logoalt Hacker News

moron4hireyesterday at 4:59 PM0 repliesview on HN

I don't know, man. I mean, I know it's the standard Architecture School answer that Wright was influential. But I feel like that can only be said if you focus on superficial, outward appearance and completely ignore his design philosophy, why he designed the way he did.

The materials he chose were meant to make home ownership accessible to the common man. Your own link to the Jacob's House talks about Mr. Jacobs being "a young newspaper man". The $5000 cost in 1935 is like $120k today. Yeah, if 1500sqft houses cost $120k today, I could believe a journalist just starting out on their career could afford the mortgage on it.

Are houses L-shaped now? Yeah, sure. Are they accessible to the common person? Not at all. People are talking the Little Golden Book version of Wright's philosophy.

Also, my house is not L-shaped. Jacobs got 25% more house for 1/6th the inflation adjusted price. He got a study and a shop; I'm performing my own manual labor in my back yard to build a gazebo that I hope will work as a shop for me. As a newspaper hack with a likely-unemployed wife he got a house near a lake. My electrical engineer with a master's degree wife working at a major military research institution and I got a drainage ditch that kinda looks like a stream when it rains really hard. And we're in our 40s. Everyone massively missed Wright's point.