Harmony and Counterpoint: An Adaptive Reuse of Frank Lloyd Wright's A.D. German Warehouse

Abstract

Constructed in his self-acknowledge hometown of Richland Center, Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright was to work on the A.D. German Warehouse twice during his lifetime. Initially constructed between 1917 and 1921, financial woes on the part of the owner led to a shuttered building. In 1934 Wright worked on an adaptive reuse, but the plans were never to be implemented and German lost the building for good.

A careful study of the history of the structure, foregoing todays computers for Wrights triangles, and an analysis of the frieze led me to my own adaptive reuse.

The musical characteristics of harmony and countperpoint found powerful expression in the pairings of vertical and horizontal, light and dark, and new and old. These relational tensions resonated with the internal structure of the transformational geometry and created a powerful resolution between the enclosing massive forms of the original Warehouse and my new design.