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- Doheny Ranch Doheny Ranch Development Road map showing the proposed location of the Doheny
Ranch Development, Beverly Hills, California DOHENY RANCH DEVELOPMENT,BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA, 1923 Attempting to reestablish practice in Los Angeles in 1922, Wright found himself challenged to propose new, more positive approaches than those being adopted by developers. He focused on one of the most enticing sectors of the large, undeveloped plots that skirted the city: the 411-acre Doheny Ranch, located in what is now Beverly Hills and later developed as the Trousdale Estates. The land was owned by Edward Laurence Doheny (1856-1935), then one of America's wealthiest citizens. How understandable for Wright to have sought Doheny as a client, and to have proposed a residential development of unparalleled scale. No records have been discovered to document any contact between Wright and Doheny, who quite possibly never met. It therefore seems that Wright prepared his design in the hope of interesting Doheny rather than in response to any actual commission. Few drawings survive, and they are largely pictorial; evidence suggests that all were completed during the early months of 1923. The proposal, unencumbered by the realities of an actual programme, suggests a prototype for a new type of Southern California suburb. Ample precedents for Doheny exist in Wright's own work-for instance his design for the Sherman M. Booth house (unbuilt; Glencoe, Illinois, 1911). The new elements of massiveness, textured masonry, and walled gardens seem partly inspired by Italian vernacular buildings, which Wright came to admire following a prolonged visit to Italy in 1910. During his stays in Japan, he discovered landscapes that joined buildings and plantings into one composition. From his fascination with pre-Columbian architecture-arguably a natural source for the indigenous expression he sought in California-came a renewed awareness of large-scale composition. Yet ultimately the conception of the Doheny Ranch was his. Fixity and mobility were to be joined in a single composition that anticipated, in both scale and function, more recent, adventurous approaches to the problems of the suburb.
Hypothetical study model of the Doheny Ranch Development View of model View of model, enlarged The model is based on Wright's overall perspectives of the development in which variations of Houses `A' and `B' can be discerned together with other, more generalized forms. As a study of the actual site makes clear, he drew only a central section of the Doheny Ranch. In realizing that section as a hypothetical study model, it became clear that his massing studies corresponded closely to the original topography. In the model, House `C', which seems ideally suited for the northern section
of the site, has been so placed. Segments of roads correspond to Wright's perspectives,
as do building elements on a far ridge, but no attempt has been made to add
the additional buildings or complete the road system that would have been necessary
had he continued to develop the scheme. Sketch perspective for Olive
Hill, Los Angeles Perspective with pool for the
community playhouse (The Little Dipper), Olive Hill, Los Angeles Perspective from below for the
Aline Barnsdall House, Beverly Hills, California Front elevation for the Aline
Barnsdall House, Beverly Hills, California Wright's design of 1923 responded to the expansive qualities of the Doheny site, respected local vegetation, and accommodated the automobile in both spatial and architectural terms. It was nothing less than an idealized prototype for what American suburbs might have become, but did not. As surviving perspectives demonstrate, buildings, roadways, and plantings are conceived as an integrated totality; it is the vision of the suburb as one structure. Roadways depicted as powerful visual elements appear to terrace the hills, providing a unifying pattern. Developed in the manner of viaducts, they bridge intermediate ravines on gracefully arcuated spans or massively embank the steep terrain. Walls defining these roadways extend to become walls of the houses themselves. Numerous roof terraces broaden the horizontal planes of the connecting roads, amplifying an architectural image of vast scale. Both roads and houses are clustered in ways that structure the site by selectively shaping and retaining the natural slopes. The more fragile segments of valleys and the steepest slopes are left largely untouched, but are joined in the full composition to achieve an effect of extraordinary unity.
Preliminary perspective for
the Doheny Ranch Development Preliminary perspective for
the Doheny Ranch Development Perspective for the Doheny Ranch Development HOUSES `A', `B', AND `C', DOHENY RANCH DEVELOPMENT While surviving perspectives of the Doheny development are sufficiently loose as to suggest that nothing other than a general layout was ever conceived, designs for three prototypical houses that could be adapted to various sites within it provide additional evidence. Labeled `A', `B', and `C', they embody a new spatial typology in Wright's work, related in their interior verticality and terracing to the Thomas P. Hardy house (built; Racine, Wisconsin, 1905), but now more decisively developed. There is an exaggerated mass to the designs, spaces are more formally differentiated, and the play of levels is greater. Consistent with Wright's earlier work, each building relates sensitively to its site, yet is more boldly shaped to strengthen an overall composition. Houses `A' and `B', both linear in configuration, bridge shallow ravines and terrace sloping land rising behind. The roadway to `B', contained within a viaduct, powerfully extends the line of the house. House `C', dramatically angled in plan, seems to reconnect the landforms themselves. It marks Wright's most pervasive, compelling use of angled geometries up to this time.
