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I have had the father feeling for a building, but I never had it for my children. Frank Lloyd Wright
What ever man might build could never express or reflect more than he was. He could record neither more nor less than he had learned of life when the buildings were built. Frank Lloyd Wright
Why, I just shake the buildings out of my sleeves. Frank Lloyd Wright
Architecture is going to be our contribution to the great civilisation of the future. Frank Lloyd Wright
A physician can bury his mistakes, but the architect can only advise his client to plant vines – so they should go as far as possible from home to build their first buildings. Frank Lloyd Wright, New York Times 4th October 1953
The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization. Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright is the greatest ever American architect. Buildings like the Guggenheim museum, the Johnson Wax building and Falling Water are masterpieces, redefining what was possible and became famous the world over. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Man Who Built America, BBC 2017
Frank Lloyd Wright built over 500 buildings. ibid.
The buildings even became known as prairie houses. ibid.
Taliesin: Wright’s ideal of how architecture and nature should coexist … organic architecture. ibid.
The Ennis house 1924: this is a fortress … a building that perfectly suits its city [Los Angeles]. ibid.
The greatest house of the 20th century: Fallingwater. ibid.
Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest of all American architects. For more than seventy years he showed his countrymen new ways to build ... He created some of the most monumental and some of the most intimate spaces in America. He designed everything. Frank Lloyd Wright I, Ken Burns & Lynn Novick, PBS 1998
Frank Lloyd Wright broke all the rules in his work and his life. ibid.
Order out of chaos. ibid.
By 1909 Frank Lloyd Wright seemed to have everything an ambitious architect could want ... But appearances were deceiving. ibid.
What he liked to call organic architecture. ibid.
When the Imperial [Hotel] was finally completed Wright’s Japanese clients were delighted. ibid.
Even members of Wright’s own family turned against him. ibid.
His critics wrote him off as out of date ... In the years to come he would eclipse everything that had gone before. ibid.
To keep his name and his ideas alive and to lure new clients she urged her husband to lecture and to write. Frank Lloyd Wright II, Ken Burns & Lynn Novick
Wright professed nothing but contempt for modernism. ibid.
Wright named his building Falling Water: it would eventually become the most famous modern house in the world. And he had drawn it all in less than three hours. ibid.
At seventy Wright’s career had been reborn. ibid.
Over the next fifteen years Wright and his fellowship turned out drawings and plans for more than three hundred and fifty buildings. ibid.
Back in 1943 Wright had been asked to design a museum in New York City to house the vast collection of non-objective paintings amassed by the copper king Solomon R Guggenheim. ibid.
This internationalism of the 12th century extended to architecture and sculpture. Kenneth Clark 2/13: Civilisation: The Great Thaw, BBC 1969
Great things were to be done in the next centuries of high Gothic. ibid.
I’m in the Gothic world: the world of chivalry, courtesy, and romance ... And where architecture reached a point of extravagance in history ... What Marxists call Conspicuous Waste. Kenneth Clark: Civilisation 3/13: Romance & Reality
Most think that with the pointed arch it came from the East. ibid.
Early Renaissance architecture is based on a passion for mathematics. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 4/13: Man The Measure of All Things
Borromini in my opinion was the single most exciting architect there has ever been … The Picasso of architecture. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! – From St Peter’s to St Paul’s I, BBC 2013
Bernini: as architect, as sculpture, as painter, the man could do everything. ibid.
This square mile of the city of London contains the finest concentration of Baroque architecture outside Rome – 51 Baroque gems nestling among the money making skyscrapers. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! From St Peter’s to St Paul’s III
Blenheim Palace ... like a great big ceremonial cake ... A Baroque architecture that resounds with power and might ... This Borromini of Blenheim – Nicholas Hawksmoor: Hawksmoor was the most inventive and madcap architect these shores had produced ... the chances are Hawksmore did it. ibid.
Architecture: One of the foremost architects of the age was William Butterfield who completely reinterpreted medieval Gothic architecture in Victorian terms ... This is Keble College, Oxford ... Amazing. Staggering. If you really don’t like it, get a life ... I will never have a word said against it. Architecture became a central part of the Arts and Crafts movement in the late nineteenth century. And the Pre-Raphaelites were keen to play an active part. Andrew Lloyd Webber, Perspectives, ITV 2011
These obituaries were written in the sort of reverential tone which might have been reserved, say, for the prodigal son. The general theme was that here was a man who had strayed and should be pitied by all decent upper class people.
The real reason for the sympathy was, however, not that Poulson was a crook but that he was caught. Tories are always singing the praises of self-made men and John Poulson was certainly that. His background was the very essence of stout-hearted English self-help.
... He was a Tory, but he noticed that Tories often charged more (and expected higher bribes) than Labour politicians, so he built his practice on the bribery of Labour councils in the north of England and Scotland.
Of course if a greedy Tory came his way Poulson snapped him up. He welcomed with open wallet a Tory cabinet minister, Reginald Maudling, and a prominent Tory backbencher, John Cordle, whose membership of the Synod of the Church of England in no way precluded him from accepting generous bribes from John Poulson.
Poulson built one of the biggest architectural practices in Europe by the simple device of bribing politicians, council officials, sheikhs and sultans.
No Labour chairman of committees was too lowly for Poulson. Vast inedible dinners in hotels were his speciality for Labour councillors.
There was no reason at all why John Poulson should ever have been knocked off his pedestal. The business world then (and now) was full of gangsters and charlatans who lived out their life in the full glow of their contemporaries’ high regard.
Poulson was done down by his own greed. Like Robert Maxwell in a later period, he became obsessed with obtaining riches which were beyond his grasp. He borrowed too much and spent too much.
When he finally went bankrupt, journalists who had honoured him and fed at his table turned on him to gloat at the ‘greatest corruption story of the decade’.
Poulson went to prison for seven years. Yet he did nothing more than what other more skilful ‘entrepreneurs’ have done.
In many ways he was a model for the ‘enlightened self-interest capitalism’ which became known as Thatcherism. He helped himself at others’ expense, grabbed what he could from his workers, sold his customers short with shoddy goods, built himself a palatial house and promised to do his duty to God and the Queen. Paul Foot, article 13th February 1993, ‘Bribery & Corruption’
Ludwig II of Bavaria is a legendary figure. The handsome boy king loved by is people … A monarch obsessed by beauty. The Fairytale Castles of King Ludwig II with Dan Cruickshank BBC 2013