Wrightscapes - Hardcover

Aguar, Charles And Berdeana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071377689 ISBN 13: 9780071377683

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education, 2002

Synopsis

The first in-depth look at the environmental designs of "America's favourite architect", Frank Lloyd Wright. It contains many never before published photographs and site plans. "...a comprehensive and intriguing look at the work of Frank Lloyd Wright from the outside. It provides a view from the perspective of his designs in settings or landscapes ...the point of view is to see how the designs of the outside flow into, out of, around, and in a few classic cases, under the architecture of the building." - John Crowley, Dean, College of Environmental Design, University of Georgia. Shedding light on a fascinating yet previously unexamined topic, "Wrightscapes" analyzes 85 of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs paying particular attention to site planning, landscape design, community scale and regional planning. The authors include many original diagrams, rare archival material, and some 200 photographs and site plans, many never published before, detailing Wright's residential and public work and his urban design initiatives. A true collectors item "Wrightscapes" is a pleasure to read and a joy to own. Frank Lloyd Wright is perhaps best remembered for his unmatched mastery of the organic style of architecture - where a structure's form and material blend harmoniously with its natural surroundings. Less well known, but equally inspirational are the contributions Wright brought to landscape and site design. His creations in this area reflect a holistic, sustainable, and environmentally-sensitive utilization of plants, climate, solar power, and natural lighting. "Wrightscapes" is the first definitive book to address Frank Lloyd Wright's landscapes and environments. The authors provide a unique new perspective of the man and his work by presenting previously ignored, yet important aspects of his achievements, interests, and career, including little-known facts such as: Wright originated the visionary concept of a rear living-room opening into a garden terrace - fifty years before the California architects generally credited with the concept; Wright actually designed the first carport - three decades prior to the date he is said to have "invented" it; during the first forty years of Wright's career, he personally and professionally interacted with, and was significantly influenced by, designers who today would be described as landscape architects; Wright had a career-long fascination with community-scale planning. "Wrightscapes" also chronicles how and why Wright's famous ecological sensibilities were established, delving into Japanese and European influences as well as forces that shaped both the young and the mature architect. The authors also demonstrate how his design aspirations went far beyond the accepted definitions of architecture. In order to be as complete as possible, "Wrightscapes" even includes a detailed listing of "dos and don'ts" for owners of homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Here is truly groundbreaking, richly-illustrated coverage of an important yet unexplored aspect of Frank Lloyd Wright's genius.

About this title

Review:

