Word: architecting
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...good people of Wisconsin have always had mixed feelings about one of their best-known native sons. They took pride in the achievements and fame of Frank Lloyd Wright, arguably the 20th century's most original architect, who died in 1959 at 91. Yet they also deplored his bohemian life-style, his arrogance and bombast, his leftist politics and above all his predilection for scandal. In 1909, to cite one notorious example, he abandoned his first wife and their six children to carry on a flagrant affair with a client's spouse. One result of Wisconsin's ambivalence: while...
Until now, that is. This Thursday, the 128th anniversary of the architect's birth, Republican Governor Tommy Thompson will preside at the official groundbreaking ceremony for what is probably the most important Wright-designed project never executed in his lifetime. Monona Terrace is a five-level, semicircular, 1.8 hectare convention center now under construction at the edge of Lake Monona in Madison. Wright spent his youth in the state capital, which is about 65 km east of Taliesin (Welsh for "shining brow"), his home and architecture school at Spring Green. Those historic connections with Madison must have given Wright...
...architect's endless feuding with local politicians and businessmen guaranteed that, as Wright once ruefully predicted, the Terrace would never be built while he was alive. Amazingly, the arguments continue, even though an overwhelming majority of Madison elders are now committed to the $67 million project. Opponents of the Terrace have filed four lawsuits to block its construction, primarily on environmental grounds. One such suit claims that the 1,700 pilings supporting the edifice, which has a rooftop terrace and spiral parking ramps at each end, will cause groundwater contamination. Terrace opponents have also asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency...
...even though more than half the cost will be borne by state and county funds and by private donors. Yet another source of acrimony is whether the Terrace deserves to be considered a Wright design at all. A local organization called It Ain't Wright has argued that the architect's original concept envisioned a 2.8 hectare multipurpose civic center, complete with jail and railroad station, on a pristine stretch of lakeshore. The scaled-down version being built snuggles up against a cluttered Madison neighborhood. The proximity, critics say, violates Wright's central thesis that architecture should be in harmony...
Taliesin-trained architect Anthony Puttnam, who was a Wright apprentice back in the '50s, defends the project's authenticity. "I don't think we've done anything that Wright wouldn't have done," Puttnam says. "He was very open to change. He knew the importance of accommodating the client...