LAUTNER & FLW
FLW called John Lautner "the second greatest architect on earth" (FLW being the first, of course).
Immensely innovative and breathtakingly ambitious in his designs, Lautner is widely considered FLW's most talented protege. Lautner has been described as the "missing link" between FLW and modern greats like Frank Gehry and Zaka Hadid. Gehry has called Launter "a God", recounting climbing over fences as an architectural student in Los Angeles to just get a peek at his work.
John Lautner also revered Wright. After apprenticing for 6 years at Taliesin in Wisconsin, Lautner moved to Los Angeles to oversee consturction of the Sturges house (and then others), while starting his own practice.
Launter speaks of FLW's mentorship in an oral history of his career:
"... Mr. Wright was around all the time pointing out things that contributed to the beauty of the space....how a certain way of detailing, which he would call grammar, contributed to the whole idea, the whole, the total expression. And then he kept accenting the idea that there wasn't any real architecture unless you had a whole idea ... So I really learned that you have to have a major total idea or it's nothing, you know; it's just an assembly. What most people do is an assembly of cliches or facades or what-have-you..." (citation link)
On their parnership on Sturges, FLW wrote to Lautner on Februaru 11, 1939:
"Herewith sketches for the Sturges.
I think it is self explanatory. Take it to them for their reaction.
It is one of the simplest things we have done and one of the best."
