Frank Lloyd Wright: Letters to Clients

Title

Frank Lloyd Wright: Letters to Clients

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Description

"LETTERS TO CLIENTS is the third volume in our 'Frank Lloyd Wright Letters Trilogy,' all published by The Press at California State University Press, Fresno. The first one, LETTERS TO APPRENTICES (1982) focused upon Frank Lloyd Wright as a teacher. LETTERS TO ARCHITECTS (1984) dealt in the main with Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural principles, ideas and ideals. In LETTERS TO CLIENTS Frank Lloyd Wright is seen at work, getting his buildings built. Here all of the principles, all of the creativity, all of the innovations and efforts to get them down on paper are spread out for the reader to see.

From the hundreds of clients in his lifetime, and the thousands of letters to an from them, the letters to clients presented here focus upon sixteen representative buildings. These include large buildings and small, early ones and late, buildings for easy clients and for difficult ones, even an unbuilt project for a colorful Hollywood personality. The buildings range from the world famous Fallingwater built for Edgar Kaufmann to the near anonymous gem of a Pauson house that burned two years after construction.

The letters selected for this volume reveal, from the inside as it were, the actual creation of works by the greatest architect of our century. They allow us to share in the inspiration and, at least as important, in the bedrock know-how that made those buildings function. The artist who envisioned the streamlined Johnson Administration Building also innovated all steel office furniture for better fireproofing. The architect who built the magical Hollyhock house also developed new and efficient methods for cleaning public restrooms. As these letters suggest, there seemed to be nothing in the world of architecture that Frank Lloyd Wright could not do. And he usually did it first.

While LETTERS TO CLIENTS runs the full gamut of Frank Lloyd Wright's creativity, there is one significant omission: the Guggenheim Museum. The seventeen years struggle to get that building built is, however, more the stuff of drama than of architecture. Its small mountain of correspondence is a volume in itself, and essentially a statement in human terms. It is therefore being published separately as THE GUGGENHEIM CORRESPONDENCE, with introductions and commentary by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer (The Press at California State University, Fresno, 1986)."

ISBN

0912201088

Publication Date

1986

Publisher

The Press at California State University

City

Fresno, CA

Keywords

Architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright

Disciplines

Architecture

Frank Lloyd Wright: Letters to Clients
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