From: http://www.katherinemansfieldsociety.org/

Book Review

From Crna Gora to Taliesin
Black Mountain to Shining Brow: The Life of Olgivanna Lloyd Wright
Compiled and edited by Maxine Fawcett-Yeske and Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer
(Novato, CA: Oro Editions, 2017).

Frank Lloyd Wright would surely have approved of this beautifully produced book – a work of art in itself, with its striking design, its profuse number of illustrations (both black and white and full colour), and its use of glossy, high quality paper. The story of his wife’s life, told in her own
words, is a remarkable one.

Indeed, the editors undertook a formidable task in bringing this autobiography into print. Olgivanna started writing her autobiography in 1956, beginning with her childhood in Russia, but she had only reached the year 1931 when she stopped writing. Following her husband’s death in 1959, she turned to the archives of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, of which she was President, to locate the material she needed to complete the task. From this material, and several other published books and unpublished manuscripts, ‘it was possible to develop a rich and varied account of her life as told completely in her own words’ (9). The editors’ comprehensive annotations throughout the volume do much to extend our knowledge and understanding of this extraordinary life.

Olga Ivanovna Lazovich was born into a well-to-do family in Montenegro on 27 December. She was never certain of the exact year of her birth; the United States social security records gave it as 1896, whilst her obituary in the New York Times listed it as 1898. At the age of nine, her older sister Julie, who had married a rich Russian, took Olgivanna to live with her in Russia – staying in Moscow and St Petersburg – with summer trips to their villa on the Black Sea in Georgia. Just before the outbreak of the Russian revolution she married the Russian architect Vladimir Hinzenberg, with whom she had a daughter, Svetlana. The marriage was not a happy one and it was during this turbulent time – both politically and personally – still in Georgia, that she met the first of two men who would alter the course of her life: George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. As the editors note in their clear and concise preface, on first meeting him, ‘a strong sensation of certainty, of illumination, of absolute conviction gripped her. […] Without a moment’s hesitation, then and there, she decided to join his group of followers. […] His aim was to awaken people out of sleep and let them see the truth about themselves. […] In Olgivanna, Gurdjieff found the ideal disciple, flexible, eager to learn, never doubting, never hesitating, never resisting, open, and willing to absorb’ (11).

As soon as the Russian revolution spread to Georgia, Gurdjieff and his followers, including Olgivanna (who had now left her husband) and her daughter, moved to Constantinople, where he set up his first ‘Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man’. After several further moves, they arrived in Fontainebleau-Avon in 1922, Gurdjieff having purchased Le Prieuré des Basses Loges as the Institute’s permanent home. In 1924, Gurdjieff announced to Olgivanna that she could learn no more from him and should go and ‘live her life accordingly’ (11). Her husband, Vladimir Hinzenberg, had emigrated to Chicago a few years earlier, and so she moved to America, to see if it might be possible to salvage her marriage.

It was shortly after her arrival in Chicago that she met the second most influential person in her life: Frank Lloyd Wright. Although he was thirty years her senior, for both of them it was ‘love at first sight’. For four years, whilst waiting for their divorces to come through they lived as man and wife at Wright’s famous house, Taliesin, and Olgivanna gave birth to their child, Iovanna in 1925. Nevertheless, this unconventional lifestyle was frowned on by many, and cost Wright a number of lost commissions: ‘Without work, without income, unable to meet the expenses of their home, Taliesin, they were evicted. Hounded by lawyers and the press, they sought refuge in various places across the country’ (11).

As the editors explain, it was in part thanks to her rigorous training with Gurdjieff that Olgivanna was able to withstand the immense hardships of those harrowing years. Finally able to marry in 1928, the Stock Market Crash, followed by the Great Depression, did little to alleviate their circumstances. In spite of this, in 1932 they set up their school for architects, known as The Taliesin Fellowship – which had been Olgivanna’s idea – with the students known as ‘apprentices’. Part of their training included elements of Gurdjieff’s teachings. She had told Wright ‘that it was not enough to build beautiful buildings; he should train the builders of beautiful buildings. At the same time he would derive inspiration and vitality from the younger people around him’ (12). By the mid-1930s Wright had reacquired an international reputation as one of the most innovative architects of his generation.

