Wright Makes It Right

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, 77, dislikes buildings "all dressed up in military fashion, heels together, eyes front. . . ." He makes his houses lie flat on the ground and stretch out. To his followers, the old master is a modern Michelangelo whose sculptures can be lived in.

Wright's latest, a country house for wealthy stockbroker Gerald Loeb, has yet to be built, but a 6 ft. by 12 ft. model went on view last week in Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art. Designed for a barren hilltop, the Loeb house was to be as low, flat and full of wrinkles as an unmade Japanese bed.

Wright laid out a jigsaw puzzle of pierced roofs, gardens, lawns, curving walls and pools. The circular swimming pool, hollowed out around the edge, has columns under water as well as above, enclosing a glassed-in submarine gaxden. Said Wright: "The average swimming pool looks to me like a glorified bathtub.

Sleeping Turrets. Most startling feature was in the chimney: a vertical window through which Loeb would be able to watch the smoke and flame from his hearth, ascending like mercury in a thermometer. The bedrooms, designed to be dark, had no window except a narrow band of glass around the roof-edge. They were circular, air-conditioned "sleeping turrets," cork-lined for added coziness.

The neighbors in Redding, Conn, are already muttering that Loeb's horizontal hideaway will not fit in with their colonial-style mansions, but Loeb confidently expects it to be far better suited to "modern Connecticut living" than theirs.

A money-wise, 52-year-old bachelor, Loeb recently toured the Midwest to see Wright's houses for himself. He admits that the temperamental old architect's notions are sometimes impractical in small ways, but thinks that living in a Wright-designed house will be worth a little inconvenience. Says Loeb happily: "Wright is good and he knows he's good."

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