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Right: John Lautner's sub par imitation Desert Springs Motel, Palm Springs CA
John Lautner studied under the great Frank Lloyd Wright. He moved from his native Michigan to live and work in Los Angeles until his death in 1994.
His buildings do show Wright's influence, but with a twist. Wright was the master at integrating his buildings (especially his homes) with their surroundings, often of the natural environment. The buildings almost become invisible within nature. Fallingwater may be Wright's most famous example of this, but there are many more, including the Arizona Taliesin West, which incorporated the sparse, cactus-filled landscape (colors and shapes) into the building. Wright often used the materials for the houses directly from the surrounding environment.
Lautner tried very hard to submerge his buildings into the environment. But, what he really accomplished was to submerge the environment into the buildings. He did this with his open-plan style (a style which Wright also used but with more intimate effects), glass-walled homes. From the inside, one feels like part of the outside. But from the outside, one feels like looking at an alien space-ship that has suddenly landed between the trees and shrubs.
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His biography states that Lautner hated living in Los Angeles. But he never left it either. Wright, who was born in Wisconsin (with family ties in Massachusetts), kept in contact with his home state throughout his life, building a summer home there.
Lautner's futuristic, alien vision, was finally playfully popularized with his Googie style. He designed the Googie's coffee house, which became the blueprint for generations of road-side diners and restaurants. In a similar imaginative vein, his buildings became the site for many films and TV commercials.
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Perhaps Lautner's life-long endeavor was not to imitate Wright, which is certainly the normal progression of a student to turn away from his teacher. But, after conquering nature (on our planet) where else could he go? After all, he had also abandoned his home in Massachusetts, to live in a region he despised. So, the most he could do was stretch his imagination, which is good enough for movies, commercials and fun places to eat. But how long can people really stand to live in a Lautner house? His famous Desert Hot Springs motel is selling for far below its expected price, and Hollywood stars are flipping their Launter home, certain that in this age of property avant-garde, people will buy them as investments rather than as permanent homes to settle in.
Not surprisingly, his most successful, and praised house was the one he built for himself. And that really resembles Wright's integration with building and nature - from the outside and the inside.
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Right: Lautner's California home, reminiscent of a Wright house, and the woody Michigan landscape
UCLA's The Hammer has an exhibition on Lautner entitled: "Between Earth and Heaven: The Architecture of John Lautner" through October 12th, 2008