Building Taliesin

Through letters, memoirs, contemporary documents, and a stunning assemblage of photographs - many of which have never before been published - author Ron McCrea tells the fascinating story of the building of Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin, which would be the architect's principal residence for the rest of his life. Photos taken by Wright's associates show rare views of Taliesin under construction and illustrate Wright's own recollections of the first summer there and the craftsmen who worked on the site. The book also brings to life Wright’s "kindred spirit," "she for whom Taliesin had first taken form," Mamah Borthwick. Wright and Borthwick had each abandoned their families to be together, causing a scandal that reverberated far beyond Wright's beloved Wisconsin valley. The shocking murder and fire that took place at Taliesin in August 1914 brought this first phase of life at Taliesin to a tragic end.

The Building Blocks series presents icons of modern architecture as interpreted by Ezra Stoller, whose photography has defined the way postwar architecture has been viewed by architects, historians, and the public at large. Taken just after the completion of each project, these photographs provide a unique historical record of the buildings in use, documenting people, fashions, and furnishings of the period.

This inaugural issue is devoted to studies of Taliesin I. Designed and constructed in 1911 upon Wright’s return to Wisconsin from Europe, Taliesin I burned in August 1914. It thus became the most difficult Wright residence for Wright scholars to examine. In this volume’s critical essays, Neil Levine offers a view of the different layers of meaning of Taliesin I; Scott Gartner explains the legend of the Welsh bard Taliesin and its meaning for Wright; Anthony Alofsin considers the influence of the playwright Richard Hovey and the feminist Ellen Key on Wright’s and Cheney’s thought of the period; and Narciso G. Menocal suggests that the Gilmore and O’Shea houses in Madison, Wisconsin, are a collective antecedent to Taliesin I. To conclude the volume, Anthony Alofsin has written what amounts to a catalogue raisonné of the drawings and photographs of Taliesin I. Surprisingly, he finds no photographs of the living area and argues that those that have been published are in fact of Taliesin II.

Supplying both a gripping mystery story and an authoritative portrait of the fabled architect, William Drennan wades through the myths surrounding the massacre at Wrights landmark residence, Taliesin, and casts fresh light on the cataclysmic effects these murders exerted on his life and subsequent designs.University of Wisconsin Press

A special highlight is the chapter on Wright's collection of Asian art, which was reputed at one time to be among the largest and finest in the United States, and today consists of screens, woodblock prints, sculpture, ceramics, rugs, and textiles.

This eloquent and powerful book combines poetry and pragmatism to teach the language of landscape. Anne Whiston Spirn, author of the award-winning The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design, argues that the language of landscape exists with its own syntax, grammar, and metaphors, and that we imperil ourselves by failing to learn to read and speak this language. To understand the meanings of landscape, our habitat, is to see the world differently and to enable ourselves to avoid profound aesthetic and environmental mistakes. Offering examples that range across thousands of years and five continents, Spirn examines urban, rural, and natural landscapes. She discusses the thought of renowned landscape authors--Thomas Jefferson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Frederick Law Olmsted, Lawrence Halprin--and of less well known pioneers, including Australian architect Glenn Murcutt and Danish landscape artist C. Th. Sørensen. She discusses instances of great landscape designers using landscape fluently, masterfully, and sometimes cynically. And, in a probing analysis of the many meanings of landscape, Spirn shows how one person's ideal landscape may be another's nightmare, how Utopian landscapes can be dark. There is danger when we lose the connection between a place and our understanding of it, Spirn warns, and she calls for change in the way we shape our environment, based on the notions of nature as a set of ideas and landscape as the expression of action and ideas in place.

Ulysses reveals all the secrets of the Grand Canyon and leads you on the discovery of other parks sculpted by nature in this south-western U.S. state. It also takes you to Arizona's dynamic cities, most notably, Phoenix and Tuscon.

The story of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life is no less astounding than his greatest architectural works. He enmeshed himself eagerly in myth and hearsay, and revelled in the extravagance of his creative persona. Throughout his long career, Wright strongly resisted the suggestion that his accomplishments owed anything to earthly influences. As much as he wanted his achievements to be recognised, he wanted them to be unaccountable – but they are not. This book reveals for the first time how his unbreakable self-belief and startling creative defiance both originated in the liberal religious and philosophical attitudes woven into his personality during his childhood – deliberately so by his mother and by his many aunts and uncles, to honour the fierce Welsh radicalism of their ancestors.