Millard House
The Millard House , also known as La Miniatura , is an apartment building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1923 and built in Pasadena , California. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 12, 1976 as a monument .
Wright's Textile Block Houses
The Millard House was the first of four similar homes that Frank Lloyd Wright designed in 1923 and 1924 in Los Angeles County . Wright worked at Millard House after finishing work on Hollyhock House in Hollywood and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo .
At this point, Wright felt too fixated on the Prairie Style as an architect and tried to expand his architectural visions. Wright turned to concrete block as his new preferred building material. In his autobiography, he wrote that he chose concrete blocks because they were "the cheapest (and ugliest) thing in the construction world" and he wanted to see what "could be done with this gutter material" . The four houses were called textile block houses because the concrete walls were structured like brocade . The style was Wright's experiment with modular building; he was looking for an inexpensive and simple method of building that would allow ordinary people to build their own houses with prefabricated stone blocks. By adding ornamentation to the mass-produced stones, Wright hoped to create "masonry material capable of a great variety of architectural beauty." One author described Wright's concept as follows: “By uniting decoration and function, exterior and interior, earth and sky - openwork blocks served as skylights - Wright saw his approach of the 'Textile Block Method' as an extremely modern and democratic expression of his organic Architectural ideals. "
Millard House design
Wright was commissioned to build the house by Alice Millard, a rare book dealer, for whom he built a house in Highland Park , Illinois in 1906 . Wright tried to reconcile the Millard House with the land on which it was to be built. The design took into account the steep slope of the property. He placed the house among the trees and had the concrete blocks made of sand, gravel, and stones that were found on the property. By using rough-textured, earth-colored blocks, he tried to match the house to the color and shape of the trees and the landscape. Although the construction was largely a break with most of Wright's previous work, it remained consistent with his lifelong love of natural materials and his view that buildings should flatter their surroundings. He later said that the Millard House "was part of the lot it was on ."
The stone blocks were created in wooden shapes and were patterned on the outside and smooth on the inside. The area was divided by a cross so that there was a square in each corner. The project cost 17,000 US dollars . Wright exceeded the budget that Alice Millard had given him by seventy percent. Some reports say the builder ran away and left Wright to complete the project at his own expense.
The roughly 220 square meter building is a three-story block. On the first floor there is the kitchen, a servants' room and a dining room that opens onto a terrace with a reflective pool. On the second floor there is the main entrance, a guest room and the living room, which extends over two floors, with an open fireplace and balcony. Millard's bedroom was on the third floor, with a balcony overlooking the living room and an outside terrace.
Like many of Wright's homes, Millard House suffered from leaks when it rained. After the house was once flooded by a storm, Millard wrote a letter of complaint to Wright in 1933, stating that the basement was completely full and the water in the dining room was six inches. Millard had a separate studio added to the house in 1926, designed by Wright's son Lloyd Wright .
Critical reception
The initial reaction to Millard House and the three similar structures was not positive. The houses were greeted with howling laughter as the architects, used to the style of Beaux Arts architecture, were appalled that a common building material was being used for the facades and interior walls of expensive houses. Much later, an article in The New York Times wrote of the houses Wright built in California in the 1920s:
“It didn't help that at the time he was obsessed with an untested and (supposedly) cheap method of building concrete blocks. What kind of wealthy people, many wondered, would want to live in such a house? Aside from the free-spirited oiler Aline Barnsdall, with whom he constantly argued, his ragged clients included a jewelry seller, a widow of an antiquarian bookshop owner and a failed doctor. "
Wright himself, however, was quite proud of the Millard House. He says about it: “I would rather have built this little house than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome .” Over the years, the Millard House has received more positive reviews and is now considered one of his best works. In 1965 Art Seidenbaum wrote in the Los Angeles Times :
“In the surrounding area, the place is fascinating because it still looks modern in a neighborhood that is graceful but aging. Or, perhaps better, the Millard House is timeless and its own place. "
A jury made up of ten respected citizens and architecture experts made the house one of the twelve most important landmarks in the Los Angeles area in 1969. 1980 pointed Los Angeles Times points out that the Millard House is world famous and is among the few buildings in Los Angeles, to "classic works of the 20th century" .
See also
- Ennis House , Samuel Freeman House and Storer House - the other three houses Wright built this way.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry in the National Register Information System . National Park Service , accessed May 25, 2016
- ^ A b c d e Charles Lockwood: LA Homes Mark Architect's Most Turbulent Period (English) , Los Angeles Times. January 30, 1983.
- ↑ a b c d e Martha Groves: Public gets rare look at a Wright gem: Architecture buffs visit one of his 'textile block' houses, La Miniatura in Pasadena, last on view in 1992 (English) , Los Angeles Times. January 27, 2008. Retrieved August 29, 2008.
- ↑ Above the Strip in Hollywood: Frank Lloyd Wright's Storer House on the market for $ 1 million (English) , Los Angeles Times. June 6, 1981.
- ^ A b c Hugh Hart: Architecture; When the answers are not just concrete (English) , Los Angeles Times. September 26, 2004.
- ^ A b Art Seidenbaum: The Southland Houses That Frank Lloyd Wright Built , Los Angeles Times. October 17, 1965. “ Environmentally, the place is fascinating because it still looks modern in a neighborhood that is gracious but aging. Or, maybe better, the Millard House is of no time and its own place. "
- ^ Hugh Eakin: Fixer-Uppers That Need Love and Concrete , The New York Times. August 14, 2005. Retrieved August 29, 2008. " It didn't help that he was obsessed at the time with an untested and (supposedly) low-cost method of concrete-block construction. What kind of rich person, many wondered, would want to live in such a house? Aside from the free-spirited oil heiress Aline Barnsdall, whom he fought with constantly, his motley clients included a jewelry salesman, a rare-book dealing widow and a failed doctor. "
- ↑ Janette Williams: Wright's 'La Miniatura' is restored , Pasadena Star-News. July 20, 2008.
- ^ Art Seidenbaum: Los Angeles Landmarks: The Top Dozen , Los Angeles Times. 1969.
- ^ Paul Goldberger: Design Notebook: A Hollywood House Worthy of an Oscar , Los Angeles Times. November 6, 1980. " have become classic works of the 20th Century "
Web links
Coordinates: 34 ° 9 ′ 19 ″ N , 118 ° 9 ′ 39 ″ W.