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It is, in the end, a serene, seductive, stimulating space, one that cuddles you inside the wide, low-ceilinged foyer before sending you out into the larger world of glass-walled living room, dining room and city beyond.
The contrast might be jarring if the space weren't so fully integrated, united by a single aesthetic shared by the man who designed it 45 years ago and the men who, over the past few weeks, transformed it from paper architecture into the real thing.
One of the apartments that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Edgar Kaufmann Sr. in 1953 now enjoys a comet's life: For 10 days it is the Pittsburgh Home and Garden Show's 1999 Dream Home at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. This weekend, Wright believers are making the pilgrimage from England, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and all over the United States and Canada. Next week, a camera crew arrives from Home and Garden Television to produce a one-hour special on the apartment.
Designed for the Trimont site on Mount Washington and never built because developers thought the neighborhood lacked essential service businesses, Point View Residences is a triangular building with a floor plan based on a parallelogram grid.
Wright considered it one of his masterworks, and the construction of one of its apartments kicks off several months of exhibits and events, all part of an architectural tourism initiative designed to bring new visitors to Pittsburgh. The plan seems to be working; indeed, the informal, ad hoc committee sponsoring the tourism package couldn't have hoped for a...