From Noteworthy Books section This impressive study of a usually neglected aspect of Frank Lloyd Wright's work includes a capsule history of Usonian Homes and a number of Wright's other attempts to create comparable communities. A photograph of the Reisley's home appears on the dustjacket. Wrightscapes differs, however, from Usonia in purpose, scope, and character. Rather than presenting a single human-interest story, it tells many stories about hundreds of places. Although Charles and Berdeana Aguar treat the men and women in these stories sensitively, their purpose is to offer systematic technical descriptions and analyses of the landscapes in which Frank Lloyd Wright's designs were build. Believing that Wright's ecological and environmental sensibilities "developed over a number of years within the social and historical context in which he lived and worked," they proceed chronologically, beginning with his home in Oak Park. In the Preface, Berdeanna Aguar describes how, through more than a decade, she and her late husband had visited 157 sites in 22 states and interviewed 9 former senior apprentices and 97 homeowners, of whom 37 were original clients or "first families." In 1948 she and her husband had visited Taliesin to explore the possibility of joining the Fellowship, but their financial circumstances made membership impossible. That, however, did not diminish the Aguars' interest in Wright; through the years. Charles Aguar visited almost 200 sites, many of them more than once, an Mrs. Aguar accompanied him on most of the visits. Wrightscapes treats Wright's architectural career in nine phases, from the "Emergent Years, 1889-1897" to the "Taliesin Fellowship Years -- the Era of Usonia, 1937-1959." The chapter on the "Oak Park Studio Years, 1897-1909" claims the largest number of pages. Here the Aguars analyze the landscapes of about their structures, projects, and proposals. Along the way, they call attention to the persons and other influences that shaped Wright's approach to landscaping. In the course of their work, according to Mrs. Aguar, they discovered some distressing truths that reflected Wright's professional failings. For example, he designed some buildings before a site was selected, and he was not above selling a plan designed for a distinctive site for use in as many as three other sites that shared none of the geographical circumstances of the original one. In many instances, neither he nor any member of his staff visited a site before or after construction. Moreover, it took him a while to perceive "the fact that landscape architecture is an art subject to the dimension of time wherein the consideration of natural progression, the whims of climate, and appropriate maintenance must be factored into the design process." ...Many, though, will find it helpful in understanding sites that hold particular interest for them. The descriptions and analyses of the Martin House and Taliesin, for example, are superb. Wrightscapes deserves to be a companion to William Allin Storrer's The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog. With the Aguars' book in hand, readers will be led to discover, as I have, that there is much more to see in each site than the building...extraordinarily fine book. Talisman 20040801 Wrightscapes documents the environmental designs of Frank Lloyd Wright. Authors Charles and Berdeana Aguar chronicle the life of this talented icon from his childhood in the harsh climates of Wisconsin through to his adult life in the warmer temperatures at Taliesin West in the Arizona desert. The authors show Wright as having been extremely sensitive to site planning and other landscape-related issues. The Aguars detail how Frederick Law Olmsted, the Columbian Exposition, and the rebuilding of Chicago after the great fire of 1871 had a profound impact on the career of America's most famous architect. Wrightscapes clearly delineates Wright's life into understandable stages and tackles each phase with a level of detail that is impressive since Wright's life has already been so well researched. To obtain their wealth of Wright knowledge, the authors conducted extensive site visits and studies, established personal relationships with former and present owners of Wright projects and created a productive relationship with the people of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Wrightscapes will benefit those who believe landscape architects should strongly influence a site's design before the structural architecture is created. This book makes it clear that Wright took the landscape into consideration and consulted landscape architects, including the notable Jens Jensen, before designing houses and other buildings. Wright's interest in innovative landscape design can be seen early on in his career with the design of his Oak Park home and studio, which he sited to take advantage of views, privacy, trees, vegetation and microclimates. He was also an ardent proponent of the Prairie School, a modern architectural design style that promoted the use of native plants and creating a sense of place within designed landscapes. Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's estate in Spring Green, Wisconsin, was one of his most mature landscape designs and upheld his Organic Architecture design principals. Wright took great pains to design the house and land into one element that combined American, Italian, and Japanese components of landscape design into one cohesive whole. The book points out that although Falling Water was his most famous design, it went against his Organic Architecture strategies. These design guidelines stated that architecture should be sited in a manner that lets the occupants enjoy the most prominent features of the site, instead of building on top of them. The in-depth study done on many of Wright's Organic Architecture design sites will benefit landscape architects because they show the importance that the sun, seasons, wind, and other natural parameters of the place play into designing our environment. Wrightscapes may never have come to fruition without the persistence and dedication of Charles Aguar's wife Berdeana after the untimely death of her husband. Wright fans and landscape architects owe a great debt to her for this because without her diligence this important book may have never been published. Thanks to Berdeana, the world can enjoy a new book about Frank Lloyd Wright that is progressive and forward thinking, an extremely difficult feat to accomplish. Unlike Wright, an architectural genius who realized fame and critical acclaim while living, it is sometimes difficult to assess a person's true accomplishments until after they have passed away. The extent a person impacts their community, profession and family can sometimes only be fully realized once they are gone. Such is the case with Charles Aguar who passed away before Wrightscapes was published. I have learned from many sources of Aguar's extreme devotion to his students, peers and his wife Berdeana, a bond that was undividable. Aguar also greatly impacted his community as seen through his contribution to the creation of Athens (GA) greenway. He also contributed a great deal of research to the profession of landscape architecture including an in-depth study into the life and works of landscape designer Earle S. Draper, whom Aguar dubbed "the unsung hero of Southern (U.S.) landscape architecture." Aguar's most significant research legacy nevertheless will most likely be the work that he and Berdeana compiled into Wrightscapes. Georgia Landscape Magazine 20030701 Excerpts from feature article in HOME section by Lisa Morrison Springfield -- You hear the admiration in her voice as she begins to speak. Berdeana Aguar, co-author of