Features
The World’s Most Beautiful House
Set among trees, rocks and a waterfall, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater was a masterpiece beset with problems.
Jonathan Glancey tells its story.
Chicago, 16 October 1956. Frank Lloyd Wright, then the most famous living architect in the US, hosted a press conference at which he unveiled The Illinois, a mile-high skyscraper four times the height of the Empire State Building. Born 150 years ago this June, Wright was 89 at the time and, with the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum under construction on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, as radical and as provocative as he had ever been.
The name of Wright’s god began with an ‘n’: nature
The Guggenheim project, however controversial the form of the building, had endeared him to New York’s media, with Wright appearing on the popular TV quiz show What’s My Line? in June 1956. The following September, he was twice the subject of the smoke-laced Mike Wallace Interview. You can watch these on YouTube today. Compelling viewing, the crinkle-eyed Wright comes across as smart as a whip. It does seem remarkable that you can tune in to see and hear a man born 150 years ago talking with such relevance for the 21st Century across a broad spectrum of political, ethical and, of course, architectural concerns.
Wright was certainly a master of the one-line quip. He told a client who phoned to complain of rain leaking from the roof of her new house onto the dining table where she was sitting to “move the chair”. On seeing his lanky engineering assistant, William Wesley Peters, inside one of his latest and rather low-ceilinged houses, he said, “Sit down, Wes, you’re ruining the scale of my architecture”.
And when asked for his occupation in a court of law, he stated, “The world’s greatest architect.” When his wife remonstrated with him, he turned to her saying, “I had no choice, Olgivanna. I was under oath.”
Much of the furniture in Fallingwater, such as this living room, was built into the structure so its interior design would remain fixed
Despite the bravura urban projects in Chicago and New York and the media attention these gave him, the octogenarian Wright had no love for cities. The name of his god, he told Mike Wallace, began with an “n”: nature.
Designed to house 100,000 people, The Illinois was Wright’s way of attempting to curb urban sprawl, of trying to keep the city in its place and nature safe from its claws.
The Illinois was never built and Wright, in a career spanning three-quarters of a century, was to complete just one tall building, the 19-storey Price Tower opened in February 1956 in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
Kosi’s emergence on the Afrobeat scene feels both familiar and fresh. Rooted in a childhood shaped by gospel music and choir rehearsals, his sound carries the discipline and soul of his church background. But, there’s also a raw edge, drawn from the streets of Festac, Lagos, that gives his music a grittier, lived-in texture. The blend is strikingly obvious as you’d hear a voice trained in harmony and a message born of hustle.
The artist’s approach to songwriting is intentional, pulling from personal experiences and everyday realities rather than chasing empty trends. It’s this mix of vulnerability and confidence that has quickly earned him attention within Lagos‘s music circles, even though he has just a few releases. Kosi is already making a case for himself as a voice that can stand out in the crowd, honest, grounded, and undeniably Afrobeat.
A man places a Russian national flag on a balcony of a residential building in Lysychansk, eastern Ukraine, which is now territory under the control of the self-described Luhansk People’s Republic
As the Russia-Ukraine war enters its 132nd day, we take a look at the main developments.
Here are the key events so far on Tuesday, July 5.
Fighting
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his troops have “no alternative” but to “push back and destroy the offensive potential” of Russian forces, as the battle moves from Luhansk to nearby Donetsk.
- Ukrainian forces that retreated from Lysychansk are now holding the line between Bakhmut and Sloviansk, preparing to fend off a further Russian advance, Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai said.
- President Vladimir Putin congratulated Russian troops on “liberating” the eastern Ukrainian region of Luhansk.
- At least 345 children have died in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s invasion and 644 have been wounded, the prosecutor general’s office reported.
Diplomacy
- Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson met Ukraine’s president in Kyiv, with the two parties signing a joint statement on defence and energy cooperation.
- Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov will fly to Hanoi on Tuesday for a two-day visit to Vietnam before heading to a G20 meeting later this week in Indonesia, the Vietnamese government said.
- Zelenskyy thanked the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for supporting a ban on Russian teams and athletes competing in most Olympic sports.
- Putin did not congratulate President Joe Biden on the United States’ Independence Day on July 4 due to “unfriendly” relations, the Kremlin said.
Economy
- Ukraine needs $750bn for a recovery plan, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal told a Ukraine Recovery Conference hosted by Switzerland.
- Ukraine is holding talks with Turkey and the United Nations to secure guarantees for grain exports from Ukrainian ports, Zelenskyy said.
- Britain said it would on Tuesday introduce new economic, trade and transport sanctions on Belarus over its support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and also sanctioned six Russians it said were spreading disinformation.
- Belarus said it was freezing foreign shareholdings in 190 Belarusian companies, including the software engineering company EPAM Systems and Lukoil Belarus, in response to Western sanctions.
Race plays key factor in a society where 10 percent of population owns more than 80 percent of wealth, World Bank says.
South Africa is the most unequal country in the world, with race playing a determining factor in a society where 10 percent of the population owns more than 80 percent of the wealth, a World Bank report has said.
“South Africa… is the most unequal country in the world, ranking first among 164 countries,” the Washington-based institution said Wednesday in a report, Inequality in Southern Africa.
Almost three decades after the end of apartheid, “race remains a key driver of high inequality in South Africa, due to its impact on education and the labor market,” it said.
When race is considered as a factor in income disparities, the report added, “its contribution to income inequality amounts to 41 percent, while contribution of education is reduced to 30 percent.
“The legacy of colonialism and apartheid, rooted in racial and spatial segregation, continues to reinforce inequality.”
The country’s neighbours that make up the rest of the Southern African Customs Union – Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia – established in 1910, all finish higher on the list of the most unequal countries in the world.
In the region, women earn on average 30 percent less than men with the same level of education with the pay gap as wide as 38 percent in Namibia and South Africa.
The uneven distribution of agricultural land is also a factor driving inequality, especially in rural areas.
In Namibia, 70 percent of the 39.7 million hectares (98.1 million acres) of commercial agricultural land “still belong to Namibians of European descent”, the World Bank said.
The report was produced before the COVID-19 pandemic and its authors used the Gini coefficient – an indicator of income inequality – to rank countries.
-
Audio10 years agoPage – Day Break Everywhere Burst
-
Audio5 years agoShadykarz – Forever
-
Audio10 years agoJuniorboy ft. 9ice – IRAPADA
-
Entertainment Gists5 years agoEx-Beauty Queen, Sandra Benede Shares Sexy Photo
-
Audio5 years agoSimi – Happy Birthday ft. Adekunle Gold, DeJa
-
Audio5 years agoRuger – Bounce
-
Mixtapes4 years agoMixtape: DJ DimpleNipple – The Best Of Amapiano Thrills
-
Editorials3 years agoSa’eedah Imam On Creating Her Imprint In The Nigerian Music Industry As An Emerging Creative Writer