The couple were together for 35 years. After Wright’s death in 1959, Olgivanna became the President of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation (which eventually became the Frank Lloyd Wright School of
Architecture). She also established the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives to protect her husband’s work in perpetuity. For the rest of her life, until her death in 1985, in addition to writing five books, she
travelled the world lecturing about the life and work of her husband.

Members of the Katherine Mansfield Society may well have read Olgivanna’s reminiscences, ‘The Last Days of Katherine Mansfield’, published in The Bookman in March 1931.1 It is mostly replicated in one of the chapters in this volume, together with a much more detailed and fascinating account of life at the Prieuré:

For several weeks I washed dishes all day long while memorizing daily a long list of English words which I had hung on the wall in front of me. In the evening we met for discussions in the living room of the Prieuré while we started building the Study House, a large hall for the Movements. […] We wheeled wheelbarrows full of dry leaves which we collected in the gardens, and, with frozen hands, I stuffed them as insulation between the inner and outer walls of the building.

Georgivanitch was everywhere, measuring boards, sawing and nailing them down; he was up on the roof using the torch, stepping on precariously balanced beams. We worked until one, two, and sometimes three in the morning. In that super effort there was great satisfaction, and order was being established within. It almost seemed at that time that we lived outside of space and time.

[…] I did not have a dress to change into; I had to wash the dress if I wanted it clean to wear the next day. I had nothing. Wherever we went he forbade us to take more than a small suitcase of clothes. Some – the English people that came, and those who were not as deeply involved as I was, those of whom sacrifices were not demanded – still lived freely […] but I stayed within the walls of that monastery. I lived in it. I worked from five in the morning until the late hours of the night. (52-3)

KM was one of those English people who came in a ‘free’ capacity. Olgivanna records Mansfield’s arrival in 1922:

As I was about to sit down for lunch one day, I saw a woman standing in the doorway of our dining-room looking at each of us with sharp, intense eyes that seemed to burn with a desire, a hunger for impressions. When she went to sit down and eat with us, someone called her to a different dining-room. I wanted to know her. […] I told [Gurdjieff] what a lovely face she had, and how much I liked her. ‘You take care of her’, he said. ‘Help her all you can but be careful of too close proximity – her illness is contagious’. (54-5)

A close bond was quickly established between the two women, and Olgivanna’s friendship brought much happiness to KM in those last few months of her life. On the night of KM’s
death, Olgivanna was summoned by Orage:

‘Please come quickly; Katherine has been taken very ill’. I ran all the way to her room. She was lying down on her bed, with several doctors bent over her. They were going through some hopeless motions with hot water bags. She was dead. This was the first time on my life I had a close experience with death. This was a shock and for a while I walked in a different life, apart from life. I thought of nothing else but the existence of Katherine. (61-2)

Olgivanna’s first-hand account of the last weeks of KM’s life is a very poignant one. Indeed, this whole volume – Olgivanna’s extraordinary life, told in her own words – leaves the reader in awe. Her friendship with Katherine Mansfield was a significant moment in a lifetime of significant moments. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. The astonishing details of Olgivanna’s life will stay with you long after you turn the last page of this beautifully produced volume.

