Frank Lloyd Wright Revealed

This book is a good resource for students doing a National History project about Frank Lloyd Wright's house, Fallingwater. The book shows the structure of the house in ways that makes sense to 5th grade students. As a teacher, I value this kind of resource for this age of student.

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 wo

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!