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Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959)

Author of The Natural House

191+ Works 3,714 Members 31 Reviews 4 Favorited
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About the Author

Wright is widely considered the greatest American architect and certainly one of the most influential. Throughout a career of nearly 70 years, he produced masterpiece after masterpiece, each different and boldly new and yet each with the unmistakable touch of Wright's genius in the treatment of show more material, the detailing, and the overall concept. Born in Wisconsin of Welsh ancestry, Wright studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin and began his career in Chicago as chief assistant to Louis Henry Sullivan, who influenced his early thinking on the American architect as harbinger of democracy and on the organic nature of the true architecture. Out of these ideas, Wright developed the so-called prairie house, of which the Robie House in Chicago and the Avery Coonley House in Riverdale, Illinois, are outstanding examples. In the "prairie-style," Wright used terraces and porches to allow the inside to flow easily outside. Movement within such houses is also open and free-floating from room to room and from layer to layer. Public buildings followed: the Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo (destroyed) and the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois, the former probably the most original and seminal office building up to that time (1905). The Midway Gardens in Chicago and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (both gone) came next, winning Wright still greater acclaim. Personal tragedy, misunderstanding, and neglect dogged Wright's middle years, but he prevailed, and in his later life gathered enormous success and fame. The masterworks of his mature years are the Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin, and Fallingwater, Bear Run, Pennsylvania---with its bold cantilevered balconies over a running stream, probably the most admired and pictured private house in American architecture; then, toward the end of his life, the spiral design of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Wright's own houses, to which he joined architectural studios, are also noteworthy: Taliesin West was a true Shangri-la in the Arizona desert, to which he turned in order to escape the severe winters in Wisconsin, where he had built his extraordinary Taliesin East. Wright was a prolific and highly outspoken writer, ever polemical, ever ready to propagate his ideas and himself. All of his books reflect a passionate dedication to his beliefs---in organic architecture, democracy, and creativity. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
(Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

Series

Works by Frank Lloyd Wright

The Natural House (1807) 320 copies
Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867-1959: Building for Democracy (1991) — Architect — 318 copies
The Future of Architecture (1953) 214 copies
The Living City (1958) 189 copies
A Testament (1957) 107 copies
Genius and the Mobocracy (1949) 34 copies
Letters to Architects (1984) 33 copies
Letters to Apprentices (1982) 26 copies
Letters to Clients (1986) 18 copies
When democracy builds (1945) 17 copies
An Organic Architecture (1970) 16 copies
Monona Terrace: Frank Lloyd Wright's Vision on the Lake (1997) — Editor, some editions — 14 copies
The Disappearing City (1932) 6 copies
Fallingwater (2009) 6 copies
Taliesin 6 copies
Taliesin Drawings (1952) 5 copies
Frank Lloyd Wright (2001) 5 copies
Humane Architektur (2014) 3 copies
AUTOBIOGRAFIA: 1867-1944 (1998) 3 copies
Flags jigsaw puzzle (2013) 2 copies
Pencils jigsaw puzzle (2005) 2 copies
Moore House (2013) 2 copies
Testamento 2 copies
Frank Lloyd Wright (2009) 2 copies
Architectures 3 (DVD) (2003) 2 copies
Unbuilt Designs (1990) 2 copies
The Robie House 2 copies
Hauser (2006) 1 copy
The Wright Letters (1987) 1 copy
Primers escrits (1996) 1 copy

Associated Works

Architectural Theory: From the Renaissance to the Present (2003) — Contributor — 281 copies
A Documentary History of Art, Volume 3 (1966) — Contributor — 152 copies
The House Beautiful (1911) — Designer, some editions — 46 copies
Frank Lloyd Wright at a Glance: Glass (2001) — Subject — 32 copies
Frank Lloyd Wright at a Glance: Interiors (2001) — Subject — 27 copies
Frank Lloyd Wright at a Glance: Usonian Houses (2002) — Subject — 25 copies
Frank Lloyd Wright at a Glance: Early Years (2002) — Subject — 18 copies
Frank Lloyd Wright at a Glance: Prairie Houses (2002) — Subject — 16 copies

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Frank Lloyd Wright in Memoirs and autobiographies (December 2023)

Reviews

This is the fourth volume in the highly acclaimed series of Wright's written works, most of which are out of print and have never before been systematically compiled for publication. Arranged chronologically, Volume IV includes the years of world conflict and postwar recovery--a rich, prolific period during which Wright created designs for some of his best-known buildings.
 
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petervanbeveren | Jan 7, 2024 |
With 57 illustrations and a fold-out of Broadacre City in full colour, where he presents a detailed plan for a city where a natural environment is achieved by imaginative use of material resources.
 
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petervanbeveren | Jul 29, 2023 |
If anybody were most qualified to write about Fallingwater, it would be Edgar Kaufmann Jr., son of the client, apprentice to Wright, part-time occupant of the house for 27 years, and heir who donated it to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Logically then, this large-format book has Kaufmann's recollections, as well as photos by Christopher Little (the photographer of choice for the building), some beautiful drawings in color, and much more. It is a fitting balance of Kaufmann the client's son and Kaufmann the architectural historian.… (more)
 
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archidose | Sep 24, 2018 |

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Works
191
Also by
10
Members
3,714
Popularity
#6,822
Rating
3.8
Reviews
31
ISBNs
224
Languages
10
Favorited
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