Frank Lloyd Wright Louis Sullivan And The Skyscraper

This profusely illustrated work offers abundant insights into the early development of the skyscraper and the influence of two master builders who played key roles in its evolution. Rare photos, floor plans, and renderings document such influential structures as Sullivan's Wainwright Building in St. Louis, Wright's Larkin building in Buffalo and many others.

This volume brings together for the first time all the papers Louis Sullivan intended for a public audience, from his first interview in 1882 to his last essay in 1924. Organized chronologically, these speeches, interviews, essays, letters to editors, and committee reports enable readers to trace Sullivan's development from a brash young assistant to Dankmar Adler to an architectural elder statesman. Robert Twombly, an authority on Sullivan's work and life, has introduced each document with a headnote explaining its significance, locating it in time and place, and examining its immediate context. He has also provided a general introduction that analyzes Sullivan's writing style and objectives, his major philosophical themes, and the sources of his ideas. With the help of headnotes and introduction, readers will get a thorough sense of Sullivan's concerns, discover how his ideas evolved and changed, and appreciate the circumstances under which new interests emerged. This collection is a handy introduction to the full range of Sullivan's thinking, the book with which readers interested in the architect's writings should begin. As a companion volume to Robert Twombly's biography of Sullivan, it gives a comprehensive picture of one of America's most important architects and cultural figures.

Describes the life and accomplishments of the founding father of American architecture.

Insightful study of principles of Wright's architecture. Over 120 photos, plans, and illustrations of Robie House, Fallingwater, Taliesin, other masterworks.

On the eve of the twentieth century, Chicago was rapidly outgrowing its borders. Architect Louis Henry Sullivan answered the demand for more office space, theaters, department stores, and financial centers by pioneering what would become an essential model for city life - the skyscraper. Louis Sullivan's designs stand today as leading exemplars of Chicago School architecture. Frank Lloyd Wright, who worked as an assistant to Sullivan, liked to refer to him as his "lieber Meister," or "beloved master." Having spent much of his career in a late Victorian world that bristled with busy, fussy ornament for ornament's sake, Sullivan tossed all that bric-a-brac into the fire with the now famous dictum "Form follows function." He honored this ideal in his skyscrapers and his residential commissions, as well as in the small-town banks so important to the second half of his career. In Louis Sullivan: Creating a New American Architecture, nearly two hundred photographs with descriptive captions document Sullivan's genius for modern design. Patrick Cannon introduces each chapter with key biographical information and discusses the influences that shaped Sullivan's illustrious career. Rare historical photographs chronicle those buildings that, sadly, have since been destroyed, while James Caulfield's contemporary photography captures Sullivan's existing Chicago buildings and many other structures in Eastern and Midwestern cities.

Louis Henry Sullivan traces his life and oeuvre. It addresses his most famous buildings - including the Auditorium Building in Chicago, the Wainwright Building in Saint Louis, the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, and the National Farmers Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota - and reveals many of his lesser-known projects to be underappreciated masterpieces. For the first time, Sullivan's work, which has often been misappropriated, is explored in its historical and theoretical context.

The famous American architect's fascinating look at the early years of his pioneering work, which led to his being called the "father of the skyscraper." Far from an ordinary document of records and dates, Sullivan's passionate book crystallizes his insights and opinions into an organic theory of architecture. Includes a wealth of projects and evaluations, as well as 34 full-page plates.