Toilets to Get Repairs at Wright Home

Yahoo ^ | 1/12/04

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Pa. - The overseers at Fallingwater released plans to fix the source of a consistent complaint by visitors to Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece — the bathrooms.

Composting toilets near the home, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, have failed to work properly and have left many of the 140,000 visitors each year talking about the aroma as well as the architecture.

A new system, which has been six years in the making, calls for nearly five miles of underground piping and a waste disposal system intended to protect the pristine environment around Bear Run, the stream that flows underneath the home.

Micro-organisms are used in the new system to break down waste, according to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which oversees the property.

Fallingwater was completed in 1937 for department store magnate Edgar Kaufmann Sr., who used it as a vacation home.

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

Interested in being part of the ping list for REAL NEWS? Email me.

[martin_fierro]

	It's a 'Burgh Thing.TM
Send FReepmail if you want on/off BPT list
Learn Pittsburghese!

Fallingwater is falling apart.

[Age of Reason]

That's one ugly house.

I was never in it, but just looking at the photos of it gives me the creeps.

[Age of Reason]

Is there a trapdoor, at least, to allow fishing from the living room?

[RightWhale]

Not much we can build lasts forever. This house was probably okay as a vacation cabin, but as a museum, forget it.

[billorites]

If I wasn't dead, I might give a damn!

[martin_fierro]

That reminds me -- Mrs. F & I recently visited Guggenheim MOMA in NYA (Another Wright design).

Its exterior is TRASHED. Really needs some refurbishing/new paint.

[martin_fierro]

NYA = NYC. Duh.

[Age of Reason]

Wright is constantly held out as a great architect.

I think his home designs are hideous.

I'd hate to live in one.

[Eska]

There's a river trail from dawson to eagle. Takes about 5-6 hrs from Dawson. Open water in places, but usually good trail. The quest runs up 40 mile then takes the road into eagle from bridge. Its 50 miles from 40 mile bridge to eagle, 51 miles by river and can get gas here in eagle; not available in chicken. Some friends rode 185 miles up from tok over christmas, had one machine break down. Only deep drifts were up on american summit close to eagle. Don't want to get caught up high during white out.

We have a couple WT's and kid has summit. Boy, I like those old fan cooled ski-doos for up here.

I've did a few 150 mile runs and best to have a couple machines when ya do it. Also best to have a warm cabin to lay up in after a days run or when snow hits. We have extra guest room and several sofas; welcome to come up. I'd like to make it down your way this summer for halibut myself.

Another place I really liked was out Nabesna Road, Sportsmans Paradise. Doug has lodge & cabins 20 miles back in on copper lake. Caught lots of lakers there last winter. Rode way into wrangels up jacksina glacier, over platinum creek pass towards tetlin, and just some of the nicest country I have ever seen, like a nova movie with hundreds and hundreds of caribou. The tok trail blazers are real active club, class act people and they have runs every weekend; good people. My youngest boy misses the mountains & deep powder down there. I do too, but wife likes Eagle and so do I too. Come march, spend some time out nabesna road.

Let me know your plans.

[annyokie]

I don't care for his work.

I have read that he was a horrible control freak and forced the persons who commissioned him to use only his furnishing designs and not to move them from where he placed them, either.

[RightWhale]

I never saw the point of Frank Lloyd Wright, either. New shapes in architecture, some new ideas for household appliances. Not like he discovered fire or the wheel.

[Age of Reason]

As for his house designs again: I will agree with his followers that some of what he did was innovative--but for me, the funny part about it all is that however innovative his stuff is, it just doesn't add up to a place I'd feel at home in.

[Age of Reason]

Bad as I find Wright's home designs, few designs for churches give me the willys as much as this one by Le Corbusier: http://www.archinform.net/medien/00000418.htm?ID=296d14424615898ab71c73bbe9d8fa12

Yeech.

Yet, the critics loooooooooooooooooooovvvvvve it.

[RightWhale]

In Alaska we worship Le Corbusier. We can build anything out of steam pipe and plywood.

[mountaineer]

I agree, F. L. Wright's designs are really quite inadequate as actual, practical homes. Falling Waters has been falling apart for decades. It seems the great man wasn't quite so great when it came to the nuts 'n' bolts of building a house in which real people might live. Funny, my house is older than Falling Waters and doing just fine - I guess my small town contractor had a much more realistic notion of what a real home should be.

[martin_fierro]

Seems that Wright (who, in his personal life, was a world-class butthole) forgot the fundamental rule of good design:

FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION.

[StrictTime]

Here is an example of a beautiful church...

First Presbyterian Church of Stamford, CT.


The outside of the church earned it the nickname, the Fish Church:

Sorry for the small, dated pic. It's the only one I could find quickly.


The architect was Wallace Harrison, famous for the U.N. building, Rockefeller Center, The Met Opera House and other famous NY buildings.

[MadelineZapeezda]

FLW's 3rd wife was Olgivanna Lasovich,a Serb from Crna Gora and schooled in Russia. She kept Taliesan operating smoothly for him.

[Age of Reason]

Well, it exhibits more talent than the "Our Lady of Pizza Huts" style that's been going up over all over for the last few decades.