Perspective with partial plan for House
'A', the Doheny Ranch Development Main floor plan for House `A',
the Doheny Ranch Development Elevation for House `A', the
Doheny Ranch Development Upper floor plan for House `A',
the Doheny Ranch Development Perspective for House `B', the
Doheny Ranch Development Lower floor plan for House 'B',
the Doheny Ranch Development Main floor plan for House 'B',
the Doheny Ranch Development Upper floor plan for House `B',
the Doheny Ranch Development Lower floor plan for House 'C',
the Doheny Ranch Development Main floor plan for House `C',
the Doheny Ranch Development Perspective with partial plan
for House 'C', the Doheny Ranch Development Elevation and plan for House
`C', the Doheny Ranch Development Perspective for the Alice Millard house (La Miniatura),
Pasadena, California Perspective for the Alice Millard
house (La Miniatura), Pasadena, California Paralleling Wright's proposals for the Doheny Ranch were designs for Aline Barnsdall (1882-1946). Hollyhock House, which he began to plan in 1917, records his first response to the Los Angeles area. During and after the course of its prolonged construction (1919-22), Wright designed other buildings for her expansive Olive Hill site, including a theatre, a community playhouse, and adjoining houses as well as a long row of shops along one edge of her property. As a group, they relate in scale and appearance to Doheny but lack that project's more sweeping unity. Closer to the conception of Houses A, B, and C were the four block houses Wright realized in Los Angeles in 1923-24. Fundamental to Wright's approach were the materials and methods by which his designs could be realized. Never, it seems, did he design without reference to these essential elements, though rarely was he bound by their conventional limitations, seeking instead to broaden their potential. His development of concrete blocks into what he called the textile-block system illustrates this approach. The first conceptions of architectural form and the means by which these forms could be realized were intertwined from the beginning. The textile-block system that Wright developed during the 1920s underlies his designs for Doheny and related projects of the period, including four houses in the Los Angeles area: Millard (called La Miniatura, 1923), Storer (1923), Freeman (1924), and Ennis (1924). All four houses were built, illustrating in fragmentary form the ideal suburban image of the Doheny Ranch development. Similar to the individual units in that project, each house was related to a roadway; when space allowed, these roadways were made an active part of the design. Each structure also embanked or retained the slope of its site through extended walls and terraces, so that an intermediate, clearly bounded area of cultivated garden was created. This garden area, in turn, linked each building to the surrounding, seemingly unchanged terrain. Plan, elevation, and related
sketches for the Alice Millard house (La Miniatura), Pasadena, California View of the Alice Millard house
under construction, Pasadena, California Plan of lower level for the John Storer house, Los Angeles Perspective for the John Storer
house, Los Angeles Aerial perspective for the Samuel
Freeman house, Los Angeles Sketch plan for the Samuel Freeman
house, Los Angeles Full-sized detail of pattern
block for the Samuel Freeman house, Los Angeles Blocks from the Samuel Freeman
house, Los Angeles Perspective from below for the
Charles W. Ennis house, Los Angeles Perspective from below with
partial plan for the Charles W. Ennis house, Los Angeles A building could grow right up out of the soil - wherever sand and gravel abound, a few steel strands dropped into the concrete for reinforcement. Steel has given new life to `concrete' - new possibilities, finer purposes. When it was found that the coefficient of expansion and contraction was the same for concrete and for steel, a new world opened to the architect. 1930 As realized, each of the California block houses departed from the ideal construction Wright originally envisioned, which would have used blocks woven on steel rods for walls, floors, and roofs. In practice, blocks were also combined with more conventional frame construction. Yet in each successive house Wright manipulated the blocks themselves with increasing ease, gradually extracting a degree of richness through sensitively located bands of ornament, stepped planes, and battered profiles. These effects, only suggested in the Doheny drawings, were most fully realized in the Ennis house.
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