Post 126
The name Ludd M. Spivey you would not likely recognize unless it was tied to the man that put Florida Southern College, right here in Lakeland, Florida, on the map. Frank Lloyd Wright designed and started the first of 12 of the 18 planned structures in 1938. This is the largest collection of Wright-designed structures in the world which was started when Wright was 71.
I wonder how the two men met? Wright was 71 and living in Chicago, IL where he built one of his most well-known structures, a home named Fallingwater, completed in 1937 for the Kaufmann family in Mill Run, PA. An architect and designer that was pivotal in changing the face of his profession world-wide, Wright first coined the phrase and the concept of organic architecture which stemmed from the idea and use of the natural geographic and geologic materials and substances and lay of the land, incorporating the structure into the surroundings.
At Florida Southern, where everything is naturally flat, he utilized light and shadow, angle and plane as well as really unusual building techniques for the collection. It contains a Visitor Center, the Annie Pfeiffer Chapel, the William H. Danforth Chapel, the Lucius Pond Ordway building, the Hawkins Seminar Building, to name a few. The photo below with that awesome Florida-Blue sky is the Pfeiffer Chapel.
I will make this a two-part series because there is so much to see. Even the buildings that are not open to the public, like the Science and Hawkins, there is much to see in the gardens, the tower in the gardens, and some of the other structures that were built by outside construction companies and some, designed after his death, to complement the collection that were not Wright's (the library). Below is the outdoor connecting hall to the (not open to view) Science building. Interesting detail work every where you look.
There are gardens in progress and a few that needed a loving touch from a person like me but the students, now in residence chatted and walked in small groups as they do on any campus. The distinction on this campus, as I remarked to my friend, is that if it is so that deprivation of beauty stunts maturation and growth, then living in the presence of it must increase it. What a place to live, work and study within!
The collection is called "Child of the Sun" which together, form an interesting geometric pattern when viewed from above. Conversely, Mr. Wright thought of the smallest details, for example, using cubes of colored glass embedded in the walls of the chapel, so when you are seated in the interior, you see rainbows of color coming through the cubes stuck into the concrete in patterns and rows.
I will show the interior of the Pfeiffer chapel with its soaring light shaft in the next section. Until then, please enjoy scenes from the campus gardens and the unique Water Dome, completed in 1948, which was a vision that did not have the technology to actually make it work in that time. It is 160 feet across, outfitted with high-pressure water nozzles which propel water 45 feet into the air creating the dome effect. It is controlled by a computerized fountain system.
