Originally Posted by
Alan Caro
Tom Bender,
I've never visited Fallingwater, but have been in the Hollyhock House in Hollywood- recently restored, and another texture block FLW house: La Miniatura- which is not that far from the Gamble House, the Price Tower in Oklahoma, and the Guggenheim, NYC. The Gamble house is in an area with several Greene and Green houses - there are four within a short distance and another couple, including one of the their masterpieces, the Blacker House, not far away. I used to live quite near the Gamble House, and I've also seen the James House in Big Sur, CA in the early 80's when the original owners of 1931 still lived there, and Charles Greene's studio in Carmel, CA. In my view, the James House is one of the greatest houses in the World; it's a handmade, organic sculpture that grows out of the Big Sur cliffs. I was lucky to see Greene's studio - which is never open to the public- with Randall Makinson, who wrote the book on G&G and it's an experimental jewel- amazing bas-relief woodcarving that Charles did himself.
If I were to characterize Falling Water and the Gamble House:
Falling Water: FLW's fantastic cubist site response, epic, forceful, and a monument to FLW's invention and compositional genius. However, all the texture block houses to me seem strangely heavy, grey, and confining. I admire them, but they're hard, cold, machine and and museum-like: nothing in a FLW can be changed- personalized, without spoiling the art piece. -And, I wouldn't want to live in a FLW house. That the problem with modernist starchitects; they think you should be happy prisoners to their artistic genius.
By contrast, the Gamble House, and other G&G houses, which are British Arts and Crafts, a wisp of Art Nouveau- the Greene's knew how to make a beautiful curve- and traditional Japanese architecture-inspired are wooden puzzle boxes, there's a great sense of peace and repose, plus that glow of a sensitive, artistic human touch to every surface. I can live there. I had a friend in Pasadena in the 80's whose mother knew the Gambles in 1913 and played in the Gamble House. She said it felt like more like a home than her own house. I can't even image a child in a FLW House.
I designed a number of houses in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Malibu, Marina del Rey, Venice CA and a set of spec houses in Redwood City in the Bay Area that were modern, but with the G&G in mind, plus a little Lutyens, Voysey- another A&C architect, sort of the English Greene, and Charles Rennie Makintosh around the edges too. By the way, that's a great pity about Makintosh's Glascow School of Art burning and near total loss; as big or bigger a disaster to architecture than Notre Dame, which by contrast has every possibility of recovery. Similar to Notre Dame, the School of Art burned while it was being rebuilt, after a lesser fire.
Those are two very good contrasting houses that force a person to come to terms with what they think constitutes a home.
I really recommend looking up images of Charles Greene's James House in Big Sur- that's the house with everything.
Alan Caro