Gerri Kimber

Notes
1 Olgivanna, ‘The Last Days of Katherine Mansfield’, Bookman, 73, March 1931, pp. 6-13.
Picture credits:
Page 1
Cover of book and photo of Olgivanna, courtesy of Oro Editions website:
http://www.oroeditions.com/book/life-olgivanna-lloyd-wright
Page 2
Picture of Gurdjieff: G. I. Gurdjieff arriving in New York, January 1924. Photo: The
Gurdjieff Foundation of New York. All rights reserved.
Photo of Prieuré des Basses Loges, Fontainebleau-Avon, rear view, overlooking the gardens
c. 1910. Bernard Bosque Collection.
Page 3
Two photos of Olgivanna and Frank Lloyd Wright, courtesy of Oro Editions website:
http://www.oroeditions.com/book/life-olgivanna-lloyd-wright
Page 4
Photo of Olgivanna, courtesy of Oro Editions website:
http://www.oroeditions.com/book/life-olgivanna-lloyd-wright

An architectural guide to Rome. Talking to Stephen Harby

11th December 2017

“Robert Venturi’s ROME” re-interpreted by two authors and architects, Frederick Fisher and Stephen Harby.

“This guide is intended for all travellers to Rome, whether of the armchair or shoe leather variety, and whether the traveler is novitiate or veteran”

Robert Venturi wrote Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture in 1962, at the age of 37 when he was spending two years at the American Academy in the city, gleaning all he could about the city of such rich and diverse architectural styles, both complex and contradictory. Both authors studied his seminal work when they were students. In the original, Venturi illustrated his book with black and white photos, but in this volume by Fisher and Harby there are beautiful watercolours that bring magic to the pages, a deft and light hand.

When Venturi was in the city, the buildings were largely covered in grime and soot and his photos capture that two dimensionality. Now, when many buildings have undergone cleaning and renovation, a lighter medium is ideal to capture the light and the innate dancing of light that is present in the city. Watercolour is ideal to bring to life the light and shade, that chiaroscuro. Thus, Stephen Harby shares his watercolours as they describe selected buildings around the city, some well-known like the Pantheon, the Vatican.. to Luigi Moretti’s more stark and linear post World War II apartment building, Casa Girasoli, in Parioli, which I would now choose to visit when I am next in Rome. Porta Pia by Michelangelo would also be on my list.

This is such a diverse and wonderful selection of buildings dotted around the city, all beautifully brought to life. If I had one niggle it would be the format of presentation – a book slightly larger than A5 size and in order to access some of the double page illustrations, you would have to crack the spine (sacrilege in our house!). But wonderful to be able to slip it into your bag as you tour the city.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

Over to Stephen for our #TalkingLocationWith… feature. Here he shares background context for the book, Robert Venturi’s Rome by Frederick Fisher and Stephen Harby, published by ORO Editions, September, 2017

Rome: Continuity and Change or the City Layered in Time

Rome is unique in offering the architectural visitor a span of history whose visible remains encompass the longest timeline of anywhere in the world. There may be destinations whose history begins earlier (the pyramids in Egypt) or where the focus on a single period is deeper (Renaissance Florence), but Rome offers the best chance to explore and unpeel the layers of time spanning over three thousand years. Whether you are looking for ancient Roman ruins, early Christian churches, fountain filled baroque squares, or the latest project by architects Richard Meier or Zaha Hadid, you will find it in Rome!

It is for this reason that creative geniuses of all epochs have come to Rome to find their inspiration. Writers Keats, Shelley, Goethe, painters Ingres, Turner and Sargent all spent time in Rome and emerged transformed as artists. In the 19th century and even earlier in the case of France, countries established academies in Rome so that their citizens could go there and be inspired. In 1893 the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago was opened to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of America. There was a great reawakening of interest in the classical tradition of architecture as embodied in ancient Rome and in the Italian Renaissance. The group of architects who led the creation of that fair including Daniel Burnham and James Follen McKim and financier J. P. Morgan decided that architects, painters, and sculptors practicing the new style, which came to be called the American Renaissance, should have an opportunity to study at the source in Rome. The American Academy in Rome was founded a year later in the tradition of the many earlier Academies.

