What We Build
Last week we had the pleasure of being guests of the Fred Jones, Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. The FJJMA is currently featuring an exhibit entitled “Bruce Goff: A Creative Mind”, a curatorial homage to one of the most creative American architects of the last century. Goff was a long-time Oklahoma resident and chairman of the School of Architecture at OU in the 1940’s. The exhibit was mind blowing…for a sneak peek, including a YouTube clip of one of the “virtual tours” of an unbuilt Goff building, go here: http://www.ou.edu/fjjma/home.html.
Our residency at OU was part of an on-going infatuation for all things architectural that TCP has been indulging for the past couple years. Ever since our fall 2008 visit to Taliesin (Frank Lloyd Wright’s former home, studio and currently the summer home to the FLlW school of architecture) we have been exploring connections between music and architecture. A concert program of music by Takemitsu, Manoury, Xenakis, and Lansky look at relationships both obvious (Xenakis was a working architect under Le Corbusier) and not so obvious. Not surprisingly, the connections we’ve found lurking beneath the surface are far more exciting than the more obvious corollaries.
Music and architecture both have the ability to profoundly affect the human psyche. If you’ve ever lived in a basement with low ceilings and no windows you don’t have to be told that the structures we surround ourselves with can affect our mood. Likewise music has been used to calm a crying baby, to rally a nation, to incite violence. Both art forms encompass a “space”, one physical and one aural, that can peak curiosity or inspire creativity.
We were certainly inspired by the weird and wonderful spaces Bruce Goff created, including the Ledbetter House (pictured above). Ledbetter is currently the home of Ghislain d’Humieres, director of FJJMA and our gracious host in OK. The house somehow manages to be both surprising and calming. Ledbetter sprawls from left to right as you walk in, with a ground floor living room and dining area to the right and a gently sloping pathway over the fountain leading to the bedroom and study on the second level. Goff manages to tie the structure together formally with the elements he uses. So a low limestone wall in front of the house references the large limestone wall that frames the entire back of the house, and runs outside into the patio and garden area.
We have a visit scheduled to another famous Goff building, the Ford House, in January. So keep an eye out for pictures of that incredible space on the blog after the new year. Incidentally, the Ford House is currently the home of TCP Board of Directors member Sidney K. Robinson, who was instrumental in the building (no puns intended) of our Music and Architecture program. We’ll also be blogging about our next big music/architecture project…a new piece for TCP that David is writing to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Taliesin in 2011.
