Frank Lloyd Wright : Master Builder (ARCHITECTURE/DE) - Softcover

Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer was an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright and is currently a trustee and Director of the Archives for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. He is the author of Frank Lloyd Wright Drawings and Treasures of Taliesin and editor of the highly praised series The Collected Writings of Frank Lloyd Wright.

David Larkin is the co-author and designer of such celebrated illustrated books as Classic America and Shaker and publisher of Barn and Wooden Ship.

Paul Rocheleau and Michael Freeman have contributed the new photography included in this book.

Wright has been the subject of numerous books, illustrative and historical, popular and scholarly, but Larkin and Pfeiffer have still succeeded in creating something fresh and exciting. This handsome volume presents brand-new photographs of and lucid critical commentary on 38 of Wright's most significant buildings, including such famous public structures as the Unity Temple (1905) in Oak Park, Illinois, and New York's Guggenheim Museum (1943-59), as well as lesser-known but stunning private homes. This selection embraces Wright's entire career, from the early prairie style to the adventurous creations of the 1940s and 1950s. The process of design for each masterwork is documented from Wright's earliest conceptual sketches to his polished drawings, which are works of art in their own right. Some black-and-white photographs of buildings under construction are provided, but the book's strongest visual components are the grand color photographs. The shots were composed to capture the unique aesthetic of each structure's exterior and interior, from its orientation to the land to its elegant decorative detail and dramatic use of natural light. A liberal sampling of excerpts from Wright's writings and correspondence adds to this volume's authority and value. Donna Seaman