the Wright stuff

[Paul Clerkin]

On mornings when the fog hangs low over the lake, the island home that Frank Lloyd Wright designed looks like a sleek yacht at harbor, its prow pointed to the horizon. Outside, it presents simple, streamlined planes. But inside, wrote Edgar Kaufmann Jr., the son of the man who commissioned Fallingwater, “it becomes a magic maze of caves and unexpected corners, of rising and falling levels and light, veiled or in sudden shafts of brilliance.”
Watercolor

Though Wright designed the home in 1950 — when he was in his eighties — it took 50-odd years after his death for it to get built. And it might never have been built if Joe and Barbara Massaro hadn’t discovered a perk that came with the 11-acre island on Lake Mahopac in New York that they bought in 1995: Frank Lloyd Wright had created preliminary drawings for a house to be built on the island for one of its previous owners.

Approaching Chicago architect and renowned Wright scholar Thomas A. Heinz, AIA, the Massaros asked: Could he help them bring Wright’s vision to life? And could he build the home on the exact location — a rocky edge of the island — that inspired Wright? Other Wright designs have been built after his death, but the Massaros wanted to build this one on the site for which it was intended.

http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/heinz/

[Paul Clerkin]

trailer for documentary
http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/heinz/trailer.html