I said yesterday that Fallingwater wasn't my favorite Frank Lloyd Wright house. Fallingwater is great, don't get me wrong, but this is my favorite Frank Lloyd Wright House:
It's called Kentuck Knob and it's just a few miles from Fallingwater. It was built for the Hagan family who knew the Kaufmans, the owners of Fallingwater, and wanted a Frank Lloyd Wright home of their own so they somehow convinced Frank to design it for them. But it was built late in Wright's career -- after he'd already become quite famous and I guess had had enough of traveling from location to location. He famously asked for photos and some topographical maps and designed this building without ever visiting the site once. He never even saw the home completed.
This Grand Usonian is not the most unique of his designs and there are some issues with the layout, but this, of all his buildings, is the one I most want to make my home in. Maybe it's because I simply don't have the ego to see myself living in a place as grandiose as Fallingwater. Maybe because of the clerestory windows you can see in the picture above and that motif that looks to me to be at once both ancient Native American and modern. Maybe it's because I always wanted to live on "a knob." Maybe it's the fact that the second owner, Baron Palumbo, was an avid sculpture collector and all the grounds are filled with his acquisitions, like this Claes Oldenburg that the Shortlings are so cleverly pretending they ate too much of in this picture.
Maybe it's because it's one of the few buildings that has a verified Wright signature tile.
Maybe it's the fact that without ever visiting the location, he knew just where to put the windows so these hexagons would slowly track across the floor throughout the day.
Maybe it's the miniature Fallingwater in the back.
Or the tin roof.
Or perhaps, the running/rolling hill.
There are a hundred reasons I love this house.
But I think probably the view has something to do with it too.
See why I wanted to go here in the fall?
It's called Kentuck Knob and it's just a few miles from Fallingwater. It was built for the Hagan family who knew the Kaufmans, the owners of Fallingwater, and wanted a Frank Lloyd Wright home of their own so they somehow convinced Frank to design it for them. But it was built late in Wright's career -- after he'd already become quite famous and I guess had had enough of traveling from location to location. He famously asked for photos and some topographical maps and designed this building without ever visiting the site once. He never even saw the home completed.
This Grand Usonian is not the most unique of his designs and there are some issues with the layout, but this, of all his buildings, is the one I most want to make my home in. Maybe it's because I simply don't have the ego to see myself living in a place as grandiose as Fallingwater. Maybe because of the clerestory windows you can see in the picture above and that motif that looks to me to be at once both ancient Native American and modern. Maybe it's because I always wanted to live on "a knob." Maybe it's the fact that the second owner, Baron Palumbo, was an avid sculpture collector and all the grounds are filled with his acquisitions, like this Claes Oldenburg that the Shortlings are so cleverly pretending they ate too much of in this picture.
Maybe it's because it's one of the few buildings that has a verified Wright signature tile.
Maybe it's the fact that without ever visiting the location, he knew just where to put the windows so these hexagons would slowly track across the floor throughout the day.
Maybe it's the miniature Fallingwater in the back.
Or the tin roof.
Or perhaps, the running/rolling hill.
There are a hundred reasons I love this house.
But I think probably the view has something to do with it too.
See why I wanted to go here in the fall?
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October 25, 2015 at 12:47 PM
I want that house! I've always wanted a house that has windows for walls.