La Miniatura.
A textile block becomes a way to study the construction, light and spatial character of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Millard House.
La Miniatura is explored through the relationship between a small patterned unit and the architecture it makes possible.
The work studies Frank Lloyd Wright’s Millard House in Pasadena through photography, drawing, digital reconstruction and hybrid imagery. An early investigation of the textile block develops into a cinematic assembly study, revisiting the house through the making of its parts. The original building is a precedent; the work presented here is documentation and interpretation.
Explore the Millard House website- Subject
- Millard House / La Miniatura, Pasadena
- Original architect
- Frank Lloyd Wright
- Work
- Photography, modeling & representation
- Course development
- Cinematic Constructs, Summer 2022
- Instructor
- Farzam Yazdanseta
Beginning with the block.
The textile block connects pattern to construction. Close photographs attend to the relief, joints and changing shadows of the material surface. Digital reconstruction isolates the unit’s geometry, while drawings place it in relation to the site, elevation and interior.
The hybrid image brings these two readings together. The photograph retains the weight and variation of the surface; the analytical linework describes its geometric order. The result is a study of how ornament, repetition and material depth contribute to the perception of the wall.
Assembly becomes a narrative.
The Summer 2022 Cinematic Constructs course uses the detail as a route toward understanding a whole architectural system. The La Miniatura storyboard follows formwork, casting and block assembly before moving to interior light, window details and the building as a larger composition.
Exploded drawings and changing viewpoints make relationships visible that a single exterior photograph cannot show. The sequence moves outward from a component to walls, floors, glazing and roof, then returns to the experience of the house in its landscape. Photography and cinematic representation become complementary ways of looking closely.
An analytical model separates the roof, textile-block walls, floor plates, glazing and stairs. Original architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Precedent study, photography and representation by Siyue You. Original architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright. The 2022 cinematic development was undertaken in Farzam Yazdanseta’s ARCH-581A-01 Cinematic Constructs course at Pratt Institute.