Sixty years later, in 1954, American architect Robert Venturi arrived in Rome at the age of 29 to spend two years at the American Academy for the prestigious Rome Prize Fellowship. In the intervening time, since the founding of the institution, much had happened in the world at large to radically reshape ideas about history and its continuity. In the world of architecture, in the first quarter of the new century a revolution had taken place with impacts no less profound than the political cataclysms of war and revolution had been for society as a whole. Modern architecture, ushered in by such figures as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Walter Gropius, the latter two exiles to the United States from war-torn Germany, took firm hold in the postwar period of the 1950s, banishing the idea that architectural practice should be inspired by historical examples from the past, and calling into question the very idea of an institution whose purpose was to inspire architects and artists to come and learn from the past. The principles of modernism in art as well as architecture espoused minimalism, purity, and the creation of original and unique solutions and expressions without any reference to what came before.

Robert Venturi’s education as an architect reflected this period of transition from a traditional sensibility to a modernist one, and although much of his early training had been rooted in traditional methods, he was also of his period and by no means inclined to be a practitioner of traditional design, a stance he has maintained throughout his long career. While he was in Rome he quickly became enamored of the Renaissance and Baroque architecture and urban spaces that filled the city, and in particular the work of Michelangelo, Bernini and Borromini. While there he laid the groundwork for a revolutionary book on architecture, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, which was published in 1966, and would proceed to revolutionize thinking about architecture in the following half-century. In this dense and very personal book, he cited over 100 examples of buildings drawn from all over the world, principally in Europe, and with approximately 30 taken from Rome.

This book was widely read by architects, and particularly students of architecture in the 1970’s, which we both were. Our book, Robert Venturi’s Rome is both homage to the importance the original book had for us, but also an expression of the deeply rich lodes of architecture and urbanism that Rome can offer us. We have taken as our starting point the some 30 buildings that Venturi singled out, and have written about them both in the context of Venturi’s observations and our own impressions of the same places. This book is highly personal, dependent on both the lens Robert Venturi presented to us, but also our own unique visions of the city.

Thank you to Stephen for such wonderful insights into the city, its architecture and Venturi himself. Do take a look at Stephen’s website where you can find out more about his escorted tours to various countries and about his art, He is also on Instagram.

Do come and join team TripFiction on Social Media:

Twitter (@TripFiction), Facebook (@TripFiction.Literarywanderlust), YouTube (TripFiction #Literarywanderlust), Instagram (@TripFiction) and Pinterest (@TripFiction)

For more books set in Rome, just access the TripFiction database

From: https://www.tripfiction.com/architectural-guide-to-rome/

From: http://mashable.com/2017/11/17/homeless-shelter-design-transitional-housing/#qgujIw6Hriq4

Homes for Hope was created by USC School of Architecture students during the Fall 2016 semester. The course, called The Homeless Studio, was funded by the Martin Architecture and Design Workshop (MADWORKSHOP) and led by MADWORKSHOP director Sofia Borges and board member R. Scott Mitchell.

From: http://www.culturenow.org/cocktails_and_conversations&event=Bartholomew_Voorsanger_and_Alastair_Gordon

June 16, 2017 Center for Architecture, New York City

The Pairing:
Bartholomew Voorsanger, Voorsanger Architects PC
Alastair Gordon, Wall Street Journal

Cocktail designed by:
Toby Cecchini, Bartender + Author

Bartholomew Voorsanger, FAIA, Principal, Voorsanger Architects PC

Bartholomew Voorsanger received a Bachelors Degree with Honors from Princeton University in 1960, a Masters Degree in Architecture from Harvard University in 1964 and a Doctor Honoris Causa at the University for Architecture and Urbanism "Ion Mincu", Bucharest, Romania, in 2005. He worked for three years with urban planner Vincent Ponte in Montreal, Canada and subsequently for ten years as a Design Associate for I.M. Pei & Partners. The firm Voorsanger & Mills was established in 1978 and reorganized as Voorsanger Architects PC in 1990. Projects by Mr. Voorsanger have been published nationally and internationally in numerous volumes, magazines, and articles. His work has been exhibited in individual and group shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Finnish Architecture, the Frankfurt Museum of Architecture, the Spanish Ministry of Construction Gallery, the Architectural Association School of Architecture, Harvard University, the Hudson River Museum, the National Academy of Design, the AIA Center for Architecture (NYC) and New York University. The Firm has received numerous awards both locally and nationally.

