BR wall tiles.

[joberg]

Yes, the FLLW foundation...but with their price, I wouldn't count on making an entire room with them . It seems that the rest of the suppliers have the tile wrong in terms of design (or the ones seen in the movie).

[jameth]

Could not find them on their site, although regardless I'm sure they are more than I want to spend.

I only need four

[jameth]

Kropserkel tiles look good. What exactly is wrong with them??

I looked at previous posts but really could not spot the error.

It would be $140 for four ABS tiles

[joberg]

Kropserkel tiles: small square at the bottom right hand side.
Deckard's tiles: small square at the bottom left hand side.

Kropserkel tiles: deep groove at the right hand side (wrong, wrong)!
Deckard's tiles: deep groove at the top of the tile (original design).

[Gaff87]

Great info, J.
I always get confused as to what is the correct layout of the tile.
Some tiles can look correct, but as we know could be way off.

Neil

[andy]

Basically the pattern is a mirrored image. The ones made for the actual house come in both versions and are turned through out the house. You can turn any of the other versions too to have the square in the left bottom side, but then a slot like cut out would be on the right side instead of the top. Only a handful of people would notice this though

Andy

[joberg]

It's true that with Ennis three type of placements were used to obtain the overall effect the tiles have on the house.
First: tile with small square at the left hand side, deep groove on top.
Two: tile with small square at the right hand side, deep groove on top
Three: either tile #1 or tile#2 was simply rotated to obtain the last "look"...problem is that the deep groove is either on the right hand side or the left hand side.
The rotating trick is usually seen outside on the facade than inside where a special effort was made to make a mirror tile with the proper placement of the" small square and the deep groove" design. To simplify our life we should choose the flat tile

[jameth]

[joberg]

It doesn't matter if the small square is at the right or left hand side; the deep groove should always be at the top either way.

[jameth]

Do you think we are anywhere close to anyone doing a run of accurate tiles or is Kropserkel the only choice???

[Division 6]

Tiles just showed up on CSI Vegas again.

E...

[joberg]

I think the main problem with those tiles is the medium you`re using to manufacture them and how many you`ll have to produce to recoup your investment (`cause I don`t see anybody doing those for free anytime soon )...same with the VK machine: how much are we willing to pay for it?..I hate to talk about cost and if it was up to me I would`ve made those tiles a long time ago for the people here (like Rich made the Coyle available for us here at Propsummit)...and then there`s always the risk of getting a C&D from the FLLW Foundation

[juno88]

The candle isn't terribly expensive and makes a nice decor item

[joberg]

Looking good...thanks for sharing.

[andy]

I have that lantern too. It is very cool and pretty heavy as well. It would good in any tasteful room, that even the wives and girlfriends would approve.

Andy

[TM]

In terms of references to the design of the Ennis House tile, there is much to compare with the Freeman House tile. This image is from Steinrag.com:



This was obviously a cropped image of a larger drawing held at the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, the LOC only offers a tiny thumbnail of the drawing, but a larger image can be found here:

http://popartmachine.com/item/pop_art/LOC+1134613/ARCHITECTURAL-DRAWING-FOR-A-HOUSE-FOR-SAMUEL-AND-HARRIET-FREEMAN,...

Unfortunately, I can't seem to make the IMG link work. So click on the above. Also, that site also has a link to a much larger sized image.

I have always wondered about the actual size of these tiles. According to the above drawing that size is 16" x 16". Naturally, Frank Lloyd Wright had to do things differently and with more difficulty, for this does not correspond to standard block sizes. A typical 8" x 16" block can be seen here:



You can see that today, at least, the typical block size is 7-5/8" x 15-5/8". The 8" x 16" nominal dimension corresponds to the centerline of the mortar between the blocks.

Tony
_________________
If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes. . .

[andy]

IIRC it was FLW and his son that created the concrete blocks as we know them today.

Andy

[TM]

Andy,

I don't think that's correct. According to this site:

http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/dictionary/index.asp?action=view&term_id=9281&term_type_id=3&term_type_text=things&letter=C

"The first commercial manufacture of concrete blocks began in 1868 by the Frear Stone Manufacturing Company of Chicago."

This was a year after FLW was born.

FLW and his son Lloyd (who remains rather under-appreciated) invented the textile block system we see at the Ennis, Freeman, Storer and Millard houses. These thin blocks were paired, one facing in and one facing out and in a sense woven together with rebar, vertically and horizontally. With an air gap in between for insulation. This yielded a very nice design, but turned out to be not so great structurally. Also, unlike conventional blocks, numerous textile block sizes were required to put a house together. This proved to be very expensive and the system was abandoned.

Additionally, FLW had the wacky idea of mixing the concrete on site using sand and dirt from the site in the mix. While this may have served the stated purpose of matching the color of the blocks to the color of the site, it also resulted in bad and inconsistent mixtures. This yielded somewhat fragile, structurally unsound blocks, causing significant restoration problems over the years.

Lloyd, at least, learned from that mistake and his concrete projects were better executed. For example, the Oasis Hotel in Palm Springs, while not textile block, has held up very well.

I remember seeing drawings of the textile block system, showing typical wall, window and corner details. I wish I remembered where I saw it, because I can't find anything like I remember on Google Images.

Tony
_________________
If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes. . .

[joberg]

The woven technique makes the "Block Houses" (mainly California) supple in case of earthquakes...case in point: the retaining wall at Ennis had to be repaired extensively a few years ago and that wall was built using the famous "cement -from- the- site-technique" . So yes, while that woven design has its limits, it's still better than the ciment-block one.
Btw: the selling price for Ennis House has come down: $ 7.000.000 from $ 8.000.000

[jon]