John Lautner (16 July 1911 – 24 October 1994), influential American architect whose work in Southern California combines progressive engineering with humane design and dramatic space-age flair. July 16 is the 197th day (198th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar, with 168 days remaining. ... A database query syntax error has occurred. ... October 24 is the 297th day of the year (298th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 68 days remaining. ... 1994 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International year of the Family. ...

Lautner was born in rural Michigan and attended Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin Fellowship for six years in the 1930s as architectural training, serving as construction manager on Wright's Johnson residence "Wingspread" and on two projects in Los Angeles. He stands among the most successful of Taliesin graduates. Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was one of the most prominent architects of the first half of the 20th century. ... Information on Taliesin, the Welsh bard, is located on another page. ... This article is about the largest city in California. ...

Lautner established his own office in Southern California in 1940 and produced a long series of houses that combine innovative engineering, superb handling of materials, respect for his clients' needs, and an experimental vision that remains perpetually fresh. The living room of his Carling Residence, for instance, was built to rotate on a turntable and become an outdoor patio. The Reiner Residence called Silvertop in Silver Lake, California contains entire glass walls that silently disappear with the touch of a button. His design solutions may appear to be grandstanding at first, but they derive from logic, originality, and technical daring. Silver Lake is a Los Angeles neighborhood east of Hollywood. ...

His own first residence (1940) was built on a hillside. By choice or by accident, Lautner developed a reputation for making the most of challenging locations. The Malin Residence (the Chemosphere, 1960), is the extreme example. The client was a young engineer with limited resources and access to a site with a priceless view of the San Fernando valley, but worthless because of its severe slope. Lautner's radical solution was to propose a octagonal, saucer-shaped structure entirely supported by a central stem five feet in diameter. Working with the client's own participation, materials donated from companies eager to be associated with the project, Lautner took an otherwise-unbuildable slope and created a house with incredibly sweeping views. The Chemosphere has become a Los Angeles landmark that conveys both hope and folly. In 2000 German publisher Benedikt Taschen purchased and restored the house as his Los Angeles office.

Although mostly known for residences, Lautner created an entire genre of commercial architecture: Googie. With the 1949 design for Googie's Coffee Shop at the corner of Sunset Strip and Crescent Heights, Lautner's logical yet space-age sensibility, colliding with the client's requirements, produced a building with expansive glass walls, arresting form, and exuberant signage oriented to car traffic: an advertisement for itself. It became part of the American postwar Zeitgeist. Other chains such as Tiny Naylor's, Ship's, Norm's and Clock's quickly imitated the look as a superficial style, which proves its commercial value. The Space Needle, built for Seattles Worlds Fair, 1962 Googie, also known as populuxe, is a form of architecture, originating from southern California in the late 1940s and continuing approximately into the mid-1960s. ... Zeitgeist is originally a German expression, which means the spirit (Geist) of the times (Zeit). It denotes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era. ...

"Googie" was labelled as such in a 1952 magazine article by Yale University professor Douglas Haskell. Although the genre still has its admirers, in the 1950s the architectural community ridiculed it as superficial and vulgar. Not until Robert Venturi's 1972 book "Learning from Las Vegas" did the architectural mainstream even come close to validating Lautner's logic. Lautner's reputation suffered as a result. Following some lean years in the 1950s and 1960s, he enjoyed something of a resurgence with his poured-concrete houses in the 1970s, notably the Bob Hope Residence and other houses in Palm Springs. This article is about the institution of higher learning in the United States. ... Robert Venturi (June 25, 1925 -) is a Philadelphia-based architect who worked under Eero Saarinen and Louis Kahn before forming his own firm with John Rauch. ... Palm Springs is a city located in Riverside County, California, USA. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 42,807. ...

Among Lautner's other works include the Arango Residence in Acapulco, Mexico with its concrete sky-moat, and the landmark Desert Springs Motel in Palm Springs. His dramatic and photogenic spaces are frequently exploited in films, notably the Palm Springs Elrod Residence used to good effect in the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever. Acapulco, also known as Acapulco de Juárez, is a city and major sea port in the state of Guerrero on the Pacific coast of Mexico, 190 miles S.S.W. of Mexico City, at 16. ... The James Bond 007 gun logo James Bond, also known as 007 (pronounced double-oh seven), is a sophisticated fictional character and British spy created by writer Ian Fleming. ... A 2002 Penguin Books paperback edition Diamonds Are Forever was the fourth James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, originally published in 1956. ...

External links

• http://www.johnlautner.org/
• http://www.speicher.com/lautnerb.htm
• http://pages.videotron.com/mdaoust/index.htm
• http://www.breakfaster.co.uk/hopehouse.html