Mr. Voorsanger has served on many national and international juries for design awards, has been a speaker at numerous professional symposia, and has authored a variety of articles for design and art periodicals. Mr. Voorsanger has been invited as a guest lecturer and critic and held faculty appointments in architecture design studios at the Rhode Island School of Design, Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He became a design Fellow of the American Institute of Architecture in 1985. Mr. Voorsanger is a former Chair of the Board of Advisors of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, President of the New York chapter of the AIA and the New York Foundation for Architecture. He formerly served on the editorial board of the Harvard University Graduate School of Design Magazine, and is on the GSD/HDM Practitioner's Advisory Board. He also currently serves as the Chair of Design Review for the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.

Mr. Voorsanger is the Principal in charge of design for the firm. Some of the Firm's projects include the New York University Midtown Center, the graduate and undergraduate dormitories for New York University, the New York University Center for Advanced Digital Studies, the International Competition for The Brooklyn Museum Master Plan, The Pierpont Morgan Library Garden Court, Eugenio Maria de Hostos Community College, the Air Traffic Control Tower at LaGuardia, the Asia Society and Museum in New York, Terminal B Newark International Airport, Master Plan for the University of Virginia Art Museum, Residences at Wildcat Ridge, Charlottesville, and Tucson. Most recently a complex of villas and apartments in Dubai, the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, and the competition for the new National Military Museum for the United Arab Emirates in Abu Dhabi.

Alastair Gordon, Contributing Editor, Architecture and Design, Wall Street Journal

Alastair Gordon is an award-winning critic and author who has written regularly about the built environment for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. His critically acclaimed books include Naked Airport, Weekend Utopia, and Spaced Out. He teaches critical writing at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, and is Editorial Director of Gordon de Vries Studio, an imprint that publishes books about the human environment. He has been awarded research fellowships from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, as well as being cited for Excellence in Architectural Criticism by the American Institute of Architects.

Toby Cecchini, Bartender & Author

Toby Cecchini is a writer and bartender based in New York City. He has written on food, wine and spirits for GQ, Food and Wine, and The New York Times. His first book, Cosmopolitan: A Bartender's Life, was published in 2003. He is currently at work on his second book, a travelogue of spirits based on his travels for The New York Times' Living and travel magazines. He began bartending at the Odeon in 1987, where he is credited with creating the internationally recognized version of the Cosmopolitan cocktail in New York. He followed that with stints in several bars including Passersby, which he owned until 2008. In 2013 he reopened the shuttered Long Island Bar in Cobble Hill Brooklyn.

From: http://www.landscapeandurbanism.com/2017/04/11/john-yeon-modern-architecture-and-conservation-in-the-pacific-northwest/

John Yeon: Modern Architecture and Conservation in the Pacific Northwest
Those not hailing from the Pacific Northwest may be less familiar with John Yeon, one of the influential figures in architecture and conservation and the development of a unique brand of regional modernism.  If you don’t know Yeon, or you want to learn more, you will be pleasantly satisfied with the recent volume from Oro Editions by Marc Treib, “John Yeon: Modern Architecture and Conservation in the Pacific Northwest”  The life and arc of Yeon’s career is carefully documented with many images and illustrations spanning his diverse and influential career.  And while I knew of and about much of his work, the detail unlocked a greater understanding of the key themes of regionalism, materiality, landscape, and conservation that are just as resonant and relevant today.

