The WTF? Thread

[ursus arctos]

This concept deserves wider application

The musical possibilities alone are legion

[WOM]

Ah! Turns out I'm not keen on the original style either.

The list of posters who've never put a foot wrong ...just...got...shorter.

[Fussbudget]

It's pretty much just treibeis now isn't it

[ursus arctos]

She just doesn't understand Prairie Style culture

[caja-dglh]

There is a lot to appreciate about FLW and his design. Unfortunately owning one involves having bottomless financial resources and an understanding that - in more than under any other circumstance I can think of - there is a band of people waiting to be mad at you about what you choose to do to your home.

Like that crappy kitchen to jam a sub-zero into a FLW house. Even though the budget for that was probably 4x the average expensive kitchen renovation.

[Amor de Cosmos]

One day I was geeing my Dad, who very rarely talked about architecture despite it being his profession, about FLW. "Hmm. Interesting architect. You do realise all his buildings leaked though?"

[WOM]

I just revisited a Globe and Mail article about a Vancouver area Ron Thom rescue that was for sale. Sold for $1.8 million and needs $500K in work, including...of course...a roof and extensive water damage work. Because of course you'd do a flat roof in the rainiest part of the country.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Because of course you'd do a flat roof in the rainiest part of the country.

Of course you would. The Miami Vice inspired 'Leaky Condo' phenomenon ran for years here.

[Fussbudget]

Like that crappy kitchen to jam a sub-zero into a FLW house. Even though the budget for that was probably 4x the average expensive kitchen renovation.

What's wrong with the kitchen? The kitchen is nice!

[caja-dglh]

It is not what Frank would have wanted.

Seriously - there are about 15 of his homes within walking distance of my house. Park a kitchen or bathroom renovation van in front of any one of them and the curtain twitchers will be looking for their pitchforks and torches.

[ursus arctos]

dglh lives in the Wright version of Portmerion.

One wrong decorating step and there's a.giant blob with your name on it.

[caja-dglh]

Yeah. the FLeW crew do not mess around. Shit - my neighbor friend (before I arrived) got a stop work order on fixing his roof in November because they wanted to make sure it was OK with their historical requirements. And you would not pick his house out of an architectural relevance line up 100 times out of 100.

I would not live in a FLW home as they are a prison to architectural maintenance, and I am not that person.

[Amor de Cosmos]

It's always struck me as odd that US citizens, who generally pride themselves on preserving individual freedoms, have in many (usually affluent) neighbourhoods really restrictive covenants on what you can do to your property. Many moons ago we used to visit friends in Santa Barbara, every time it seemed there was something they could, or couldn't, do to their house they were arguing about. Like why/whether they were required to have a Spanish style red tile roof for example. It seemed pretty darned un-American to me.

[ursus arctos]

All done in the name of "preserving and enhancing property values", which is a primary imperative for those people

[San Bernardhinault]

The entire HOA controlled environment thing feels deeply WTF to me. Not being allowed to paint your own house the color you want feels very alien to me.

[Sam]

When I become eye-wateringly wealthy (which is to say when my dad wins the lottery jackpot and gives me a chunk of it), once my girlfriend and I have decided where we want to live I'd like to be somewhere with a nice view, and if I can get somewhere built for me I'd find a really great architect and ask them to do something inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, I think. I'm not sure whether I'd call him my favourite architect, but in terms of how his homes look (when I see them on screen, I mean – I've obviously never actually been in one) they seem to use natural light and open up to external views fantastically.

'Inspired by' would be key words, though.

[Satchmo Distel]

The only nationally sanctioned book burning in the US was apparently of Wilhelm Reich's work in the 50s by the FDA on the grounds that they promoted his orgone accumulators.

[ursus arctos]

Reich was much more successful at pressing the establishment's buttons than were any of his contraptions

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

So what's the story there? From a very quick look at "orgone" on Wiki I assume it's pseudo-scientific quackery, but presumably the authorities saw it as more sinister than the average quackery if they made it a special case for book burning?

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The last couple of pages of this thread give me a Simon and Garfunkel earworm btw.

[ursus arctos]

Sex was a Communist plot

Especially if it was seen as potentially empowering women

[S. aureus]

The last couple of pages of this thread give me a Simon and Garfunkel earworm btw.

Whereas I now have a Hawkwind one.

[Satchmo Distel]

So what's the story there? From a very quick look at "orgone" on Wiki I assume it's pseudo-scientific quackery, but presumably the authorities saw it as more sinister than the average quackery if they made it a special case for book burning?

Reich was a serious psychoanalytic and political writer in the 1920s and 30s in Vienna and Germany, eventually seeking to synthesize Marx and Freud (similar to the Frankfurt School) but after Freud rejected his political work and he then had to flee the Nazis, he developed a persecution complex and went into pseudo-science, producing the totally bullshit "orgone" accumulator. The FBI cleared his group of subversion in 1947 but then in 1954, the AG issued an injunction following an FDA investigation and Reich was jailed for breaching it, dying in jail.

I assume the Eisenhower admin went after him because Adorno and Horkheimer had gone back to Frankfurt in 1949 (Marcuse had worked for the OSS and would not become a public anti-capitalist author until the 1960s) whereas Reich was a sitting duck. Kate Bush's "Cloudbusting" was about Reich.

I strongly recommend "Everybody" by Olivia Laing for some beautiful chapters on Reich.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

You could argue that as someone trying to combine Marxism and psychoanalysis he may have been dabbling in pseudoscience long before he started into his orgone nonsense

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Whereas I now have a Hawkwind one.

Thanks, s aureues, just checked that out on YouTube. Not bad.