Frank Lloyd Wright

A cultural icon who defined the twentieth-century American landscape, Frank Lloyd Wright has been studied from what seems to be every possible angle. While many books focus on his works, torrid personal life, or both, few solely consider his professional persona, as a man enmeshed in a web of prominent public figures and political ideas. In this new biography, Robert McCarter distills Wright's life and work into a concise account that explores the beliefs and relationships so powerfully reflected in his architectural works.

McCarter examines here how Wright aspired to influence America's evolving democratic society by the challenges his buildings posed to traditional views of private and public space. He investigates Wright's relationships with key leaders of art, industry, and society, and how their views came to have concrete significance in Wright's work and writings. Wright argued that architecture should be the "background or framework" for daily life, not the "object," and McCarter dissects how and why he aspired to this and other ideals, such as his belief in the ethical duty of architects to improve society and culture.

A penetrating study of the foremost pioneer in modern architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright offers a fascinating biographical chronicle that reveals the principles and relationships at the base of Wright's production.

Library Journal

This book is not a biography of Frank Lloyd Wright but rather an investigation into Wright's philosophy of design and space. McCarter (architecture, Univ. of Florida) dulls his attempt, however, by writing a chronological narrative in the irritating manner of a tour guide, using the first-person plural "we." The reader is bombarded with descriptions of sizes and shapes of rooms and hallways, heights of ceilings, and textures of concrete slabs; there is so much minutiae that it is impossible to see the theory through the clutter. The book is filled with beautiful photographs and illustrations, as most books on Wright's works are, but they do not aid in the tour, and often we are left to our own imagination concerning the appearances of rooms and their decor. The author does offer valid insights into Wright's philosophy, but these expositions are buried under page after page of details. More discussion and less description would have greatly improved this book. Recommended only for specialized architectural and interior design libraries; general collections should consider Neil Levine's The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (LJ 6/1/96). Glenn Masuchika, Chaminade Univ. Lib., Honolulu

Robert McCarter is professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida. He is the author of several books on Frank Lloyd Wright and a recent monograph on Louis Kahn.