As introduced by Treib, Yeon is best know for his residential design, embodying the concept of ‘regional modern architecture’ and designs shaped by “sensitive siting, planning, masses, use of wood, and accommodation of contemporary living” the epitomy of which is the Watzek House completed early in his career in Portland in 1937.  This style “set the bar for many of the region’s houses that followed in its wake.”  The exterior rooflines juxtaposed with Mount Hood in the background, and the amazing interior wood detailing ground this as a touchstone worthy of exploration.

Beyond being a residential designer, Yeon, who was largely self-taught, brought a passion for many causes surrounding conservation and planning throughout his career, becoming a vocal advocate for landscape preservation, sensitive roadway design, scenic areas, all stemming from his regionalism of a different sort, his roots in his home place.  As Treib mentions,

“John Yeon lived in the present, held a deep appreciation for the past, but was always concerned with the future.  He understood and was troubled by the threats that development posed to the Oregon landscape and actively sought to confront and mitigate the problems they caused.”

This included work in the Columbia River Gorge, now an officially designated Scenic Area, and his purchase of land now known as The Shire, which “became a test ground, a playground, a retreat for the architect, and a tool to inspire key activists and funders of his preservation efforts.”

The area is now the John Yeon Center for Architecture and the Landscape, operated by University of Oregon and providing a legacy appropriate to Yeon’s passion for study and education specific to the region.  “The Shire is a center for Pacific Northwest landscape studies while being preserved as an example of landscape design. It provides an educational site for the study of landscape preservation, design, ecology, and management creating opportunities for individuals and study groups to engage in research and discussion of landscape architecture, planning, conservation and preservation issues associated with the Columbia River Gorge, the Pacific Northwest region, and the nation.”

The book explores in detail many of these topics, and provides lots of in depth discussion on Yeon’s self-taught architectural vocabulary, his innovative use of materials, his advocacy and conservation efforts, as well as his life-long love of art and collecting.  It also focuses on his pursuit of architecture as a relatively solitary endeavor, and his eschewing both formal education and working for larger firms to pursue his own path. Coming from an affluent family, he had perhaps some unique opportunities to travel at a young age,  which influenced his thinking around architecture, and access to some clients that gave him opportunities beyond his age and experience.

That said, his intuition as a designer, along with his evolution among established Portland architects like A.E. Doyle (whose office Yeon worked briefly) and contemporaries such as emerging talents like Pietro Belluschi offered some structure and assistance on projects.  As Treib mentions, “It is evident that in the early stages of their training, an exchange of ideas and influences passed between Yeon and Belluschi”.

The interior and exterior relationship of Watzek house is thoroughly modern, and Yeon’s feel for exterior environment is deft.  The courtyard and pool engaged the house on all sides, as Treib outlines:
“The Watzek house and landscape were conceived as an interrelated unit, but within that unity, Yeon played an intensified landscape of native species against areas — such as the courtyard and the zone outside the living room — that stood out as designed spaces.”
The use of the borrowed native Pacific Northwest landscape seemed to fit the design more than the actual design plantings, which in a residential context makes sense, with some plantings strategically employed for functions like screening and directing views, or to create and reinforce outdoor rooms.  The strong connection of architecture and landscape influences my design aesthetic, embodied in the formalism of the Watzek house portico, where Yeon “projected the interval between the portico posts as lines of paving stones set within the lawn, in effect, using rows of stones to echo the rhythm of the house architecture in the softest of voices.”

These concepts were not unique to Yeon, but still define much of regional modern design today, and at the time, much like his architectural style, were fresh and new.  Architects will also appreciate his experimentation with ‘ventilators’ which allow for user control of interior environments.  I also appreciated the deep dive into the Watzek house, as well as some of his subsequent work with the use of plywood as a building material, and the experimentation with modular designs strategies, all of which referenced his favorite and most regional of material, wood, but showcased the level of design detailing Yeon became famous for, using 1:1 drawings to investigate specific joints and interfaces of materials for functional and aesthetic reasons.  The sophistication of this is seen, for instance in the Cottrell House (below).

