Hasta La Ideas

News: a house in New Jersey designed in 1954 by the influential American architect Frank Lloyd Wright could be sold and moved as far away as Italy in order to save it from flood damage.

Homeowners Sharon and Lawrence Tarantino, who are themselves architects, hope to sell the Bachman Wilson house to a buyer willing to dismantle and transport the house away from its flood-prone site in Millstone, New Jersey.

“We have been here 25 years and over the past couple of years the flooding has become worse. We have to do what is best for the house,” Sharon Tarantino told the Daily Telegraph.

The asking price for the residence is £1 million, which includes the building and its furnishings as well as the estimated cost of moving it to a new location.

After plans to move the house to New York fell through, the couple got in touch with Italian architect Paolo Bulletti, who three years ago organised an exhibition in Fiesole, a town near Florence where Wright lived in 1910, to celebrate the centenary of the architect’s time in the area.

“We have recognised that the Bachman Wilson House was designed after Wright’s second visit to Fiesole in 1954 and there were many similarities to the design of his Fiesole house that was unbuilt,” said Sharon Tarantino.

The Tarantinos have now signed an exclusive agreement naming Bulletti as the Italian agent to research buyers for the property.

Although he has yet to find a site, Bulletti believes the mayors of Fiesole and Florence would be pleased to have the house, given Wright’s connection to the region, though it is still unclear if planning regulations would permit the house to be used as a residence.

However, it could be “erected in protected land, a park or a garden as if it were a sculpture,” Bulletti told the New York Times.

“We want to know that it has a future if we are going to go to the trouble of dismantling it and moving it,” said Sharon Tarantino. “We feel that wherever it goes, it has to have a connection to Wright.”

We recently reported that a Wright house in Phoenix, Arizona, could be bulldozed unless a new buyer is found or the city agrees to grant landmark status to the property.

Meanwhile, a New York and Athens-based architecture firm provoked ire from commenters last month with its proposal to add 13 floors to Wright’s famous spiralling Guggenheim Museum in New York – see all news about Frank Lloyd Wright.

Photographs are by Lawrence Tarantino.

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