Steve & Frank - Design Bureau

6 Comments

  1. Ryan D
    November 7, 2011

    Great article. Very well done, Duo

    Reply
  2. thomaspotts
    November 10, 2011

    I’ve never used anything but a mac computer. As a home designer, I’ve spent a lot of time devouring Wright’s contributions. I too see the similarities. I also see that Wright is regarded as a “curio” despite the breadth of influence. Perhaps there is something to be gained by studying the differences between these two men, in addition to the similarities, in order to more fully place their efforts in the context of the societies they wanted to shape. Perhaps I would start with scale. The one involved with spaces to inhabit, the other with objects to employ. Conversely, the one involved with relatively modest firms and “schools” the other with vast corporate structures and international manufacturing. Anyway, I agree, each is a uniquely American icon, and there is something to be learned from that.

    Reply
  3. Casey Eldridge
    November 10, 2011

    What if Jobs had copyrighted the operating system of a computer that Paul Allen and Bill Gates had developed for him? We wouldn’t have WINDOWS and we wouldn’t have MICROSOFT that we have today.

    Allen and Gates took the operating system they wrote for Apple and developed it as Microsoft Windows in the 1982. They had designed something called MS-DOS, for IBM, but weren’t satisfied with it. The system they designed for Apple gave it a new feature. They wanted to make that feature work on all computers – Apple built and sold and IBM and its clones. Apple kept its OS to itself and MS-DOS allowed IBM and other manufacturers use the new operation system, in conjuction with something that was named Windows. And the rest is history.

    Reply
  4. rich hiler architect
    November 16, 2011

    great article. these men are the essense of genius.

    Reply

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Steve & Frank

Monday, October 17th, 2011

by Duo Dickinson

Steve Jobs died prematurely this month. I say this because I, too, am 56. America’s other design icon, Frank Lloyd Wright, died when he was 91. Their relationship within their professions and our culture bears some baring.

Jobs and Wright were driven, intense, and often exquisitely rude men. It’s hard to say that either of them would have ever felt that taking the time to smell the roses or go to a child’s little-league game would have ever trumped the magic detail that they were pursuing in any given project at any given time.

Neither man needed consensus, cooperation, or feedback. But both men had a vision that was uniquely theirs, and refined to a point where it was undeniably powerful, seductive, and evocative of a sense that the user/occupant was part of a hyper-cool world of insight and progress.

When Wright emerged as a force in design in the early 20th century, his introduction to the world of architecture had conceptual facilitation by the International Style architects of Europe, but in truth he was always viewed, even in America, as a subset to the greater modern revolution. Wright’s distinct form of architecture has winnowed down to cult status, whereas the more “light” form of modernism of Corbusier and the Bauhaus is the dominant paradigm in our culture.

Jobs’ Apple products are beloved and energized existing technology, but Microsoft is the dominant paradigm and has flooded the massive majority of computer devices in America and worldwide.

"Jobs did not invent the computer nor did Wright invent the building; both saw it with an eye that would have been lessened had it been crowd-sourced, think-tanked, or focus-grouped."

Fifty years after Wright’s death, it’s clear that the Wrightian mode of design is outmoded for the day’s starchitecture — inherently geometric and quirky, evidentiary of materiality and craft, it is viewed as a curio. After Jobs’ death, it is unclear that Apple will succeed beyond Jobs’ death to sustain its vitality as a subordinate stream of technology in culture, American or otherwise.

Both men are uniquely American, both are the John Wayne and Ronald Reagan of their chosen professions. The force of their personalities cannot be simulated by assertions of it — Sarah Palin, Philip Johnson, or Donald Trump desperately sought and seek Wright's and Jobs' undeniable potency, but words and affect cannot get them there. No amount of pretense can create the inside-out dynamism. Even though both were master salesmen, neither would sell anything that was not, in their view, a perfect reflection of who they were. They never played to an audience; they just wanted the audience to see the truth that they knew.

Both had a power based upon raw and hyper-focused talent that was un-learnable, and neither went to a school to learn what they did. Neither ever had a partner that they could live with for very long, and both had extraordinary success at the cost of a greater purpose in their lives.

Wright and Jobs represent the extreme distillation of the American character into divergent yet inextricably linked worlds of design:  architecture and technology. Jobs did not invent the computer nor did Wright invent the building; both saw it with an eye that would have been lessened had it been crowd-sourced, think-tanked, or focus-grouped. Both had the ego and individuality that made their work so distinctive that it has undeniable power, and propagated hundreds if not thousands of imposters.

In a time of economic travail, people look towards our society, our communities, and our government to keep us from going under. Wright and Jobs never did that — instead they looked to themselves and loved their vision enough that it virtually precluded any possibility of failure in their eyes — despite obvious setbacks in both of their career paths.

In fact, Fallingwater and the iPad were Depression babies — both emerging at low points of economic opportunity as beacons of what is always possible when a force of will is self-sustaining.

They are uniquely American stories — stories that may be out of fashion in an economic downturn, where hope is placed in personal skill, without the aid of cultural assists, safety nets, or political correctness.

Both men were a terror to be around; both men did things that others couldn’t. Both men knew that, used it, and are forever remembered as changing the world despite their own obvious mortality.

(Great minds think alike: http://www.adamkhan.net/parries/the-mouse-and-the-cantilever/)

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