Frank Lloyd Wright house is moved from Minnesota to Pennsylvania

Frank Lloyd Wright 1950s Usonian homes that was intended for middle-class residents has been moved from its original site in Minnesota to a private estate located near Fallingwater.
Encompassing approximately 2,300 square feet (214 square metres), the low-slung dwelling was constructed of concrete block, with a roof clad in reddish Ludowici tiles. Standard dimensional lumber was used for rafters, while cypress was used for window frames and built-in cabinetry.

Photography: Patrick J Mahoney – Courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.

The clients’ grandson, Peter McKinney, and his wife Julene ended up with the Lindholm House, where they lived for many years. In 2016, they began working with the Chicago-based Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy to figure out how to ensure the home’s longevity. Its secluded setting had changed significantly over the decades, with commercial development now dominating the area. The house was put up for sale, but there were no suitable takers. The McKinneys decided to donate the house to the Usonian Preservation, an organisation that owns a 130-acre (53-hectare) estate in Acme, Pennsylvania, called Polymath Park.

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Photography: Patrick J Mahoney – Courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.

“The decision to relocate the house was a very difficult one for us,” said Peter McKinney in a statement. “The house has been in our family for over 60 years and our son, David, grew up there,” he added. The three of us believe this solution is best for the long-term survival of the house.”Barbara Gordon, executive director of the Conservancy, said relocating the house to the Pennsylvania property was the best option. “The Conservancy has long disfavoured moving a Wright house unless its demolition is imminent or its site becomes so compromised that it is unmarketable,” she said in statement. “The McKinneys and the Conservancy concluded that there was no viable long-term future for the house as a residence on its once secluded, wooded site.”

Photography: Patrick J Mahoney – Courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.

The Lindholm House was deconstructed in April and May of 2016. The concrete blocks, concrete floor slab and roof rafters were demolished, but the rest of the dwelling was packed into trailers. The components then travelled over 1,000 miles (1,609 kilometres) to the home’s new location. Reconstruction of the building was completed in April. The house will be protected under a preservation easement and will be monitored by the Conservancy. Archival material and copies of original drawings will be stored at the house. “The decision to relocate the house was a very difficult one for us,” said Peter McKinney in a statement. “The house has been in our family for over 60 years and our son, David, grew up there,” he added. The three of us believe this solution is best for the long-term survival of the house.”

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Bending Bridges | Centro de Estudios Superiores de Diseño de Monterrey, CEDIM

Designed by CEDIM, Within the context of double-layered shells in architecture, there is wide contemporary research which is bringing relevant advancement in lightweight applications and structural performance for large span construction. Such topics have been explored during the last eight years by educational institutes such as the Institute for Computational Design and Construction ICD, the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design ITKE and the Centre for Information Technology and Architecture CITA, creating the ground for this research.
Bending Bridges focuses on the development of a double-layered construction system for a free-standing load-bearing lightweight wooden structure, through global double curvature, and local active bending principle. The project aim is the design and construction of a pedestrian bridge exploiting the elastic bending capacity of standard thin plywood.

Photography: Héctor Pineda

The design explores structurally complex curved forms that fulfill both architectural and structural constraints. The arch and the surface curvature were designed and optimized through computational structural analysis to carry loads directly to the foundation, allowing to withstand the weight of 5 people crossing the bridge while guaranteeing structural integrity with minimum displacement. The bridge’s global design has been driven by a spline-like curve, which allows having an optimal distribution of forces while keeping minimum bridge inclinations on the bottom and top of the arch.

Photography: Héctor Pineda

In order to allow the assembly of doubly-curved geometries, discretization of strip patterns were introduced in the design process, generating a series of unique curvy-linear unrollable members. The segmentation strategy adopted is intrinsically connected to the assembly sequence of the bridge, which is built section by section from two sides towards the center. The double-layer system was integrated into such process, which allowed to fix in place the curvature of each section without spring back while maintaining internal stress forces used as stiffening factor.
Exploring heat and humidity as material treatment, an efficient wood steaming method was developed in order to hygroscopically enhance the material bending properties allowing the assembly of a wider range of bent geometries and making the on-site manipulation of the material much easier. The steaming system included a wooden box, a gas tank, a custom stove, sealed pots, stretchable aluminum pipes, and a hygrometer.

Photography: Héctor Pineda

All the bridge members and connections are unique, digitally fabricated with CNC machines, computationally designed in the 3D model and then materialized through CNC milling codes. The entire construction process programmed fabrication and assembly stages to run parallelly. Although the development of the construction system took almost a year, the project’s fabrication and construction phases took only 4 weeks. The final demonstrator of the research has a constant cross-section of 9 cm, a span of 12m and a maximum height of 2.5m.

Methods

Project Info:
Architects: CEDIM
Location: Mexico
Lead Architects: Djordje Stanojevic
Design Team: Linda G. Carmona, Grecia C. Cortes, Ivan A. Durán, Mónica V. García, José L. García, A. Karen Garza, Isaac E. Garza, Patricia Gutiérrez, Denise Llano, Frania Y. Logan, Sergio Martinez, Carlos A. Muñoz, Alberto Ortega, J. Adrián Reyna, Ma. Fernanda Ruíz and Jesús E. Villalobos.
Area: 484.37 ft2
Project Year: 2018
Photographs: Héctor Pineda
Manufacturers: CEMEX, Home Depot, Pinturas Osel, Robert McNeel & Associates
Project Name: Bending Bridges

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This is the World’s First Floating City and you can visit it in 2022

It’s hard to imagine living anywhere but land. The ideas of living up in the clouds or in the depths of the ocean are the imaginings of novels and movies. However, Seasteading Institute—a non-profit in San Francisco, is pushing the boundaries between fiction and reality by planning to open an actual floating metropolis by 2022. The founder Joe Quirk believes in the possibility of a floating city in the middle of the Pacific ocean.  The floating city will be autonomous and rely on itself for governance.

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The How and the Why of the Idea of the Floating City:

The idea for this floating metropolis came to Quirk after he went to the Burning Man festival in 2011. Quirk was intrigued by the way society can be unrestrained without limiting governing bodies. For Quirk, the floating city is a way for cities to govern themselves. Instead of having to rely on failing governments, the floating city is a new start. The project is going to offer homes to 300 people. Quirk’s floating island will also include hotels, restaurants, and even a power plant to sell energy and clean water to land dwellers. However, the project has been met with many struggles.

A Sea of Troubles:

Quirk has stated that the project will take around $167 million dollars to implement. This isn’t exactly feasible. It’s likely that The Seasteading Institute has also been met with skeptics and naysayers. The Institute first had backing from Paypal founder Peter Thiel, but, in a statement to The Independent, Thiel revealed that he finds the idea not feasible engineering-wise. He also believes that the project is too ahead of its time for it to be ready in time. In fact, it’s been 10 years since the company claimed it would create a prototype for the San Francisco Bay, but nothing has surfaced at all.

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Endless Possibilities:

For the time being, the organization has reached an agreement with the French Polynesian government. They are now in the process of working on a presentation of how viable the floating city actually is. Quirk sees the floating island project as a stepping stone for what he calls a “startup country”. The future is yet unclear for The Steading Institute, but, hopefully, these projects will come into reality sooner than later.

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