#388 - Frank Lloyd Wright Lemonade

About this episode

Cormac shares his experiences from a recent trip involving site reviews and architectural insights, including a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's work and modern glass manufacturing techniques.

Cormac spent last week driving from Detroit to Baltimore for a punch review, then north to a factory two hours outside Toronto to inspect replacement vestibule glass — only to reject it for the second time because the print scale was still wrong. Along the way, he squeezed in an unplanned tour of Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House in Buffalo, ended up teaching the docents, and toured AGNORA's glass factory, where he found something almost no other manufacturer will attempt: a fully miterless, corner-glazed insulated glazing unit. He also saw a project where a developer printed the image of a demolished historic building onto the glass facade of its replacement. Evan and Cormac dig into what "punch ready" is supposed to mean, whether we can still build at the level of FLW's Prairie homes, and what it costs (in time, travel, and patience) to hold a project to the standard it was designed to. This episode is especially relevant for project architects and CA practitioners who know the exhaustion of traveling to a site review only to walk away with another rejection, and who still find genuine awe in what the industry is technically capable of building, even when the job itself…

People in this episode

Hosts: Cormac Phalen, Evan Troxel

Topics covered

• architecture
• project management
• site review
• historic preservation
• glass manufacturing
• Frank Lloyd Wright

Keywords

• punch review
• replacement glass
• Darwin Martin House
• miterless glazing
• historic buildings
• architectural standards

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: AGNORA

Books & works: Darwin Martin House, FLW's Prairie homes

Places: Detroit, Baltimore, Toronto, Buffalo

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