Frank Lloyd Wright Design

To understand Wright, the architect, it’s necessary to see his work, even better to feel it as this book manages to do. Like all artists, you learn about their craft through the senses. It’s not an analytical exercise, it’s experiential. To understand Wright, the man, check out my review “The Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship” for his dramatically odd backstory.

This beautifully crafted book of brilliant examples gives you a cross-section across a wide spectrum and shows off his virtuosity. From famous stars in Beverly Hills to the Guggenheim Museum, to the masterpiece Fallingwater, as well as obscure examples from one of 17 buildings designated by the American Institute of Architects to be perpetual standing examples of American culture. His innovative and unique style is easily identifiable as delicious quality, functional eccentricism, and grand minimalism. Most stand the test of time today and a testament to their long-lasting materials and engineering.

His commissioned works included the homes of the titans of the day, headquarters, hotels from the Phoenix Biltmore to the new re-built (at the time) Imperial Hotel in Tokyo taking six years and became a iconic tribute to Japan’s revolutionary changes embracing modernism while containing Japanese traditional influences that stood as a monument living up to both concepts from 1923-1968, and then replaced by a roomier glass and steel skyscraper.

Having visited a few of his structures included in the book is one of my favorites Taliesen West in Scottsdale, Arizona and open to the public where many of his designs were drawn by the hundreds of his acolytes that interned there and overseen by Wright. The photographs do it justice but touring it is something people need to experience to actually feel it. How it feels is as a cool as how it looks wandering from space to surprising space.

As interesting and innovative as his career was, he doesn’t disappoint in his messy, weird and convoluted backstory.