Frank Lloyd Wright Collected Writings, Vol. 4: 1939-1949 - Hardcover

Architect, designer, and teacher, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was also an enormously productive and influential writer, publishing a prodigious number of articles, letters, and complete books. His writings have become indispensable inclusions in architecture libraries and have influenced generations of architects, city planners, designers, environmentalists, and architectural enthusiasts in this country and throughout the world.

This is the fourth volume in the highly acclaimed series of Wright's written works, most of which are out of print and have never before been systematically compiled for publication. Arranged chronologically, Volume IV includes the years of world conflict and postwar recovery-- a rich, prolific period during which Wright created designs for some of his best-known buildings. The predominant themes of these writings are his outspoken antiwar stance, his political isolationism, and his magnificent plan for living in the late twentieth century-- Broadacre City-- which he offers as a challenge to materialism and as a means of rehumanizing the nation and its citizens through decentralization. The essays here consist of published and unpublished manuscripts, as well as the Taliesin Square-Papers, which Wright privately published in the early 1940s as "a non-political voice from our democratic minority." The writings not only look forward to new solutions but also reflect poetically on his life's work and the sources of his inspirations. Included here are the final book of his autobiography, composed primarily of personal reminiscences, as well as a discussion of life with the members of the Taliesin Fellowship, his school and apprenticeship system, and his lasting tribute to his great teacher, Louis Sullivan, in "Genius and the Mobocracy."

His architectural message is consistent with his previous writings: the United States needs an architecture that will reflect the democratic values of the nation and encourage the creative life of the individual. Wright also continues his attack on the International Style, decrying its lack of cultural character and soulless universality.

Wright created more than 200 designs during this period-- highlighted by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the S.C. Johnson and Company Research Tower, and the Florida Southern College campus, as well as factories, theaters, civic centers, and more than 100 residential designs, many of which are illustrated here with previously unpublished drawings.