Frank Lloyd Wright And Zaha Hadid (Separated by 73 Years)
Join the Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research on its fourth Day Away bus trip to visit two of Michigan’s most radical works of architecture. Although their completion dates are separated by 73 years, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Goetsch-Winckler House (1939–1940) in Okemos and Zaha Hadid’s Broad Art Museum in East Lansing (2012) each reveal what it meant and means to have your life and work redefined by great contemporary architecture. With Gregory Wittkopp, Director of both the Center and Cranbrook Art Museum, serving as our guide, participants first will travel to Okemos where we will meet Dr. Susan J. Bandes, a Professor of Art History at Michigan State University and the author of the forthcoming book Mid-Michigan Modern: From Frank Lloyd Wright to Googie,who will lead us through the National Historic Landmark Goetsch-Winckler House. Essentially unaltered from its original design, and lovingly maintained by the current owners, Audrey and Dan Seidman, this house was the second of Wright’s Usonian house designs. The house is the quintessential example of Wright’s early design philosophy for the construction of moderate income housing (Alma Goestch and Kathrine Winckler were professors at Michigan State College, now MSU). As food is important on these trips, we have made arrangements to follow the tour of the Goetsch-Winckler House with a private lunch at Red Haven in Okemos, one of Michigan’s premier farm-to-table dining experiences.
After lunch, we will travel a few miles further west to Michigan State University where the corrugated stainless steel and glass façade of the new Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum juts sharply like a ship—or perhaps a spaceship—run aground. The museum is the first-ever university building designed by Pritzker Prize-winner Zaha Hadid and only her second project in North America. Our visit to the Broad will begin with an architectural tour, followed with a tour of the exhibition The Land Grant: Flatbread Society. Part of an international public art project, Flatbread Societybrings together artists, an architect, a writer, a musician, a curator, a chef, and others who share an interest in humankind’s long and complex relationship with grain. With a few additional surprises along the way, including an outdoor clay bread-making oven, participants are certain to have another fun and educational Day Away with the Center!