Modern architecture;: Being the Kahn lectures for 1930,

by Frank Lloyd Wright

Modern Architecture is a landmark text—the first book in which America's greatest architect put forth the principles of a fundamentally new, organic architecture that would reject the trappings of historical styles while avoiding the geometric abstraction of the machine aesthetic advocated by contemporary European modernists. One of the most important documents in the development of modern architecture and the career of Frank Lloyd Wright, Modern Architecture is a provocative and profound polemic against America's architectural eclecticism, commercial skyscrapers, and misguided urban planning. The book is also a work of savvy self-promotion, in which Wright not only advanced his own concept of an organic architecture but also framed it as having anticipated by decades—and bettered—what he saw as the reductive modernism of his European counterparts. Based on the 1931 original, for which Wright supplied the cover illustration, this beautiful edition includes a new introduction that puts Modern Architecture in its broader architectural, historical, and intellectual context for the first time.The subjects of these lively lectures—from "Machinery, Materials and Men" to "The Tyranny of the Skyscraper" and "The City"—move from a general statement of the conditions of modern culture to particular applications in the fields of architecture and urbanism at ever broadening scales. Wright's vision in Modern Architecture is ultimately to equate the truly modern with romanticism, imagination, beauty, and nature—all of which he connects with an underlying sense of American democratic freedom and individualism.

Genres: Architecture, Art

Hardcover

First published November 1, 1987

About the author

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the world's most prominent and influential architects.

He developed a series of highly individual styles, influenced the design of buildings all over the world, and to this day remains America's most famous architect.

Wright was also well known in his lifetime. His colorful personal life frequently made headlines, most notably for the failure of his first two marriages and for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio.

Reviews

[Dominika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ależ to jest język, jaka kultura, erudycja, poetyckie przyrównania - lektura wymagająca, ale jaka piękna!

[Claudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Letta la versione italiana “Architettura e democrazia”.
Un capolavoro che tutti gli architetti dovrebbero leggere.