U.S.A. - 20th Century Architecture, Individual Architects, Designers, & Planners, Rich & Famous - Biography, General & Miscellaneous Architectural History & Criticism, U.S.A. - Western U.S. Architecture, U.S. - Individual Buildings & Designs, Prairie Scho
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Overview
This book documents, for the first time, one of the largest and most important commissions of Frank Lloyd Wright's career. Between 1914 and 1924 Wright designed an entire theater community for art patron Aline Barnsdall on her thirty-six-acre Hollywood site, called Olive Hill. Although Wright designed fourteen projects for the Barnsdall estate, only one, Hollyhock House, now a museum owned by the City of Los Angeles, has been widely published. Hollyhock and another house/studio were the only buildings on the site to be completed, but all the projects are extremely important because they bridge the period between the early, well known Oak Park era of the Prairie Houses and Wright's "modern" work after 1936. This chapter in his career--except for his involvement in another huge project, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo--is virtually unknown.Supported by unpublished drawings, photographs, correspondence, documents, and interviews from a variety of public and private sources, this volume is the product of ten years of research by architectural historian Kathryn Smith.
Editorials
Library Journal
The maturation of any artist should be well documented, and when that artist is Frank Lloyd Wright, only a well-researched and visually impressive presentation will suffice--something Smith has succeeded in creating here. This is the story of the conception, design, construction, and eventual failure of Olive Hill, a planned theatrical community on 36 acres in Hollywood. Smith describes the battle of the powerful rich with the artistic poor and the unfulfilled dreams and loss that resulted. By itself, this is a tale worth telling, but Smith uses this Hollywood landscape as a backdrop for discussing a period of intense experimentation and struggle that forced Wright to develop a more modern view of architecture. This book is rich in line drawings, architectural photographs, and documents of the original projects of Olive Hill, of which only two were built, one the famous Hollyhock House. Very little has been written about Olive Hill, and this book is a treasure of information. Recommended for public and academic libraries. For more on Wright, see the review of his Collected Writings, Vol. 2 , p. 165.--Ed.-- Glenn Masuchika, Cha minade Univ. Lib., HonoluluBook Details
Published
December 1, 1992
Publisher
Rizzoli International Publications
Pages
224
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780847815401