Customer Reviews

Prairie Style: Houses & Gardens by F.L. Wright

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book covers more than just Wright. It also gives you some insight to others that came out of the Prairie School and others that were redefining the American style near the turn of the century. The book has wonderful pictures, but as an architect, I wish it had floor plans so I could more easily understand how the spaces worked together. It's still a nice addition to my library.

The great thing about the Prairie Style is that elements of it can fit into so many different other types of designs and times. Even though I have a very modern, contemporary home, I got plenty of ideas from this beautiful book. Contains loads of beautiful pictures of home interiors by Wright & his followers.

This book varies from most books on Wright and the prairie style architects in its extensive use of interior photos. Many of the prairie homes are somewhat unremarkable from the outside, while inside they have a distict beauty and grace. "Prairie Style" beautifully portrays the interior as well as the exterior of homes by Wright, his students, and contemporaries.

Prairie style architecture is one of the most American of the house styles, it is quenticential Frank Lloyd Wright. I did not always appreciate the style, I watched as they demolished many in Dallas and did not shead a tear, but after really looking at these homes and admiring the unique style, I lement the loss of those homes and I have a new appreciation of these fine homes. This book is wonderful, it has vivid images and the text is very informative. It is fascinating how Wright perfectly merged the house into the Gardens and how perfectly the two interact. Even if you are not sold on the beauty of the Prairie Style, I encourage you to get this book, you will come away with a new appreciation of this singular style and you may actually find yourself wanting one.

Notwithstanding an earlier commenter's opinion that none of the other prairie school architects hold a candle to Wright, so why bother showing them (a laughable proposition once you become aware of how much Wright claimed credit for work done by assistants like Mahoney), this book is really an anthology of images of prairie school homes rather than a Wright compendium and ought to have been clearly labelled as such. Having visited the Darwin Martin house in Buffalo recently, I can tell you that while I enjoy Wright's style this book presents some rarely seen treasures like Spencer's McCready house or Sullivan and Elmslie's Bradley house which stand with (or above) any given Wright house. Once you liberate yourself from the Wright mystique you'll crave more hard-to-find information on the works of the rest of the Prairie school, and this book is an excellent showcase of the variety of their work.

This book does have a very nice blend of photographs and reproductions of sketches and interior / exterior images, but I was not impressed with the cross over into other architect's work that, in my humble opinion, do not come close to approaching FLW's ability. Overall it is a good resource, but hardly a definitive study on Wright and his structures.