John Lautner - Residential use of concrete

In 2009 I went to an exhibit at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, titled "Between Heaven and Earth," which featured the work of John Lautner. I had never known of John Lautner's work, but fortunately my good friend who lived in Los Angeles invited me, knowing I appreciate the residential architecture and interior design of Frank Lloyd Wright, of whom Lautner worked for and of whose home in Virginia I have toured.

Entering into a dim lit room was a rolling film of photographs taken by Lautner featuring his observations of some of the sites and environments to which he would begin to design. The next room was filled with beautifully executed drawings and notes including elevations, floor plans, and sections of many homes and a couple commercial designs. I remember loving the stylized way he drew people and cars of the era.

There were several models, quite large in scale, but none of them topped the grand finale room which held two models that must have been about 6' x 10' and 3 - 4' tall depicting the slanted and varied angles of the terrain.

With each home I studied that day, it was clear that Lautner designed with the importance and attention of allowing the dweller to be in close proximation to the outdoors, thus creating an ambiguity of borders. Whether facing the windows insed the living room dangling over the edge of a hill, or literally being swiveled from a sitting space inside the home to a direction facing outside that completely opened the home to the outside, Lautner provided a way to experience the home and it's context from every angle possible.

From the 1950's into the '70's Lautner was in a time of financial strife, but he pressed on with integrity. If he were alive today, I'd recommend he come speak at CCA.

John Lautner's 100 Birthday celebration would have been this past July 2011. There are celebrations going on until November 13, 2011. If you are interested in participating check out this site: http://www.johnlautner.org/

Cheers Mr. Lautner!

Tiffany Blaylock

By Betsy Speicher

(Originally written October 14, 1994)

I can always recognize a building by John Lautner, Architect, not because it looks like any other Lautner building, but because it looks like nothing that has ever stood before on the face of the Earth.

Lautner buildings are original. Lautner built Chemosphere -- a four-bedroom house shaped like an hexagonal flying saucer perched high atop a single hollow concrete column. He also designed the Carling House whose living room pivots on a turntable to transform itself into an outdoor patio overlooking the lights of the city.

Lautner buildings are dramatic with bold geometry and exciting use of materials. The Sheats House has dynamic triangular roof lines and walls of glass that place no barrier between the shelter within and the outside world at your feet. The sensuously curving cast concrete Arango House is surrounded and embraced by a pool than flows through it and then flows out to and over the edge of the structure to reflect the serene and unobstructed beauty of the blue sky and waters of Acapulco Bay.

Lautner buildings are logical. Despite their originality and drama, my overwhelming impression of each one has always been, "But, of course!" Lautner once said he had to have "eight to ten good reasons to do anything." Nothing is accidental nor arbitrary. Every single item, from the foundation to the faucet is planned, and sensible, and inevitable.

Lautner buildings are functional. He designs to suit the site, the climate, and his client's needs and desires. He built a motel that steadfastly stands up to the brutal winds of the desert, a heat-conserving solar home in Alaska, and a ground-hugging, snow-insulated ski home in Colorado. He suspended a multi-story structure from two interlocking cast concrete sine waves to create a comfortable, private, airy, 5-bedroom ocean-view home on a long and narrow Malibu lot.

Lautner buildings are wonders of engineering. When clients come to him with an impossible, "unbuildable" site, like Chemosphere's narrow 45-degree sloping lot, he can devise the new structural principles and elements required to built on it. He can also invent new building methods. He attached the steel girders supporting Chemosphere to the central concrete column with epoxy -- in 1960!

Lautner buildings have integrity because John Lautner has integrity. In a career that has spanned over fifty years, Lautner has never deviated from his principles nor allowed fashion or cliche or anything other than the logic and beauty of a his own vision to be built.

http://speicher.com/lautnerb.htm

Chemosphere

Chemosphere

Carling House - pivots to outdoor

Sheats House

Elrod House

Arrango House

Arrango House

Arrango House

A note about Lautner's courage through hard financial times:

"In the late 1940's when Lautner's enormously successful "Googie's Coffee Shop" became the model for soaring-ceiling, glass-front coffee shops all over America, he began to face the darkest time of his career.

Architectural critics in leading magazines sneered at and ridiculed him, "Googie Architecture" became a joke, and Lautner's career seemed over. Lautner had only his own courage and dedication to see him through the 1950's and 1960's. There were years when the only work he had was a kitchen remodel and years when he didn't even have that.

His lean years did not end until the late 1970's when Lautner built Bob Hope's spectacular home in Palm Springs. At last, he finally begin to receive the honor and recognition he had so long deserved. "

http://speicher.com/lautnerb.htm

More sites with resource info.

http://www.johnlautner.org/

http://www.trianglemodernisthouses.com/lautner.htm

http://www.google.com/search?q=john+lautner&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=8Fy&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnsob&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=F41zTp3kE6HkiALpqvCzAg&ved=0CD8QsAQ&biw=1440&bih=787