Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo Venture

Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo Venture
Author: Jack Quinan
Publisher: Pomegranate Communications
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780764962646

Over a quarter of a century, Frank Lloyd Wright provided the city of Buffalo with a series of remarkable designs. These houses, commercial buildings, and unbuilt projects, devised between 1903 and 1929, link the architect's early Prairie period to his magnificent reaction to Modernism, exemplified by Fallingwater and the Johnson Wax Building. To convey this story, author Jack Quinan introduces a cast of characters linked by their association with the Larkin Company, the client that first drew Wright to New York State. Not long after sketches for a Larkin Administration Building had arrived in Buffalo, commissions for grand houses were whistling from Buffalo to Wright's studio in Oak Park, Illinois. An intimate bond united the architect and Darwin D. Martin, Wright's most fervent supporter at the Larkin Company. A reliable patron and close friend, Martin steered crucial jobs Wright's way and afforded him generous loans. The Buffalo venture extended beyond the city limits, as clients from Buffalo moved, expanded their domestic vision to summer homes, or took on farflung projects. When the fortunes of the Larkin Company and its executives ebbed, Wright focused on new fields, in Arizona, California, and farther from home. But the traces of the Buffalo years may be seen in much of his subsequent work. Drawing on materials from archives in California, Arizona, Washington, D.C., and New York, interviews conducted over several decades, and previous studies, State University of New York at Buffalo distinguished service professor Jack Quinan brings to light one of the most significant periods of Wright's long career. With more than 125 historical and contemporary photographs and architectural plans and drawings, "Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo Venture" chronicles a little appreciated chapter in architectural history.

Wright on Exhibit

Wright on Exhibit
Author: Kathryn Smith
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2022-07-12
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0691246416

The first history of Frank Lloyd Wright's exhibitions of his own work—a practice central to his career More than one hundred exhibitions of Frank Lloyd Wright's work were mounted between 1894 and his death in 1959. Wright organized the majority of these exhibitions himself and viewed them as crucial to his self-presentation as his extensive writings. He used them to promote his designs, appeal to new viewers, and persuade his detractors. Wright on Exhibit presents the first history of this neglected aspect of the architect’s influential career. Drawing extensively from Wright’s unpublished correspondence, Kathryn Smith challenges the preconceived notion of Wright as a self-promoter who displayed his work in search of money, clients, and fame. She shows how he was an artist-architect projecting an avant-garde program, an innovator who expanded the palette of installation design as technology evolved, and a social activist driven to revolutionize society through design. While Wright’s earliest exhibitions were largely for other architects, by the 1930s he was creating public installations intended to inspire debate and change public perceptions about architecture. The nature of his exhibitions expanded with the times beyond models, drawings, and photographs to include more immersive tools such as slides, film, and even a full-scale structure built especially for his 1953 retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum. Placing Wright’s exhibitions side by side with his writings, Smith shows how integral these exhibitions were to his vision and sheds light on the broader discourse concerning architecture and modernism during the first half of the twentieth century. Wright on Exhibit features color renderings, photos, and plans, as well as a checklist of exhibitions and an illustrated catalog of extant and lost models made under Wright’s supervision.

Symbolic Space

Symbolic Space
Author: Richard A. Etlin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1996-12-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780226220857

Richard A. Etlin demonstrates how the conceptual basis of the modern house and the physical layout of the modern city emerged from debates among theoretically innovative French architects of the eighteenth century. Examining a broad range of topics from architecture and urbanism to gardening and funerary monuments, he reconsiders eighteenth-century French architecture with regard to the ways in which it was informed by symbolic space. This book provides an accessible introduction to a century of architecture that transformed the classical forms of the Renaissance and Baroque periods into building types still familiar today.

The Oak Park Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright

The Oak Park Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright
Author: Lisa D. Schrenk
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2021-04-05
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 022631913X

Between 1898 and 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright’s residential studio in the idyllic Chicago suburb of Oak Park served as a nontraditional work setting as he matured into a leader in his field and formulized his iconic design ideology. Here, architectural historian Lisa D. Schrenk breaks the myth of Wright as the lone genius and reveals new insights into his early career. With a rich narrative voice and meticulous detail, Schrenk tracks the practice’s evolution: addressing how the studio fit into the Chicago-area design scene; identifying other architects working there and their contributions; and exploring how the suburban setting and the nearby presence of Wright’s family influenced office life. Built as an addition to his 1889 shingle-style home, Wright’s studio was a core site for the ideological development of the prairie house, one of the first truly American forms of residential architecture. Schrenk documents the educational atmosphere of Wright’s office in the context of his developing design ideology, revealing three phases as he transitioned from colleague to leader. This heavily illustrated book includes a detailed discussion of the physical changes Wright made to the building and how they informed his architectural thinking and educational practices. Schrenk also addresses the later transformations of the building, including into an art center in the 1930s, its restoration in the 1970s and 80s, and its current use as a historic house museum. Based on significant original and archival research, including interviews with Wright’s family and others involved in the studio and 180 images, The Oak Park Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright offers the first comprehensive look at the early independent office of one of the world’s most influential architects.

The Vision of Frank Lloyd Wright

The Vision of Frank Lloyd Wright
Author: Thomas A. Heinz
Publisher: Chartwell Books
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2016-08-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0785834427

Architectural genius Frank Lloyd Wright's designs continue to amaze people. This complete collection of his designs brings them to your home.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright
Author: Robert C. Twombly
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 462
Release: 1991-01-16
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780471857976

A complete biography based on a wide range of previously untapped primary sources, covering Wright's private life, architecture, and role in American society, culture, and politics. Views Wright's buildings as biographical as well as social statements, analyzing his work by type, category, and individual structure. Examines Wright's struggle to develop a new artistic statement, his dramatic personal life, and his political and economic ideas, including those on cities, energy conservation, cooperative home building, and environmental preservation. Includes over 150 illustrations (photographs, floor plans, and drawings--many never before published), extensive footnotes, and the most exhaustive bibliography of Wright's published work available.