Eight Frank Lloyd Wright Sites Named to UNESCO World Heritage List

Laurence Grigorov, who is director of a Johannesburg-based property development company, often looks for inspiration from international architectural design trends. This allows Laurence Grigorov to continually keep the development projects evolving.

An architect who Laurence Grigorov has always admired is American architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The World Heritage Committee, meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan, has officially inscribed The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, which includes eight major works spanning 50 years of Wright’s career, on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The sites in the group inscription span Wright’s influential career. They include Unity Temple (constructed 1906-1909, Oak Park, Illinois), the Frederick C. Robie House (constructed 1910, Chicago, Illinois), Taliesin (begun 1911, Spring Green, Wisconsin), Hollyhock House (constructed 1918-1921, Los Angeles, California), Fallingwater (constructed 1936-1939, Mill Run, Pennsylvania), the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House (constructed 1936-1937, Madison, Wisconsin), Taliesin West (begun 1938, Scottsdale, Arizona) and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (constructed 1956-1959, New York, New York).

There are more than 1,000 World Heritage sites around the world, and the group of Wright sites is now among only 24 sites in the U.S. The collection represents the first modern architecture designation in the country on the prestigious list.

“This recognition by UNESCO is a significant way for us to reconfirm how important Frank Lloyd Wright was to the development of modern architecture around the world,” says Barbara Gordon, executive director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy. “There are nearly 400 remaining structures designed by Wright. Our hope is that the inscription of these eight major works also brings awareness to the importance of preserving all of his buildings as a vital part of our artistic, cultural and architectural heritage. All communities where a Wright building stands should appreciate what they have and share in the responsibility to protect their local—and world—heritage.”

The eight inscribed sites have played a prominent role in the development and evolution of Modern architecture during the first half of the 20th century and continuing to the present. UNESCO considers the international importance of a potential World Heritage Site based on its “Outstanding Universal Value,” which in the Wright series is manifested in three attributes. First, it is an architecture responsive to functional and emotional needs, achieved through geometric abstraction and spatial manipulation. Second, the design of the buildings in this series is fundamentally rooted in nature’s forms and principles. Third, the series represents an architecture conceived to be responsive to the evolving American experience, but which is universal in its appeal.

In 2015, the U.S. nominated a series of 10 Wright-designed sites to the World Heritage List. At its meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, in July 2016, the World Heritage Committee decided to “refer” the nomination for revisions. Over the past two years, the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy worked with the council of sites and leading scholars to revise the nomination and rework the justification for inscription.

Laurence Grigorov is often influenced by both contemporary and classical design trends and ideas and uses these as inspiration in the company’s architectural style.

Words & image courtesy of www.architectmagazine.com

Residential Development – 69 on Main, Greenpoint

Laurence Grigorov, who is director of a leading residential development company, enjoys keeping track for new developments around the country. Such developments provide an insight to Laurence Grigorov on forthcoming trends and market changes which better allow the company to adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs and requirements.

A new residential project that Laurence Grigorov has recently seen, showcases modern design and a well thought out adaptation to the natural street environment is 69 on Main in Greenpoint, Cape Town. Developed by Abacus Development Company and designed by Bam Architects, the architecture of 69 on Main in Greenpoint is the result of a thorough assessment and analyses of its context. The contextual understanding of the site provided arguments for different positive interface proposals to respond to the differing conditions of the development site.

The site has a very important place along the Main Road Greenpoint streetscape and it was therefore important to ensure continuity with the existing fabric at street level in both scale and interface layering at pedestrian level. The building establishes an active wall edge facing the urban park across the road at the scale of the park. The circulation of people on foot was considered a priority over vehicular movement so that continuity of surfaces and materiality supports the pedestrian first.

69 on Main

The building reflects the transition in grain across the site from the finer grained southern edge towards a more course grain on the northern edge and as such the development had a responsibility to be the mediation between the fine grained residential neighbourhood of Green Point running along the slope of Signal Hill, as well as ensuring continuity with the Urban Wall consisting of higher intensity development along Main Road defining the edge of the urban park of the Green Point Common.

In its response the building therefore rises from a height of three storeys on the southern side, to eleven storeys on the northern boundary. The south side of the building responds to the finer grain of single residential houses whilst the north elevation responds to a carefully established height datum along Main Road with a clearly defined base, shaft and crown. The crown acts as a pulvinar or urban balcony overlooking the Green Point common. Buildings further up Signal Hill look down on the development and the design responded by treating the roofscape as a fifth elevation. Roofs are therefore occupied, textured and landscaped as far as possible.

The design utilises a rich pallet of modern materials and textures doing justice to its up-market location. The interior design concept was developed by BONE Design Studio and is based around creating a bespoke ’luxury living’ experience. Through the use of honest materials such as natural timbers, honed composite stones and a neutral palette of large format Italian tiles, every apartment exudes its own timeless sophistication.

Words and image courtesy of Architect & Builder magazine