{This is in response to the Friday Fictioneers weekly challenge, run by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields. The picture above is impressive in its architecture, particularly its dome. The glass portion looks like an eye, and I went on a Google quest, ending up at the Fly’s Eye Dome by Buckminster Fuller. I watched a You Tube interview of Robert Ruben , a collector and preserver of Modern architecture, at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, where the Fly’s Eye is displayed. It proved fascinating, and resulted in this poem.
The names in the first line refer to Frank Lloyd Wright, Buckminster Fuller, Jean Prouvé, and Teddy Cruz,(not to be confused with Senator Ted Cruz.) The first three are considered “Modern” architects, while the last is the 2018 recipient of the Vilcek Prize in architecture, working on housing for border communities near Tijuana, Mexico. Seemed appropriate, considering recent news and the gloomy outlook for the future, regarding global warming.
Frankie, Bucky, Prouvé, Cruz,
Making houses for the poor,
To help address the desolation
And destruction, brought by war.
Domes, of modular construction,
Mock the vision of a fly;
Now, endure the same derision:
Modern critics wonder “Why?”
Sparcer spaces, sprawling windows,
Welcome Nature, mimic flight,
While we retreat to cookie-cutters,
Drawing curtains. “Too much light.”
Pre-fabbed, to avert a crisis.
Re-laxed, once we won the war.
Decades splurging scarce materials.
Still, our suburbs cry for more.
Once again, the hordes are coming.
Refugees require a roof.
Time to build a new IKEA-
DIY-type Modern spoof.
I wonder if we are too concerned with grandeur and less with affordable housing…
For sure it is time for more practical housing – I have never heard anyone yet explain why we should not build more. And post-war prefabs were palaces to those who got to live in them. Some still exist. Great topic, well-handled.
It is a shame that so much architectural talent is wasted on the uber-rich.
Well done on giving me food for thought with this clever poem. I would like to think that there is still room for all types of architecture in our world. ?
Susan A Eames
Definitely!
I love the contrast in this, lovely poem.
Thank you Jennifer!
Very poetic.
Thank you Lisa!
I like where you took this. From the grandeur of the dome to a tiny housing project. Well done.
Thank you Alicia. I was mostly inspired by the dome concept, and Buckminster Fuller and his popularization of the geodesic dome concept immediately came to mind. A geodesic dome is a hemispheric structure usually composed entirely of triangles.
The Montreal Biosphere, now a museum on the St Lawrence river, is his most famous work and is pictured in this wikipedia article as well as lower down, a home he lived in in Illinois, made in this style and now being restored. Geodesic dome.
The Tiny House movement needs to grow. We just have so much stuff we just don’t need. Good poem
True Stu! Our rather large family would be squeezed in a tiny house, im afraid.
The speaker in the YouTube video mentioned tiny houses and said one of the problems people are dealing with is zoning laws.
In the US at least we often tend to limit plots of land to one house each in new developments. What, then, is a tiny house parked in a yard? A second house? An RV? Can many tiny houses occupy one lot zoned for a single (if huge and wasteful) house?
Many questions, which, perhaps, as of yet, are not definitively answered.
Dear Andrea,
Well constructed poem.
Shalom,
Rochelle
Thank you Rochelle. I know the subject matter is a little specialized, but it seems to me, that with hurricanes raking through places like puerto rico and troubled populations streaming away from their home countries, there has to be a better solution for refugees than tent cities.
Yes… finding ways to make affordable housing should be a priority over making these over-the-top structures.
Well done.
I hope we can find a way to support both endeavors.
A shame the building of such grandeur is fading, but in today’s world we need housing fast and cheap.
I too am a fan of grand houses, and Frank Lloyd Wright built many of those too. (Falling Water comes to mind.) Prouve is best known for his high end furniture.
What’s unique about a modular scheme is the ability of individual homeowners to do the construction and designing work themselves, within the safety parameters of the materials.
This is particularly useful in a situation where large numbers of people become homeless (such as a war, a hurricane or where there is mass migration.) It is also, I think, significantly cheaper than traditional methods and can make use of essentially free materials destined for the trash heap ( such as old cabinets.).
Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio is a short distance away and i have been there often and have visited many of his commissions. I am sorry to say I have not made a point of seeing much of the others works.
Thats great Johawk! I have only seen his work in photos.
It’s fair to say we no longer build such grand buildings, but with resources running out, something has to change.
The builders i mentioned above were experimenting with modular architecture, an attempt, to make the dream of one’s own home a reality, even for those with modest means.
Cruz, according to the interview I watched, is now trying to do something similar, converting cupboards and other discarded building materials into the building blocks of new homes, in border communities near Tijuana.
My point is, that we somehow got away from the idea of making modest homes accessible to all, as prosperity made materials cheap and sprawling housing developments more profitable.
But now, the refugee and population dislocation problems following WWII, that initially inspired the Modern movement to go modular, are revisiting us with a vengeance. So we need to come up with our own solutions, and fast.