Hooked On The Past, exploring the history of architecture

What if the modern technology, that becomes more and more developed and affordable, would be used not only for economically viable projects but for a noble cause of conserving and transmiting the world´s architectural heritage?

Larkin Administration Building. Image © David Romero

Hooked on the Past is a project of a Spanish architect David Romero, whose purpose is to preserve the irrecoverable architecture masterpieces, using the modern technology. With this project he attempts to create a time machine that would make it possible to move to another era and visit the long lost monuments as they were in its day.

"...it has never been so easy to show the future of architecture and even the most modest practices can present their creations through images of great quality. But what about the past of architecture?"

This project is a declaration of love for an inimitable architecture and also an implicit critic to the serious problem of conservation of the great XXth century buildings, that are often underestimated and destroyed.

The technique has improved so much that renders are often indistinguishable from a photograph even for the expert eye. As for instance, the most of the Ikea catalog is created using synthesis images, while nobody (including myself) is able to notice it.

For now, Romero has dedicated his project to Wright, one of his lifelong heroes, recreating the Larkin Administration Building, demolished in 1950 after the Larkin Soap Company was dissolved, The Pauson House, that disappeared in a tragic fire after only one year of existence, and never built Trinity Chapel for the University of Oklahoma in Norman. His inspiring work destined to preserve the master´s heritage, has received praise and support from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.

In the near future David Romero expects to expand his project and include other 20th-century reference architects (Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto) as well as ancient works.

Description of the project for METALCOUS, by David Romero

The use of architectural visualization techniques by computer is currently in its golden age, and it becomes evident just looking at any architectural magazine where at least half of the images are made by computer.

The technique has improved so much that renders are often indistinguishable from a photograph even for the expert eye. As for instance, the most of the Ikea catalog is created using synthesis images, while nobody (including myself) is able to notice it.

Therefore, it has never been so easy to show the future of architecture and even the most modest practices can present their creations through images of great quality. But what about the past of architecture? The incredible tools we have today are rarely applied to investigating the architecture of the past, and the truth is that there is a huge field to explore: from the temples of Mesopotamia to the missing works of great architects of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, there are few examples of virtual reconstructions with sufficient quality or rigor.

What is this situation due to? This type of virtual or 3D archaeological reconstruction is not supported by an economic engine that would be willing to pay the bills, as it happens in the case of construction and current architecture. And it´s for that reason that we miss the opportunity to contemplate our rich architectural heritage as it really was in its day.

Is it possible to change this situation? It remains to be seen. So far 3D visualization techniques have become so affordable that today you can achieve photorealistic results that previously were only possible through large investments. So, hopefully, realistic recreations of important historical works will be developed little by little in the near future.

My project Hooked on the Past was born with the desire to change that situation and put the focus on the part of our rich architectural heritage that we can not see easily, either because it has been lost, damaged or simply never got to be built.

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Trinity Chapel for the University of Oklahoma. Image © David Romero

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David Romero

David Romero is a Spanish architect, who studied architecture in Madrid. Since he was a student, he has been fascinated by Wright´s work. He worked in studios of architecture in France and England and currently he works in an engineering and architecture company located in Madrid. His interest in both the architectural visualization techniques and history is reflected in his personal project Hooked on the Past that intends to explore the possibilities of the union of these two disciplines, that are still little known.

Frank Lloyd WRIGHT

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin in 1869 and died in Phoenix, Arizona in 1959. He is considered as one of the Modern Movement’s father in architecture and one of the most important architects of the XX Century, together with Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. Wright was placed in Chicago, San Francisco, Spring Green (Wisconsin) and Phoenix (Arizona). His life as an active architect in USA was from 1889 to 1962 and in Japan between 1915 and 1923.

Wright was born in a protestant family. His father was preacher of the unitary church, of which he inherited a romantic view, in continuous searching of the universality and the non-conformism. In 1885 he began to study civil engineering in Wisconsin University and worked as draughtsman for an engineer-constructor. Two years later, in 1887 he placed in Chicago where he worked for Joseph Lyman Silsbee, an architect of picturesque nature. Shorty afterward he became a member of Louis Sullivan’s and Dankmar Adler’s studio, and he was the responsible of it in 1889. In this year he started the construction of his first house, for himself in the Oak Park of Chicago (1889-1890).

With Sullivan he made the Charley’s House in Chicago (1891-1892). But at the same time and independently of his work at Sullivan’s studio, he took part of the construction of the Wainwright Building (1890-1891) and the Schiller Building (1891-1892). In 1893 he broke up with Sullivan and he established on his own account, working as domestic architecture.

In 1901 he began his first great creative phase, the “Prairie Houses” period. In this phase, he made the space a real discipline. His most outstanding works were the Susan Lawrence Dana’s house in Sprinfield ¡1902-1904), Avery Coonley’s house in Riverside (1906-1908) and Frederick C. Robie’s house in Chicago (1906) and the unitary temple of Oak Park (1905-1908). He also built the Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo, New York (1902-1906) where he tacked the theme of the work space.

Wirght published in the Architectural Record magazine in 1908, the called 6 organic architecture principles; although he said he had written them in 1894. The principles are: simplicity and elimination of the superfluous; to each client, his life style and his house style; correlation among the nature, topography and architecture; adaptation and integration of the building in his environment and the harmony of the used materials (conventionalization); material expression; and at least, the analogy between the human qualities and the architecture.

In 1909 he decided to travel to Europe and he prepared two synoptic publications with the editor Wasmuth in Berlin. In this phase, Wright has already more than 130 works built. He came back to the United States in 1910. In 1922 he placed in the family lands in Spring Green. Here he planned the called Taliesin House, which would be his house, architecture studio, art gallery and farm. He would extend and modify it during the next years because of two fires in 1914 and in 1925.

Since 1913 he changed his ornamental language due to the European influence and his architecture became more geometric as a consequence, inclusively cubist. This change can be appreciated in the Midway Garden in Chicago (1913-1914) or in the Imperial Hotel of Tokio (1913-1923).

He planned after the Mrs. George Madison Millard’s house “The Miniature” in Pasadena (1923), the John Storer’s house in Hollywood (1923-1924) and the Samuel Freeman’s and Charles Ennis’s houses in Los Ángeles (1923-1924); houses built with reinforced rubblework and walls made of moulding concrete ashlars. But Wright moved to the Arizona desert in 1927, where he found other nature conditions to adapt to. Here he projected a hotel complex in San Marcos, near Chandler, Arizona (1928-1929), which is a growth model that Wright compared with the landscape.

In the 30s, the financial scandals and the consequences of the great depression prevented him to carry out many of his designs and he only projected the Kaufmann Family’s Vacation House: “Fallingwater”, in Bear Run, Pennsylvania; where Wright achieved to unify the nature, the technology and the social organization. In this phase, Wright used the term “Usonians” that referred to the union of the terms USA, utopia and “organic social order”. One example of that is the Herbert Jacops’s House in Madison, Wisconsin (1936-1937). Simultaneously, he built the de Johnson & Company’s headquarters in Racine Wisconsin (1936-1939) and his adjoining tower, where are the investigation laboratories (1943-1950). In 1943, his most important project came: the Art Museum “non objective”, put in charge by Solomon Guggenheim in the 5th Avenue in New York, finished in 1959.

In the 50s, Wright exaggerated increasingly the formal aspect of his buildings. His last projects were: the unitary church of Madison (1945-1951), the synagogue of Beth Sholom in Alkins Park, Pennsylvania (1953-1959), the Annunciation Church in Wautatosa, Wisconsin (1955-1961) and the Martin County’s civic centre in San Rafael, California (1957-1962).