Taos, NM, in Infrared

Photographs of St. Francis of Assisi church in Rancho de Taos, NM, July 2012







and of a ruined plaza building near the church:

Light and Space

If I were 20 now, if I had the chance to do it all over, to start all over again, I would probably go into architecture school.

I am constantly, vividly, viscerally aware of how light and air fill an enclosed or an open space. The way natural light moves on a surface, or in a room, is transcendently beautiful, with no other adornment. A bare wall, at the right angle to the sun, is beautiful all day long. Reduced to its purist forms, architecture is a container for light, and thus for spirit.


Santa Fe, NM

I might also work in interior design or landscape design. The goal being to create spaces for contemplation, quietude, meditation. I create these spaces for myself, most recently in my new home; I also gather them to me, as memories, in many places I've traveled to, or visited.

I like natural materials. I like wood surfaces that have been weathered by sunlight, rain, and time. White sunlight on grey cedar shingles. Light rain on whitewashed wood. I like the pure solidity of reinforced concrete, but also the aesthetic of chaotic weathering. A rust stain below a steel pipe on a concrete wall has spirit. Skin on stone.


Temperance River, MN

The color white, in design and architecture, is not a void. it contains all colors, and reflects them all. It responds to the changing light throughout the day and night. A whitewashed building on a Greek island's high hill. A white picket fence. A white chair under spreading trees. A white canvas tent on a high mesa after a light snow.




camp, Arroyo Hondo, NM

I like reflections. I am not found of mirrors, but I love windows, pools of water, glass, wet stone, and the they way they all reflect light. If I were to design a terrace, I would have inset lines and curves of moving water channeling through the stone pavements; narrow enough to be easily stepped across, but wide enough to reflect the sky. I once had a dream in which I was on a terrace made of red desert stone, into which had been incised narrow channels through which water was flowing, reflecting the clear blue sky with small white clouds; the overall shape of pattern was a labyrinth.


dawn, Flambeau River, WI

I like light to come through. Skylights over shower stalls in a high-roofed bathroom. Small rectangular windows at odd places in corners and clerestories. I have a photographer's eye for light—I have noted more than once that I am aware that many of my landscape photos are really photos of the sky—and if I applied that to a building, or a public space, light would always be getting in. Light-pipes to underground subway stations.


Taos Plateau, NM

We divorce ourselves, without imagining the consequences, from the natural cycles of night and day. We use artificial light even where we don't need it. We use harsh, direct light, because we imagine it to be more efficient and illuminating, simply because it is direct. We create enclosed spaces, indoors, all too often to block out the outdoors, the natural light, perhaps to prove our dominion and control over it.


adobe building, NM

Night finds a way to get in, no matter what. A single lamp is better than a brightly-flooded room. A candle in the right place, reflecting off the walls, is better lighting than a row of flourescent lights. We don't honor the dark enough. The shadows in a room, at night, are as important as the objects and angles that make them. They're very much alive.


Taos, NM

If I were 20, and had it all to do over again, I would probably go into architecture.

Taliesin

Yesterday I drove up to Spring Green, WI, and took a tour of Taliesin, the home and studio and architectural school built and founded by Frank Lloyd Wright. Driving back home in the evening, after spending all day immersed in his buildings, the landscape, and his style of ornamentation, I have been feeling incredibly inspired.



I’ve always been a fan of his architecture. Now I am realizing how deeply I share many of his aesthetics. There are Japanese touches everywhere. Wright once said that going to Japan was an affirmation of his ideas. So the influence is strong. There are Buddha statues, and Hokusai and Hiroshige prints, everywhere. Apparently, there is a major collection of Japanese prints in a vault at Taliesin. I’d love to go through that someday. Wright designed over a 1000 unique fireplaces in his lifetime, some completely bilaterally symmetrical, many asymmetrical, following that aesthetic, which I also believe in, that asymmetry is more pleasing to the eye, more beautiful. Many of his fireplaces are incredible sculptures in their own way, as well as functional. Everywhere, in all the buildings: natural wood and stone materials, something I also agree with.



I think my favorite place on the tour was the auditorium at Hillside, the architecture school itself: this is the school’s remarkable and beautiful amphitheatre. Second is the living room at Taliesin, the residence itself. The object I was most drawn to, in both rooms, was a music stand built so that four players could sit in a circle, all see each other, and all face the stand. The stand’s center has lights that illuminate each place, and a holder for flowers in the middle. There are only 6 of these stands in existence, I was told. I think they’re brilliant; I’d love to have one, or a reproduction, and have players use it for house concerts. (I wonder if there are plans to ever reproduce such design masterpieces, for the rest of the world to enjoy.) In the living room there was also his daughter’s Celtic harp, and a special stool he built for her to use while playing harp: the only one of its kind.



Yesterday I also gained insight into Wright’s style of drawing and drafting: very gridlike, with regions of color and line. But it is in fact representational, but with shapes on a grid. The great curtain in the theatre represents dawn in the river valley: there are shapes for clouds, mist, the rise of the hill, and there on the brow of the hill, the house itself, with smoke coming from the chimney. But it’s all done with rectangles and fields of solid color. I never expected to appreciate Wright as a purely visual artist, but this insight into his drawing method provides me with new ideas for my own. Not in any imitative way, because it’s not my style at all, but like Mondrian in terms of abstract representation. In terms of interior decoration, ornamental design, it’s powerful, bold, and exciting. If you look at them closely, you see the natural forms are preserved, especially in his plant-inspired drawings and designs, but they’re stylized and made geometrical: reduced to abstract geometrical components, if you will, but retaining nevertheless their original forms and ahapes. Applying this aesthetic to fractal patterns found in nature, as well as to fractal geometry, one could quickly devise a new style of drawing, art glass, window ornament, and lighting fixture: integrated design aesthetic, of course.

The way Wright “broke the box” of the usual building rules is one of the things I like best: the L shapes of houses and walls; the use of corner entrances, so the main wall was mostly window; the stacking of shapes in asymmetrical arrangements; the strong use of diagonals to lead the eye; the long lines of views to the outside from the center of the building; rectangles and trapezoids instead of perfect squares; circular elements, that meet triangular elements. Wright also said that architecture was music, and music was so important to him that the ornamental features at Taliesin often evoke music: threes and twos, like the black keys on the piano; and the shaping of rooms to enhance musical performance by being acoustically balanced. There were numerous pianos there, and those incredible music stands.

I've been on fire with all of this for almost two days, now. I don't mind at all. I awoke this morning with images of Wright windows still in the back of my mind, and the low hangs of cantilevered rooflines, the corner windows and doors. And I still want to linger with these images, be immersed in them. This is an influence I am unafraid to absorb, to be possessed by. The whole Prairie School of architecture, for that matter. When Wright talked about organic architecture, he said it had three components: landscape, structure, ornament. I find the ornaments lingering in my inner vision, still, and I want to engage with them, for as long as they linger in mind. As I said, I am unafraid to be influenced by all this.

Now I need to do some research, and immerse myself in Wright's work. There are things there I am ready to absorb. If I had a career to start all over again, I would seriously consider applying as an apprentice architect at Taliesin. It was truly an inspiring day.

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Update: Terry Teachout also responds to Frank Lloyd Wrights' architecture, in retreat. I agree that Wright's late houses, the Usonian houses, are among his best works, and certainly his most attractively livable. I got that same sense of livability in Taliesin itself.