Comments

1
Yes, all that... and the building was FUGLY.
2
Wright had an interesting esthetic but half of his junk had leaky roofs and was murder to heat and cool. Functionally his stuff left a lot to be desired.Plus he was a world class jerk.
Tear it down.
4
More like "Frank Lloyd Wrong"

/amiwright?
5
Eh, he was apparently a jerk but he barely dabbled in urban planning/design and notoriously loathed cities. Making him out to be some sort of anti-urbanist boogeyman is dubious at best.
6
Wright only seemed to like horizontal lines.
7
@3 - Lolz
8
So we should just destroy all art created by jerks? that is A LOT of art/music/architecture. Perhaps you should provide a list of artists that meet your standards for perfection.
9
@8, you need to watch (and eventually read) How Buildings Learn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvEqfg2s…

The short of it is that buildings and cities are not art, and celebrity architects are just masturbating. Frank Lloyd Wright is not an artist, and is provably bad as an architect.
10
#6: Like the Guggenheim, Xanadu and the Grady?
11
Too bad as the building could have been redone to fit the current asthetic. I think that what creativity and the artistic community should have promoted. On the other hand Iโ€™m not shocked by Charles take on lambasting a community in Montana where gentrification has created an uncontrolled problem of homelessness, poverty, crime and addiction in his own backyard. Next week heโ€™ll herald the call to have the Mona Lisa destroyed because DaVinci was a misogynist white supremacist because he forced the model smile.
12
@9 somebody better tell the Museum of Modern Art that wright isn't an artist. They could free up a lot of space currently occupied by his "masturbation"
13
@8 People live and work in buildings, developments, and manifestations of urban plans. If Charles was calling for the destruction of all Wright's work that'd be one thing, but he's using this particular destruction (which is NOT an ideological destruction) to reflect on the BS carried out as urban planning in the early-mid 20th c. No one is demanding perfection but instead pointing out the flaws in someone's (here, Wright's) work that either attempted something good from their perspective and monumentally failed or caused outright harm to people (as in that 1st St. Louis project).
@9 +1
14
Sorry to be down to earth but the first consideration must be whether the building is worth preserving and what's going to be built in its place. The pictures suggest the answer to that is negative; though, it may still be better to keep it than build yet another short-lived, unsustainable building in its place.

It's worthwhile to take this opportunity and learn about Wright's nauseating racial beliefs but I don't know that he should be personally reviled (rather than simply dismissed) for having embraced contemporaneous urban sprawl.
15
@12, did you watch what I posted? It's not a conversation if you never lisiten,
16
Seriously, the point is that art and architecture are very, very different things, and having something in an art museum in no way qualifies you to create functional spaces.

Watch the video. Frank Lloyd Wright thought practical spaces that people could live in comfortably, and served a real purpose were for losers. That's the height of arrogance.
17
White Fish is a town that needs tourism to survive. This is one less thing to see and do. I guess I have no longer have a reason to go to White Fish and spend my money. Too bad.
18
@16 you wrote "Frank Lloyd Wright is not an artist" yet his paintings and drawings hang in prestigious museums. Words mean somthing.

Linking to a 30 minute video from the 90's is not a conversation.
19
Seriously, do you not understand the process involved in creating a building? Suggesting that it isn't fundamentally art is just stupid.

You don't have to like art for it to be art.
20
You obviously have never seen Fallingwater.
21
Mudede:

"He was also a white supremacist (but that matter is for another post)."

Are fking serious? You drop this wild accusation and then refuse to back it up?

Try this: "Mudede is also a child rapist (but that matter is for another post)."

I usually respect your views, but this article, on top of being ill-researched, and even more ill-considered, is, as it stands, arguably libelous as well.

Do better; you usually do.
22
"...the building is quintessentially Usonian, with a flat roof complete with overhang, clerestory windows, and a central hearth โ€” a pretty uncommon feature for a clinic.

In a city that typically gets more than 5' of snow each year, a flat roof is beyond stupid. (It'd be fine if it were more solidly built, but when has Wright ever designed something one would describe as "sturdy?") Having a central hearth is also a dumb idea for a building where the door is going to be opening constantly, and the outside temperature can stay below 0F for months on end. (Source: I grew up nearby.)

I would suggest that maybe Mudede speak to someone that's actually been there before he starts passing judgment on the planning of a city he's never set eyes on - he works with someone who's at least visited - but that would demand Mudede actually do the lightest investigative work, and who wants to bother when you can namedrop, pontificate and slurp wine instead? Mudede's conclusion is still the correct one in this case, however flawed and lazy his reasoning is to reach it.
23
Damage from V2 rockets were a drop in the bucket compared to the damage The Blitz of 1940 caused. Night time carpet bombing (including incendiary bombs to create a firestorm) leveled many cities in England and gutted a lot of central London. Folks in America don't know just how bad the English had it in that war.
24
@18, okay. You're calling Stewart Brand fake news. Got it. Thanks for playing.
25
It's a typical office park with a few precious touches. Even Frank Lloyd Wright needed to pay the bills, I guess.
26
jesus christ thats an unbelievably bad article. do we need to tear down a corbusier building just so we can reflect on his misguided urbanist principles? you shouldn't need to celebrate the destruction of a piece of architecture in order to think critically about history. almost all of his contemporaries shared similarly out of touch ideas about city planning. blaming suburbanization and car-culture on wright is ridiculous
27
Charles, I wanted to share this with you. https://savingplaces.org/stories/when-fr…

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