Frank Lloyd Wright Revealed [Hardcover]

Rebecca Snelling (Author), Jan Suermondt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0785820795 | ISBN-13: 978-0785820796

Frank Lloyd Wright Revealed looks in depth at five of the most important buildings designed by arguably the greatest architect of the twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright. Revealed through words, photographs, and computer models these iconic structures are explined and shown in all their greatness and intricate detailing.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Chartwell Books (February 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0785820795
• ISBN-13: 978-0785820796
• Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 11.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,610,228 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and Informative, January 25, 2008

By 

Leopold Bloom (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT REVEALED (Hardcover)

This book concentrates on five of the architect's creations: the Robie house, the Charles Ennis house, Fallingwater, the Jacobs Second Residence, and the Marshall Erdman Prefab houses. With extensive photographs and computer renderings, along with detailed descriptions of their design, construction, and history, each house is explained in relation to Wright's overall philosophy and specific goals. Although scholars will probably find nothing here they did not already know, neophytes will be stunned by Wright's innovation and creativity.

One of Wright's goals was to create beautiful, functional housing that ordinary people could afford. Everyone cannot live in Fallingwater. While an architect's vision is expressed best in remarkable, one-of-a-kind structures for which money is no object, the limitations of ordinary life require that vision to be bounded and subdued in the service of affordable utility.

The Erdman prefab houses were an attempt to achieve this goal. Unavoidably, staying within a budget required compromises which Wright and his clients were unable to endure. We are surrounded by examples of "affordable" houses that are neither functional nor beautiful - at any rate, they show the spirit of compromise between cost, and every other factor. To meet the clients' needs, the Erdman houses eventually priced themselves out of the very marketplace for which they had been intended. Other houses - the ones we live in - are just the opposite: they create the marketplace in which they exist.

Some of Wright's ideas were squarely opposed to the needs most people have with regard to their homes. He tried to eliminate the basement, as a space that is not lived in, although most people at least use their basements for storage. An argument against this is that people should have only those possessions that they use, and in all honesty, basements do not store only those items that are used occasionally. In favor of basements - and space within the home for storage of items that might never be used - is that one advantage of living in a house where one may remain for a few years is that one can keep articles of purely sentimental value. Perhaps we don't want to keep Grandma's rocking chair in the living room; it might even be broken and unusable, but being forced to dispose of it because we have nowhere to store it is a sign of poverty, not efficiency. A few prefab homeowners did install basements eventually.

Wright invented the carport as a less-expensive alternative to the garage. This also reflects the effort to limit unnecessary storage. Americans have been described as people who fill their garages with worthless junk, while automobiles worth tens of thousands of dollars are parked outside. The carport eliminates this possibility, as nothing besides a car can really be stored in one. Again, however, this is a compromise in the direction of poverty instead of efficiency. Even the smallest garage can have space for tools that would otherwise need to be kept in a separate shed, and allows the homeowner who is so inclined to have a clear, dry space to undertake any repairs on his car of which he is capable. Also, the advantages of a garage, especially an attached one, are obvious to anyone who has had to unload groceries or run an errand with small children or animals, or install tire chains during a snowstorm. Yet by the end of his life, Wright developed a deep, perverse hatred toward the enclosed garage.

Wright is possibly most renowned for the quality many (if not all) of his structures have of seeming to fit perfectly into their surroundings. A core element of his philosophy was that buildings should harmonize with their environment, and to this end, he used local materials when possible and took topography, sunlight, and other factors into consideration in his designs. It is therefore surprising that some of his most celebrated creations have not aged well, requiring extensive rehabilitation and maintenance to prevent collapse. I would argue that a structure which "fits into its surroundings" would be able to withstand those same surroundings. Architecture, like other visual arts, is fundamentally an illusion; it is not necessary that a building literally grow out of its environment - it only needs to look as if it does. If longevity can be better achieved through the use of artificial or non-local materials that can be made to appear as if they came from nearby, then they should be used over less durable local components. Wright's insistence on this kind of integrity is like a movie director refusing to film a special effect unless it is really happening (although Werner Herzog has employed this method with great success, it's not clear whether Fitzcarraldo would have been less powerful if they had reenacted the ship being dragged over the mountain instead of actually doing it. At least two crew members would not have been killed during the filming if it had been done in a studio).

All indigenous cultures create homes that meet the requirements of using available materials, fitting the needs and limitations of their environment, and being affordable to the people who use them. When Europeans arrived in North America, they brought their own building traditions which were adapted, with varying degrees of success, to the new land. Frank Lloyd Wright's genius lay in his attempt to develop a uniquely American architecture, appropriate to his clients' needs and the specific locale, without undue influence of earlier designs from another time and place.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars One of the Worst Books on Frank Lloyd Wright Ever Published, October 8, 2007

By 

Paul Harding, FAIA (River Forest, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Frank Lloyd Wright Revealed (Hardcover)

This is a miserable book on America's Greatest Architect. Unfortunately the book has many faults. The computer graphics are quite primitive and very poorly executed. The brick in the computer drawings looks to be grossly over scaled. The computer dawings are abundant and quite crude. The photographs are very amateurish. In general they are poorly exposed and out of focus. There are no footnotes or bibliography describing where the material came from. There are many high quality books on Frank Lloyd Wright. Unfortunately this is not one.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible Book, June 6, 2007

By 

Moo Cow - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Frank Lloyd Wright Revealed (Hardcover)

This is an incredible book! I goes into great detail about 5 of his more interesting buildings showing great color photos and, more importantly, great 3D computer graphics of the exteriors, interiors and site locations. Just incredible!