Some years ago
we were invited to give a lecture at
Carnegie Mellon university in Pittsburgh. It wasn't a great lecture as I recall, slightly scuppered by both the size of the auditorium (enormous) and the running order for the evening which placed us between a contemporary dance troupe and a jazz saxophonist. In such company two English blokes talking about bus shelters and social housing must have seemed fairly bizarre.
Anyway, the highlight of the trip was a visit to two Frank Lloyd Wright houses in
Pennsylvania: Falling Water and the less well known
Kentuck Knob. While Falling Water was clearly an extraordinary piece of architecture, it was
Kentuck Knob that was the more interesting for a number of
reasons. The house was (and may well still be) owned by
Baron (then Lord) Peter Palumbo.
Palumbo collected iconic modernist houses in the same way that you or I might collect DVD box sets. At the time he also owned
Mies Van Der
Rohe's Farnsworth House and the
Maisons Jaoul by Le
Corbusier. Rumour has it that
Palumbo had planned to buy Falling Water to complete the set but was scuppered by the fact that the Kaufman family had left it to the
Pennsylvania National Park. So he bought the nearby
Kentuck Knob instead.
Kentuck Knob is run as a visitor attraction with
Palumbo living in a farmhouse nearby when in residence. There is a book and souvenir shop at the gate and a little bus that drives you through the woods to the house itself which sits at the top of Chestnut Ridge. The grounds that the bus passes through are a sort of high art amusement park peppered with sculptures by Andy
Goldsworthy and Claus Oldenburg as well as random
20th Century artefacts including a section of the Berlin wall and a K2 telephone box.
The house itself couldn't be more different to its celebrated neighbour. It is a
Usonian house, a single storey, relatively modest ground hugging building with a large overhanging roof. The plan is sort of rhomboid-
ish, two squished rectangles at one hundred and twenty degrees to each other with an odd faceted kitchen at the centre between the two.
The interior is finely honed and beautifully made, quietly impressive rather than spectacular.
Palumbo had been responsible for carefully renovating the interior and furnishing it with
FLW designed pieces. Despite the thoroughness of this
exercise the interior also featured a number of incongruously personal objects belonging to the owner. So, sitting on one immaculate Frank Lloyd Wright designed table was a framed photo of Baron
Palumbo proudly presenting Margaret Thatcher with one of those foam mounted giant cheques used for charity fund raising. Next to it was another photo of him chatting to Princess Diana.
Palumbo himself appeared at one moment, wandering through the kitchen during our guided tour in a pair of green Hunter wellingtons and smoking a cigar. He stopped briefly to tell a short and slightly pompous story about (for some reason) George Bernard Shaw before ambling off to empty a wheelbarrow full of leaves.
I was reminded of all this after reading
this excellent article (via @
tragedyhatherle's twitter feed) which describes Lloyd Wright's various LA houses. The article describes Frank Lloyd Wright's particular and characteristically eccentric approach to building houses on hills. Like the Ennis House,
Kentuck Knob could be described very well as being "of the hill" rather than on it. As well as being embedded in the site to the extent that large rocks are incorporated into the facade itself, the house is positioned just off the tip of the ridge on which it sits. Although the view from the ridge is impressive, Lloyd Wright deliberately positioned the house so that it wasn't visible from within.
The perversity of this move is admirable, although it arises from a belief that architecture should not compete with nature. Jeffrey St Claire's conclusion in his counterpunch article that the technically challenged Ennis House should be left to be reclaimed by nature is both interesting and provocative. Kentuck Knob, with its strange garden of artefacts and equally curious back story as the plaything of a wealthy semi-exiled English Lord would make an equally compelling ruin.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Meyer May House turns 100 years old. The birthday celebration this week features a symposium with big-name architects and designers coming to town and special tours featuring the home and others in Michigan. The symposium will be held on Thursday, September 10, 2009 form 1-5 PM . They will also be having tours of the Meyer May House
