For his critics and biographers, the 1930s have always been the most challenging period of Frank Lloyd Wright's career. This account uses the architect's long-inaccessable archives at Taliesin West to provide a balanced evaluation of Wright in the 1930s. It separates Wright's design activities from his self-promotion and places his philosophy of individualism within the context of the times.
An “immensely valuable” dual biography of the iconic American architect and the city that transformed his career in the early twentieth century (Francis Morrone, New Criterion). Frank Lloyd Wright took his first major trip to New York in 1909, fleeing a failed marriage and artistic stagnation. He returned a decade later, his personal life and architectural career again in crisis. Booming 1920s New York served as a refuge, but it also challenged him and resurrected his career. The city connected Wright with important clients and commissions that would harness his creative energy and define his role in modern architecture, even as the stock market crash took its toll on his benefactors. Anthony Alofsin has broken new ground by mining the Wright archives held by Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art. His foundational research provides a crucial and innovative understanding of Wright’s life, his career, and the conditions that enabled his success. The result is at once a stunning biography and a glittering portrait of early twentieth-century Manhattan.
For coloring book enthusiasts and architecture students — 44 finely detailed renderings of Wright home and studio, Unity Temple, Guggenheim Museum, Robie House, Imperial Hotel, more.
In architectural terms, the twentieth century can be largely summed up with two names: Frank Lloyd Wright and Philip Johnson. Wright (1867–1959) began it with his romantic prairie style; Johnson (1906–2005) brought down the curtain with his spare postmodernist experiments. Between them, they built some of the most admired and discussed buildings in American history. Differing radically in their views on architecture, Wright and Johnson shared a restless creativity, enormous charisma, and an outspokenness that made each man irresistible to the media. Often publicly at odds, they were the twentieth century's flint and steel; their repeated encounters consistently set off sparks. Yet as acclaimed historian Hugh Howard shows, their rivalry was also a fruitful artistic conversation, one that yielded new directions for both men. It was not despite but rather because of their contentious--and not always admiring--relationship that they were able so powerfully to influence history. In Architecture's Odd Couple, Howard deftly traces the historical threads connecting the two men and offers readers a distinct perspective on the era they so enlivened with their designs. Featuring many of the structures that defined modern space--from Fallingwater to the Guggenheim, from the Glass House to the Seagram Building--this book presents an arresting portrait of modern architecture's odd couple and how they shaped the American landscape by shaping each other.
An unprecedented look at Frank Lloyd Wright's storied relationship with San Francisco and the Bay Area, highlighting local masterpieces as well as a remarkable body of unbuilt works
Frank Lloyd Wright's foray into affordable housing--the American System-Built Homes--is frequently overlooked. When Nicholas and Angela Hayes became stewards of one of them, they began to unearth evidence that revealed a one-hundred-year-old fiasco fueled by competing ambitions and conflicting visions that eventually gave way to Wright's most creative period.
New definition to the little-known work Wright produced during this period, which he describes as Wright's primitivist phase. He traces this influence in his art through Wright's explorations of primitivist sources, innovations in sculpture, and an intensification of the architect's use of ornament. Less tangible, but as important, was Wright's view of himself, his art, and society, and Alofsin uncovers the European impact on the architect's image of himself as a.
Frank Lloyd Wright is recognized as a dominant figure in the history of modern architecture. His life and revolutionary work is described in this volume filled with more than 180 photographs illustrating 60 of his most-beloved buildings.
Published in conjunction with a major exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, this catalogue reveals new perspectives on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, a designer so prolific and familiar as to nearly preclude critical reexamination. Structured as a series of inquiries into the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Archives, the book is a collection of scholarly explorations rather than an attempt to construct a master narrative. Each chapter centers on a key object from the archive that an invited author has "unpacked"-interpreting and contextualizing it, tracing its meanings and connections, and juxtaposing it with other works from the archive, from MoMA, or from outside collections. The publication aims to open up Wright's work to questions, interrogations, and debates, and to highlight interpretations by contemporary scholars, both established Wright experts and others considering this iconic figure from new and illuminating perspectives.
