<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Essential, yet disappointing
Review: This is an immense, original, dense, and unique attempt to evaluate what is "outside" of Wright's artful buildings. The authors' 50-year fascination with F.Ll. Wright's vaunted organic architecture and respect for nature results in the first book study of Wright's landscaping-only to discover Wright did hardly any landscaping, and what he did was often illusionary rather than natural (vide: spectacular and dramatic manipulation of artificial urns, planters, terraces, and axial markers)! The Aguars looked in the archives and, aside from impressionistic renderings or geometric exercises, they found hardly a developed site or garden plan from Wright's hand or after his early Prairie years! Consequently, the great bulk of this book is the authors' reconstruction or critical evaluation of the little that is explicit. Most of their attention is perforce upon what exists on the grounds of Wright houses today, 50 or 75 years on. The late Charles Aguar, a landscape architect, interviewed owners (37 original) and subjects 85 sites to intensive site analysis to try to reconstruct what was in Wright's mind and to evaluate the pros and cons of each landscape design. (Of course there's very little about the houses themselves, or their interiors.) Some of the most fascinating designs are Wright's ventures into mass suburban planning, where Aguar can trace the evolution of his thought and practice through a series of (mostly unrealized) housing schemes. Where available he includes original planting information from the archives, but supplies none of his own for the present day. He does address admonitions for maintenance or restoration to current owners of Wright places. Aguar suggests that Wright was a far better architect than landscaper, that he was strongly influenced at specific points in his career by anti-realistic Japanese landscape design, that he became an "organic" (integrated) designer only with the development of his Taliesin estate, and that he was at his best designing and siting buildings on flat land where his geometries were least constrained by the siting analysis, soil studies, and grading plans he never made. Text and illustrations complement each other well, but some corners have unfortunately been cut when the co-author had to reduce the text to one volume. Charles Aguar's lifelong devotion to studying Wright is poorly served by the tiny photos and maps, many his own. Despite taking thousands of color slides during their visits to 189 Wright sites, and publishing on heavy glossy paper, the authors include not a single color picture (the dust cover excepted). Gardeners will be immensely disappointed in this book, designers somewhat less so. There are no color schemes and hardly a decent planting scheme (at miniscule scale), but you can compile from the 13 appendices a short list of "Wrightian" species (while recognizing that most of them actually derive from the work of Griffith or Jensen, early collaborators of Wright in Chicago). For an "environmental" appreciation of Wright's buildings themselves, you might like Grant Hildenbrand's The Wright Space, with its exciting visualizations of shelter, prospect, and procession within his buildings.
Rating:
Summary: Essential, yet disappointing
Review: This is an immense, original, dense, and unique attempt to evaluate what is "outside" of Wright's artful buildings. The authors' 50-year fascination with F.Ll. Wright's vaunted organic architecture and respect for nature results in the first book study of Wright's landscaping-only to discover Wright did hardly any landscaping, and what he did was often illusionary rather than natural (vide: spectacular and dramatic manipulation of artificial urns, planters, terraces, and axial markers)! The Aguars looked in the archives and, aside from impressionistic renderings or geometric exercises, they found hardly a developed site or garden plan from Wright's hand or after his early Prairie years! Consequently, the great bulk of this book is the authors' reconstruction or critical evaluation of the little that is explicit. Most of their attention is perforce upon what exists on the grounds of Wright houses today, 50 or 75 years on. The late Charles Aguar, a landscape architect, interviewed owners (37 original) and subjects 85 sites to intensive site analysis to try to reconstruct what was in Wright's mind and to evaluate the pros and cons of each landscape design. (Of course there's very little about the houses themselves, or their interiors.) Some of the most fascinating designs are Wright's ventures into mass suburban planning, where Aguar can trace the evolution of his thought and practice through a series of (mostly unrealized) housing schemes. Where available he includes original planting information from the archives, but supplies none of his own for the present day. He does address admonitions for maintenance or restoration to current owners of Wright places. Aguar suggests that Wright was a far better architect than landscaper, that he was strongly influenced at specific points in his career by anti-realistic Japanese landscape design, that he became an "organic" (integrated) designer only with the development of his Taliesin estate, and that he was at his best designing and siting buildings on flat land where his geometries were least constrained by the siting analysis, soil studies, and grading plans he never made. Text and illustrations complement each other well, but some corners have unfortunately been cut when the co-author had to reduce the text to one volume. Charles Aguar's lifelong devotion to studying Wright is poorly served by the tiny photos and maps, many his own. Despite taking thousands of color slides during their visits to 189 Wright sites, and publishing on heavy glossy paper, the authors include not a single color picture (the dust cover excepted). Gardeners will be immensely disappointed in this book, designers somewhat less so. There are no color schemes and hardly a decent planting scheme (at miniscule scale), but you can compile from the 13 appendices a short list of "Wrightian" species (while recognizing that most of them actually derive from the work of Griffith or Jensen, early collaborators of Wright in Chicago). For an "environmental" appreciation of Wright's buildings themselves, you might like Grant Hildenbrand's The Wright Space, with its exciting visualizations of shelter, prospect, and procession within his buildings.
<< 1 >>
|
