there sister that's a radio spa oh well the rest of it has a function and mr price's office is here in the center and uh this roof garden which you see here i guess you can see it on this side too yes all around here roof garden to be used by the employees of the price company you know the price company was the big pipeline company they're the big inch in the little inch well now so all these conceptions must start somewhere and i suggest that maybe we'd like to have you go to a drawing board and show us we've got one here we do by the way this was stolen from the show and it ought to be taken away quick not only that i should mention that this uh will be taken back that uh mr wright is holding an exhibition of 60 years of his work in new york at the guggenheim that happens to be the centerpiece of the show and of course the people are anxious to see it they will they will have it tomorrow several people are seeing it now about 13 million uh as many as may visit the show this week uh what i would like to tell you sir is ask you is um i think you've said in your book many times over that democracy is not using the forms which are proper to it the new form what are those new forms well they're always there it isn't using its own form as it should use it i don't think it's aware of exactly what that form is well what are the materials freedom isn't democracy the uh gospel of individual freedom or the freedom of the individual is it using it well now you tell me i'll take our housing take nearly everything we do architecturally it's a repetition of some stupid pattern built on a rectangle built on anything except a facility for life well now are there any materials that have given us the possibility of breaking with these cell forms well when we had steel when steel came in you see we could pull on a building we had that element of tension the most economic thing in the world is this and you could make buildings that were like that indestructible you see an economical whereas you used to have to make them like this is all this all the ten fingers steal when you do that i mean or is there something else well anything that is intention like a wire yeah when you reduce steel to tension and pull on it you have the most economic means of construction ever devised of course the greeks didn't have it what do you support it with well it is an element in itself that supports whatever you embed it in or you can use it without concrete when concrete and steel were found to be able to sleep together and stay together the body of our modern world was born you see because there you had the most economical means in tension imaginable still great spaces could be spanned and then when glass came in you could close them without cutting off the inhabitants from the outside and entirely new means of building appeared well now so you've talked about breaking from the um the the fact that we're very lagging in in breaking with the old forms of boxes and uh slabs the old box was inevitable because we had to build a box in order to build anything why but when glass and steel came in the corners of the box could be knocked away and the whole interior could be freed you see could you get away of the cantilever could you oh tell us about the cantilever now what is the cantilever print cantilever principle is the principle of getting a load under the center and one balancing the other you see that's the characteristic of that price tower oh i see what makes it economical is that all the loads are under the center and that building will weigh about uh six and three tenths a little over half what the rockefeller center buildings weigh because of the utilizing this principle of the cantilever now sir would you like to show us what uh free forms you've taken in your own designs for houses well don't you think housing the housing we do is inexpressibly on a low level stiffen awful monotonous i don't know about little boxes repeated one after this is very exciting but i'd like to know what it is this is a plan for a house for my son down in washington llewellyn and you see in here the use of steel intention the curve the curved curvicular form no this is what's this is this a this is the main floor and this is the second story oh i see and then this is what a terrace or something and that's a circular terrace it's built on a side hill you can see here where the ground drops away i think we have some pictures up here could we take a look at it as a visitor or somebody walking through well this would be the elevation on the architect's drawing board here does that mean that that's one side of the house that's the front elevation of the house so called but surprisingly enough it develops this in perspective when it's built you see the various the lower terrace and the upper form of the house which is a simple oval and this little balcony projects here from the master bedroom and it's all of that form because it has a continuous view uh all about it of a very attractive country where what where where is this being built this is being built in virginia now if you're doing a building if you're doing a building in some other part of the country in the deep south or the far west oh here look we have something here now where where is this well this is out in phoenix arizona this is son david's house this would be your son you also built of the same concrete block this is built off well now that's a patio house of course it's very hot out there and you have to get some recourse from the hot sun which in this house you have at the center and also by raising it from the ground you avoid the dust of that region oh you mean this is the actual level of the it's the actual level what's all this underneath this is the you're looking at the house from the rear the front of the house is here oh you enter the end of the court and you go up a ramp which you see here brim of a hat well this little ramp goes up to a little roof garden on the top so you can come up from the main entrance to the roof garden if you please as you come up the ramp on the other side well now it's all extremely simple and these forms seem like complicated expensive forms but they're easier to live with easier to live in than the rectangular ones uh i've i've noticed that you you've shown us two houses designed for your two sons who are very lucky they just happen to be here together it occurs to me i dare say you picked them out and if i wanted to have you design a house for me which would express the freedom of democracy um well how much would it cost me to be free it would cost you less to be free than it would to be stupid and confined well i mean in terms of hard cash which i think a lot of people may be thinking of how much would this cost about forty five thousand dollars this one yes and i suppose this would cost 35 or 40. the only thing well that that's about what they sell at gi house for out in levittown isn't it now you mean a young architect that could could uh if he had your experience and your principles and your uh determination could could design houses like this or i think i could design better ones probably oh well now i i mentioned a young occupation look at this tribe here for instance here are these little shells you know this is a lower form of life supposedly but see how it houses itself aren't these things remarkable and aren't they beautiful and see how varied they are one type one kind of humanity but not humanity but form of life see what it does in the way of housing so this elaborate one here how about this simple one said simply explain that what what was the function that would probably be the type of thing that would belong to this sort of thing that you see in levittown wouldn't it you mean a little uh well what is it's a retreat you can certainly say that it's a home it's a house it's housing and when we house ourselves why don't we do something as consistently beautiful and simple as this what's the matter well we have the means all we lack is the know-how or is it the feeling maybe we haven't got the feeling [Music] you

Channel: Omnibus With Alistair Cooke

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Keywords: Omnibus, Variety, Variety Show, Entertainment, Alistair Cooke, Frank Lloyd Wright, Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright designs, Frank Lloyd Wright buildings, Why is Frank Lloyd Wright so famous?, What is Frank Lloyd Wright style?, Why did Frank Lloyd Wright become an architect?, Omnibus With Alistair Cooke, Omnibus With Alistair Cooke Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright full interview, Frank Lloyd Wright on television, Frank Lloyd Wright on Forms Of Architecture and His Son's Houses

Id: 7KNtHl8xguI

Length: 14min 48sec (888 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020