Blog 7: Video Review

Prairie Style, Frank Lloyd Wright:

1. Frank Lloyd Wright changed Americans opinions of living in average styled, "boxed" typed homes and introduced a new way of living into wide open spaces. He wished to have buildings blend in to the natural world surrounding them without harming the environment he was building on. He began in the Chicago area with single family homes around 1904. Instead of a layout like standard homes that had each room really separated from each other, Wright developed a layout that had a really open flow to it. Wright wanted to create a lot of open living space and open up the home to let in the light from the windows. With the low, horizontal ceilings your eyes are more likely to look out and around to provide you with the experience of the surrounding area. The most important part of the Wright houses were that they were part of the land, not just on the land. It is impressive that Wright was able to leave his legacy and his ideas of how to change homes into open, organic spaces for new architects to build upon. 

2. This video connected with the text spot on because in Chapter 13 there is an Artist Bio on Frank Lloyd Wright. While in the text we were given some of the background information on who is was as a person, the video was really helpful in showing his earliest work and it was really cool to follow the cameras through a tour of the home. The text mentioned some of Wrights large-scale, commercial buildings but the video was solely about his work on single family homes. I would be interested to see some of his public buildings.

3. I really enjoyed this film because it did a wonderful job explaining the prairie style house and what is meant by Wright's ideas of a home blending into the natural surroundings. Before reading this chapter I wouldn't have thought about some of the architecture within this type of home but it was really interesting to learn about the horizontal ceilings and how the low height of them would cause your eyes to look out and around at the land through the large windows. It also helped me to understand different layouts within a home. Most homes I have visited are very separated by walls, but this style home was very open and flowed from  room to room in a way that made a lot of sense.

4. I chose this film after reading Wright's biography in the text and because I have heard about him before so I was curious to learn more about his homes. I actually just watched a show on TLC called "Four Houses" and one woman that showed her home had a Frank Lloyd Wright style home that wasn't built by him but was worked on by one of his apprentices and it was a really cool house in Georgia so that was also in the back of my mind when choosing this video.

Architecture: The Style of Design:

1. Large cities are exploding with skyscrapers. As space around the city runs out, architects are forced to build up. Skyscrapers are huge buildings made up two distinct parts, the super structure and sub structure. Buildings this large require a very special foundation that will ensure its stability. The foundation not only has to support the weight of the structure itself and its living weight once it is filled with furniture and occupants but more importantly the wind. The taller the building is, the more the force of the wind can be dangerous. The video also introduces the idea of technology equipped homes. A computerized house will allow home owners to control their whole house with just a computer. While the computer systems can be very sophisticated; wake you up, make the coffee, warm the water for your shower, and open the curtains on the window, they can also be very expensive and is not available to everyone. Technology brought to occupants of public buildings can really improve daily life through computers but it is still up in the air as to whether or not it is a priority. 

2. This video related to the text in different ways. One similarity was about the use of concrete. Concrete was used as a construction material since the work of the Greeks and the Romans and is now used everywhere in our modern world. The video also talked a lot about skyscrapers which were also part of the reading. Page 287 in the text shows sketches for steel-frame and balloon-frame construction of steel beams to create the shell for these types of large buildings.

3. I learned a lot of new information from this film. Mostly about steel and the construction of skyscrapers. While the text questioned, "How high is too high?" and "How much airspace should a building consume?" the video also added the problems that the wind can cause with buildings that large. I can't imagine the planning that goes into building a skyscraper with so much at stake. It is insane to think of the thought that has to go into planning a foundation that will support a huge building and withstand the wind. There is no room for error when you are putting a building in the middle of other buildings and thousands of people walking through it and around it.

4. I chose this film because after the Frank Lloyd Wright video which was my first choice, none of the other titles really jumped out at me so I just went down the list and picked the next video. After watching the first few minutes I thought that it looked interesting and was curious to hear about the smart houses.