Acclaimed as the “father of skyscrapers”, the quintessentially American icon Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) was an architect of aspiration. He believed in giving cultivated American life its fitting architectural equivalent and applied his idealism to structures across the continent, from suburban homes to churches, offices, skyscrapers, and the celebrated Guggenheim Museum.

Wright’s work is distinguished by its harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture, and which found its paradigm at Fallingwater, a house in rural Pennsylvania, cited by the American Institute of Architects as “the best all-time work of American architecture”. Wright also made a particular mark with his use of industrial materials, and by the simple L or T plan of his Prairie House which became a model for rural architecture across America. Wright was also often involved in many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as the furniture and stained glass, paying particular attention to the balance between individual needs and community activity.

Exploring Wright’s aspirations to augment American society through architecture, this book offers a concise introduction to his at once technological and Romantic response to the practical challenges of middle-class Americans.

The author

Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer became Frank Lloyd Wright’s apprentice at the Taliesin Fellowship in 1949. In 1957, he attended the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, returning in 1958 to continue his apprenticeship with Wright until his death in 1959. He remains at Taliesin to this day, as director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, a vice-president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and author of numerous publications on Wright's life and work.

The editor

Peter G·ssel runs an agency for museum and exhibition design. He has published TASCHEN monographs on Julius Shulman, R. M. Schindler, John Lautner, and Richard Neutra as well as several architecture titles in the Basic Art Series.