John Lautner
John Lautner was one of last century’s important contemporary American architects. His work was concerned with the relationship of the human being to space and of space to nature. “Shelter,” he said, “is the most basic human need.”
Lautner was born in 1911 and was raised in Michigan. After graduating with a degree in English from North Michigan University, he became an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright for six years.
The Arango House
Acapulco Mexico, 1973
The design of John Lautner’s Arango House is inspired by the natural features of the site, the sense of space, ocean and sky.
“Lautner’s dwellings took on dramatically new and varied shapes, as he moved toward the central theme of his career — how to use architecture to sublimate the domestic, and to domesticate the sublime.” -Nicholas Olsberg.
“When I first visited the site,” says Lautner, “I got the idea to build a large, open terrace so that all you had was the beauty of the Acapulco Bay and the sky and the mountains. You don’t feel you’re in a building at all. You’re out in space. With the beauty of nature.”
The curved, sloping concrete roof anchors into the hill at one end, then sweeps over the house and the driveway and returns to the hill at the opposite end. The roof rides low on the hill side and high on the Bay side, allowing an encompassing view of the sky and the ocean. The enclosed family room and bedrooms situated on the lower floor, facing the bay, provide elevated landscape with a continuous planter-railing along the edge of the decks.
The Arango House is more than just an artistic cure for a feeling of aimlessness or of ordinary existence. It is at once both a relaxant and a stimulant — a work of art that not only compels relaxation of mind and spirit but also inspires to live with more passion and to pursue creatively with zeal.
This house is the rarest of residencies: a house that is of itself, the environment, and the world expanding beyond… a house with few precursors and few progeny — a house with integrity. And therein lies its boldness, its originality, and its beauty.