the book, Wrightscapes is talking about Frank Lloyd Wright looking at the site planning, landscape design and community planning elements of his career... In 1994, the Aguars got the idea to write about Wright. When they looked at the vast number of books on the architect, they saw a hole. Not much had been written about the outside of Wright homes -- the landscaping and planning that went into the site selection and plantings. They gathered information by traveling the country, visiting homes and talking to the families Wright designed for. Additional information was gained by looking at the original site plans and how they had evolved. What began as a two-volume series was eventually edited down to one book and released in May 2002. Berdeana was faced with finishing the book herself when her husband died in 2000. She is currently working on a new book about her husband's work across the country. This is some of what the Aguars discovered after years of study: * Much of what Wright created was a reaction against the formal Victorian period. His landscaping went to the opposite of the evergreen, planned and ornate landscapes. * Wright didn't want his homes to look like other homes in the area. The large, high-maintenance gardens of the time were replaced with easy-to-maintain natural areas. Wright didn't try to hide but instead tried to blend where house and ground meet. * He extended the lines of his structural designs with long linear planter boxes, which he preferred be planted with a draping ivy-type plant. He added depth and light to designs by layering the outsides as well as the insides of homes with sunken gardens and changing depths. "The three elements you would use in a Wright garden would be native, deciduous and perennial plants," Berdeana said. ... The Aguars' book takes a look at the wide range of work Wright created, the planned developments, site plans and the influences in his life. Herald and Review, Decatur, IL 20030511 Review by Edith Payne from Spring 2003 Issue Those interested in Wright have long awaited a definitive study of the surroundings for Wright's architecture. It has now been published, and it constitutes a masterful addition to those books that critically evaluate Wright's work. The authors are a husband (now, unfortunately deceased) and wife: he a Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture at the horticulturally-eminent University of Georgia; she, a scriptwriter for commercial videos and documentary films. Coincidentally, Professor Aguar attended the Conservancy's organizational meeting at Taliesin West, and he was on the program at the Conservancy's 1991 meetings in Grand Rapids, where he presented some of the early research for this book. Like many Wright aficionados, Professor Aguar, then a student of landscape architecture and city planning, sought to join the Taliesin Fellowship, and in 1948 both Aguars traveled to Taliesin for that purpose. Although Professor Aguar was unable to do so because of the unavailability of GI benefits, the interest of both Aguars in Wright continued throughout their lives. In the past decade, that interest became a major professional focus as they conducted the field investigations, the interviews of original and subsequent homeowners, and the research that underlie this book. Wrightscapes itself is not an architecture book, nor it is wholly a landscape one. It is an integration that could only be achieved by a true landscape "architect." It teaches that, at least as far as Wright was concerned, buildings and their surroundings cannot be separated. It demonstrates that the whole is best interpreted by persons who have knowledge and understanding of both hardscape and natural surroundings. The book is organized in a chronological fashion, spanning Wright's work from the early bootleg days to the conclusion of his Usonian years. The Aguars' focus, by necessity, is principally upon structure and siting as the authors explore the relationship developed by Wright between the two in individual homes and planned communities. However, the Aguars include as well extremely informative analyses of the forces that shaped Wright's thinking and of the work of those who contributed crucially to its development. As stated by Mrs. Aguar, "It never was our intent to write another book deifying Wright," and this book does not. Instead, it details with remarkable grace and balance the process by which Wright learned his craft, it discusses the distinctions that exist between his rhetoric and reality, and it describes not only Wright's extraordinary triumphs but also sympathetically analyzes his professional failings and the lessons learned from them. Wrightscapes is in no sense a cocktail table book, since its layout is of a density that discourages casual reading. Along those lines, one could wish that the book had been published in the two volumes that were initially proposed so that the copious diagrams and illustrations could be viewed with greater ease. However, thanks, one suspects, to Mrs. Aguar's talents, the book is eminently readable, and it invites hard use as an accompaniment to Wright site excursions. Of particular interest to landscape designers and simple gardeners are the appendices containing lists of plant materials designated for use at various Wright projects. In an afterword to the book, the authors write, "The writing of Wrightscapes will have been worthwhile if it prevents any more destruction of the type that resulted from saving an endangered landmark, but relocating it with a siting and orientation foreign to its former occupants. It will have been worthwhile if it creates an awareness for the importance of replacement planting to assure that a mature tree with an established root system will be in place to more readily fill the void created whenever a character-defining tree inevitably succumbs to natural forces. And it will have been worthwhile if it encourages restorationists--whether private owners, public or non-profit organizations--to undertake the kind of in-depth research of Wright's proposed site environment and the rationale behind his siting and orientation as preceded the restoration of the structure." Wrightscapes provides amply the knowledge necessary to avoid the Aguars' enumerated horrors, and they are to be commended for making that knowledge available to the reading public. Bulletin: The Quarterly Newsletter of the Frank Lloyd Wright Conservatory 20030421 By D. Schuyler, Franklin & Marshall College "Wrightscapes" are landscapes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that embody the basic principles of his approach to environmental planning. This book is the result of Aguar's fascination with Wright, which began in the 1940s and continued until his death in 2000...Aguar concedes that Wright's designs didn't always live up to his ideal of an organic architecture, but they present Wright as "essentially pioneering the new discipline of environmental design." An important book. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. Choice 20021202 Reviewed by Virginia Lockett Russell, FASLA I had a stack of books to buy that had gone over budget, and without giving it a glance I put Wrightscapes, by Berdeana Aguar and the late Charges Aguar, back on the shelf. A book entitled with one word including the cliche "scapes" can't be all that useful, I assumed, and besides, does my library (or the world) really need another book about Frank Lloyd Wright? I have since given the book a second chance, and if only one more book about the world's most frequency published architect is allowed, perhaps this should be it. Here is a book that presents Wright, not as an icon, but as a designer coming of age under the influence of his upbringing, ...

