A Guide to the Best of Southern California : ARTS : Harmony in Architecture

When movie producer and architecture-buff Joel Silver was restoring the Storer House in Hollywood, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s residential masterpieces, work nearly stopped while contractors, architectural preservationists and even Wright’s grandson, Eric Wright, searched for the exact formula to duplicate the structure’s concrete blocks. It wasn’t until a little of the soil from the backyard was mixed with cement that the blocks were exactly as Wright had made them--his concept of “organic architecture” at work.

Wright believed that all parts of architecture must be harmoniously integrated. The outdoors should be an intimate part of the interior? living space; materials should flow from the surrounding landscape. This philosophy ultimately earned Wright a permanent spot at the forefront of modern architecture, a position justly earned, as witnessed in “Frank Lloyd Wright: In the Realm of Ideas.”

The show, featuring 160 works, including photographic enlargements, details and renderings, and large-scale architectural models and furnishing (only half of which were ever built), runs through September 30 at the San Diego Museum of Art.

San Diego Museum of Art, Balboa Park, San Diego; (619) 232-7931 .