ARCHITECTURAL INFLUENCES
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POTALA PALACE
TIBET
BY THE 5TH & 6TH
DALAI LAMAS
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As a child born in Chigago, Illinpis I grew up in Frank Loyd Wright's world but I also was aware of the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet.
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Both had a great impact in my mind but also my father having Mongolian and Tibetan heritage in his Russupian-Lithuanian heritage the Potala was my greatest influence
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Perhaps my interedt in architecture came about as a result of my father taking us to an open prairie when I was 3 years old and he, my older brother and I built our house. My father was a master carpenter builder and my brother became a building contractor of custom houses leaving me to become an architect
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As a bot I started designing Prairie Houses as was the trend started by Frank Loyd Wright and in his Falling Water I saw the layered look of the Potala.
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So my desighn became long layered horizontal structures with outer slanted walls
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My decorative elements were modest fortress like roof lines with Tibetan elements but not with ant Chinese influences so from an early age I saw Tibetan and Chinese architectur totally different from one another
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The Tibetan was sever, fortress like restrained simplicity with Chinese totally over decorated and stylized.
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The Tibetan was mysterious and elegant and the Chinese was very decorative and complicated
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When China claimed it designed Tibetan Architecture I laughed out loud knowing how stupid thier claim was. I did acknoledge that the top layer of the Potala's golden roof line was similar to Chinese but more in the style of Burmese temples and not Chinese pavillions
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None of my designs were ever executed though I studied architecture basically because I never found a clien that didn 't alter then rediculosly. Mostly women, wives, interfered and like Frank Loyd Wright I conceive both the exterior and interior to match and seldom, if ever, was a cliant cooperating in this
Frank Loyd Wright suuceeded as did King Louis IV of Versaille and Baroque archicture and furnishing match
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Erro Sarrinin one told ne ha walked out of a contract to design a mansion for a married couple with the man agreeing to his total design but the wamon wanted the house painted Flamingo pink with French Baroque furnishing inside a severely contemporary house
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Sarirnin laughed and walked out
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Again in my twenties Sarrinin convinced me beinf an architect was hell
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Perhaps that is why I gave it up as a livelyhood and turned to textile and fashion design. It was easy for me to contro but still I wanted to design and build my own house in a forest on a stream and waterfall in Vermont but instead temporarily lease purchased a turn of the centry shingle style for convenience to be in the village near my textile mill
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Believing I would make enough money to build my own house from my fashion success it never happened because my financial investors kept me pure then took my compay over leaving me to survice with nothing to create of my own so I became a prisoner of Buckthorne Hall and made the best of it instead
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It was all I had and eventually made it mine but keeping it both in and out a 1901 mansion as my grandfater would have left me but combining my art work into it making it very eclectic with mixed curtural elements
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Now that long episide of self house arrest has ended and Buckthorne Hall has gone to its heritage end and I now live thousands of miles away designing the house I long desired but now in Burmese-Tibetan cultural monastic style
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My variety of designs displayed here but which one opif any of these I will build still is undecided
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So what about fabric and fashion design?
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Well luxury goods is falling out of favor due to corporate colloberats have flooded the market with cheap versions made in China. No not cheap but offered as European made. A deception
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Fabrics from Asia have flooded the market with extraordinary design so there is no need
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Paris Haute Couture has become a circus but the greatest problem is there there aren't any notable women to dress and men prefer t shirts without designer logos so ther no longer a luxury market anywhere with Paris flooded with wannabe fashion designers creating circus clown outfirs just for sansationalism
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Is high fashion dead? Probably as we knew it but here in Yangon I put together my fashion atalier as I would in Paris or NYC but I don't advertise or market on line. it isbhere if people want it but my needs are fulfilled and I need not bother with the headach trying to please those who don't deserve it.
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The great families are all gone or melded into the common place with either too much money or none at all
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As the last fashion designer from the 1960s and still alive I am now simply exclusive and remote. I am here in Yangon, Rangoon if you dare come
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Now back to reality
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ADCHITECTURE
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Additionally I should include another influence of great importance
ROYAL BARRY WILLS
who created a book of colonial classic houses from simple Cape Cod cottagesto elegant Georgian mansions and sold them as a collection with beautiful architectural elevations and floor plans
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Anyone could buy the book and build one. My father had that book
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Buckthorne Hall is surrounded by Royal Barry Wills houses in the Village of Old Bennington built from 1948 posing as historic original houses from the early 18th century. No one in the US had any idea whether old or new. I knew
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Another influence came much later but connected to my early years on the praries
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in 1980 I spent the entire winter alone on Eagle Island in the Penobscot Bay of Maine in a tiby cabin in the wood with a wood stove. Similarily as a child I spent many years in a similar cabin built by my teen age brother and his buddies. I learned early the advantages of living in a one room cabin, a 7 room Cape Cod cottage and a 30 room mansion.
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Each had its advantages
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Now what
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