From the Back Cover:

THE FIRST IN-DEPTH LOOK AT THE ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGNS OF 'AMERICA'S FAVORITE ARCHITECT' . . . FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

CONTAINS MANY NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED PHOTOGRAPHS AND SITE PLANS

' . . . a comprehensive and intriguing look at the work of Frank Lloyd Wright from the outside. It provides a view from the perspective of his designs in settings or landscapes . . . the point of view is to see how the designs of the outside flow into, out of, around, and in a few classic cases, under the architecture of the building.' John Crowley, Dean, College of Environmental Design, University of Georgia

Shedding light on a fascinating yet previously unexamined topic, Wrightscapes analyzes 85 of Frank Lloyd Wright's designs paying particular attention to site planning, landscape design, community scale and regional planning. The authors include many original diagrams, rare archival material, and some 200 photographs and site plans, many never published before, detailing Wright's residential and public work and his urban design initiatives. A true collectors item Wrightscapes is a pleasure to read and a joy to own.

Frank Lloyd Wright is perhaps best remembered for his unmatched mastery of the organic style of architecture - where a structure's form and material blend harmoniously with its natural surroundings. Less well known, but equally inspirational are the contributions Wright brought to landscape and site design. His creations in this area reflect a holistic, sustainable, and environmentally-sensitive utilization of plants, climate, solar power, and natural lighting.

Wrightscapes is the first definitive book to address Frank Lloyd Wright's landscapes and environments. The authors provide a unique new perspective of the man and his work by presenting previously ignored, yet important aspects of his achievements, interests, and career, including little-known facts such as:
- Wright originated the visionary concept of a rear living-room opening into a garden terrace fifty years before the California architects generally credited with the concept
- Wright actually designed the first carport - three decades prior to the date he is said to have 'invented' it
- During the first forty years of Wright's career, he personally and professionally interacted with, and was significantly influenced by, designers who today would be described as landscape architects
- Wright had a career-long fascination with community-scale planning

Wrightscapes also chronicles how and why Wright's famous ecological sensibilities were established, delving into Japanese and European influences as well as forces that shaped both the young and the mature architect. The authors also demonstrate how his design aspirations went far beyond the accepted definitions of architecture. In order to be as complete as possible, Wrightscapes even includes a detailed listing of 'dos and don'ts' for owners of homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright

Here is truly groundbreaking, richly-illustrated coverage of an important yet unexplored aspect of Frank Lloyd Wright's genius.

About this edition

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0071377689
• ISBN 13: 9780071377683
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 374