Word: wrights
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Until now, that is. This Thursday, the 128th anniversary of the architect's birth, Republican Governor Tommy Thompson will preside at the official groundbreaking ceremony for what is probably the most important Wright-designed project never executed in his lifetime. Monona Terrace is a five-level, semicircular, 1.8 hectare convention center now under construction at the edge of Lake Monona in Madison. Wright spent his youth in the state capital, which is about 65 km east of Taliesin (Welsh for "shining brow"), his home and architecture school at Spring Green. Those historic connections with Madison must have given Wright...
...architect's endless feuding with local politicians and businessmen guaranteed that, as Wright once ruefully predicted, the Terrace would never be built while he was alive. Amazingly, the arguments continue, even though an overwhelming majority of Madison elders are now committed to the $67 million project. Opponents of the Terrace have filed four lawsuits to block its construction, primarily on environmental grounds. One such suit claims that the 1,700 pilings supporting the edifice, which has a rooftop terrace and spiral parking ramps at each end, will cause groundwater contamination. Terrace opponents have also asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency...
Some critics believe the Terrace is a pricey boondoggle that cash-strapped Madison can ill afford, even though more than half the cost will be borne by state and county funds and by private donors. Yet another source of acrimony is whether the Terrace deserves to be considered a Wright design at all. A local organization called It Ain't Wright has argued that the architect's original concept envisioned a 2.8 hectare multipurpose civic center, complete with jail and railroad station, on a pristine stretch of lakeshore. The scaled-down version being built snuggles up against a cluttered Madison...
Opponents also charge that much of the Terrace's design will be no better than guesswork by architects from the master's school at Taliesin West in Arizona, who are supervising the construction. Wright completed only a handful of sketches for the Terrace's interior, so the project supervisors have had to imitate colors, textures and materials used by Wright in other designs of the 1950s. Says architectural historian Narciso Menocal: "It's like finding a 15-page synopsis of a Hawthorne novel and having someone else turn it into a 500-page book. Whose novel is that...
Taliesin-trained architect Anthony Puttnam, who was a Wright apprentice back in the '50s, defends the project's authenticity. "I don't think we've done anything that Wright wouldn't have done," Puttnam says. "He was very open to change. He knew the importance of accommodating the client...