| John Lautner (architect) |
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Information AboutJohn Lautner (architect) |
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Lautner was born in rural Michigan and attended Frank Lloyd Wright 's Taliesin Fellowship for six years in the 1930s as architectural training, serving as construction manager on Wright's Johnson residence "Wingspread" and on two projects in Los Angeles . He stands among the most successful of Taliesin graduates. Lautner established his own office in Southern California in 1940 and produced a long series of houses that combine innovative engineering, superb handling of materials, respect for his clients' needs, and an experimental vision that remains perpetually fresh. The living room of his Carling Residence, for instance, was built to rotate on a turntable and become an outdoor patio. The Reiner Residence called Silvertop in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California contains entire glass walls that silently disappear with the touch of a button. His design solutions may appear to be grandstanding at first, but they derive from logic, originality, and technical daring. His own first residence (1940) was built on a hillside. By choice or by accident, Lautner developed a reputation for making the most of challenging locations. The Malin Residence (the ''. In 2000 German publisher Benedikt Taschen purchased and restored the house as his Los Angeles office. Although mostly known for residences, Lautner created an entire genre of commercial architecture: . Other chains such as Tiny Naylor's, Ship's, Norm's and Clock's quickly imitated the look as a superficial style, which proves its commercial value. "Googie" was labelled as such in a 1952 magazine article by Yale University professor Douglas Haskell. Although the genre still has its admirers, in the 1950s the architectural community ridiculed it as superficial and vulgar. Not until Robert Venturi 's 1972 book " Learning From Las Vegas " did the architectural mainstream even come close to validating Lautner's logic. Lautner's reputation suffered as a result. Following some lean years in the 1950s and 1960s, he enjoyed something of a resurgence with his poured-concrete houses in the 1970s, notably the Bob Hope Residence and other houses in Palm Springs . Among Lautner's other works include the Arango Residence in Acapulco, Mexico with its concrete sky-moat, and the landmark Desert Springs Motel in Palm Springs. His dramatic and photogenic spaces are frequently exploited in films, notably the Palm Springs Elrod Residence used to good effect in the 1971 James Bond film '' Diamonds Are Forever ''. EXTERNAL LINKS
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