Also significant were the other plywood houses were the epitome of regional style, 9 of which were built in the Portland metro areas, like this super simple Speculative House in North Portland, built in 1939.

This also started sporting the Yeon blue-green paint he became famous for, most visibly applied to the 1948 Visitors Information Center located along Waterfront Park.

Yeon did venture beyond Portland to build a few houses in California, which is documented in the book, and he did live and work on the Oregon Coast (along with but most of his work was close to home and predominately residential.  And while he was known early for Watzek house, Treib posits that “the Swan house could claim first place as the most cohesive representation of Pacific Northwest regional modernism”

The book moves from residential architecture and design to art collecting and museum work which occupied much of his later life, along with the active conservation work mentioned previously.  This aspect will be enjoyable to those passionate about and interested in the history of Northwest environmentalism, as Yeon was a heroic figure in many of the fights for beautiful and ecologically significant places we enjoy today.  Chapter 7 highlights much of the work on the Oregon Coast, and the Columbia River Gorge, where Yeon served by appointment on the State Parks Commission at the age of 21 and fervently fought even then, using his own funds to buy land that was threatened, again owing to his not small amount of privilege.

He wrote letters on scenic beautification of highways, making cogent arguments on the impact of road designs that did not follow the contours of the land, and the need to plant wide enough areas to allow for visual impact and survivability.  As Treib points out “This knowledge of forestry and road design for a twenty-one year old is impressive, as is the young man’s confidence in lecturing men with decades of experience beyond his own.”

The early work on sensitive siting of roadways, such as the alignment of Highway 101 on the Oregon coast in the 1940s, evolved through the work in the 1960s dovetailed with larger interest in roadside beautification with work from designers and advocates alike striving for a more beautiful landscape experience and a more sensitive approach to road design, perhaps harkening back to the approach that Frederick Law Olmsted took a century before.  Yeon’s work focused this larger trend, with an eye towards the particular landscape experience, as Treib summarizes:
“Yeon was an evangelist for the Oregon landscape.”

The Shire was the major reflection of this trend, where Yeon fought against the wind and elements of the Gorge to shape a partly natural and partly designed space.  “Yeon’s design for the landscape, developed over decades, lovingly integrated land and water.  The tightly mown, and level-edged paths played effectively against the high grasses that blanketed most horizontal surfaces.  Paths traversed meadows, climbed outcroppings, and skirted the river — all aesthetically considered.”

The final chapter sums his focus on spending more time on projects benefiting the social good, and while he still did some residential work.  He fought for more scenic highways near Multnomah Falls, and championed designs for the Portland Waterfront Park, as well as holding the torch for a Pacific Northwest modern style that influenced architecture today.  It’s interesting reading the last chapter on how Yeon grappled with the concept of regionalism, and his role in defining it.  While the Watzek house and other residential designs were regional in form and material, he still presented that “the very existence of “a Northwest regional style of architecture is debatable”.  The connection to the land is an important factor, as well as the connections between folk architecture.

“We like to think that the visual character of the landscape shaped the vision of its inhabitants so that they conjured up [and] translated the spirit of the place into forms which were habitable.  Possibly people and landscapes have so modified each other that it is impossible to tell from the resulting composite regionalist landscape which influence is the primary one.  When we see this … phenomenon from the past, it is perhaps strongest where the inhabitants were unsophisticated — for knowledge of a broader world caused a seepage of alien influences which diluted the special regional flavor.” (251)

This concept of regionalism is perhaps the most compelling part of the narrative of the book and the life of John Yeon.  Regionalism as a stylistic element, but also regionalism as a way of living and loving the place you inhabit.  An amazing life makes for good reading, and Treib does a great job packing a lot of diversity into an easy to absorb story.  As a man with that took a unique path, John Yeon benefited much from his privilege to have the freedom to pursue his passions in a less formal way could have become a path of self-indulgence.  He was an artist, but his passion for the Oregon landscape and his life-long pursuit of it’s protection made him a true, regional hero.