Book Favorites #4

I will continue the Book Favorites series even though I finished the book on Frank Lloyd Wright. (There still is a lot to talk about.)  Here is a section that talks about his education:



    "At eighteen Frank Lloyd Wright (he had changed his middle name to reflect his part in the Welsh clan)"  (By the way, his name was first Frank Lincoln Wright, which was a common name in the late 1800s.)  "dropped out of high school for the last time, without graduating.  His record of grades and attendance was a ruin.  He had decided, however, that he was going to become an architect.  Ignoring the guidelines and requirements for students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, he entered as a "special student."  Without discipline or study skills, it was predictable that he would bomb.

    

    In his autobiography, Wright suggests that he attended the University of Wisconsin in engineering studies for over three years, dropping out just before graduation because the degree simply wasn't important to him.



    What wasn't important to him was the education itself.  He dropped out after three semesters, little more than a year, failing in most of his classes.  The only degrees Frank Lloyd Wright ever recieved were honorary doctorates, many years later.  He entered the profession of architecture without a thimbleful of architectural education.  As strange as it seems to us, his ignorance may have been a lucky break."



- Up Close: Frank Lloyd Wright by Jan Adkins



This shows how Wright, con-man and trickster, actually got into the profession.  But how could he of?  It is all about how he played the game.





  

 

My Biography Book Report | Finished!

I finished my biography book report on Frank Lloyd Wright in my English class last Thursday.  I was only allowed two paragraphs, but I could of written a bunch more!   The minimum was seven sentences per paragraph, and I had like 12 each!  But overall, I thought it went very well.  There is just so much stuff about Wright in the book that I couldn't talk about.  So I'm thinking about doing a report on my blog, but the amount of information is so great that it will probably be a LONG post!  If I need to I could seperate it out into parts.  We'll see.  (still thinking about it)

I Finished the Book

I finally finished my biography book report on Frank Lloyd Wright today!  It was a long book, and it's good I finished it because it is due tomorrow!  The book was amazing, and to learn about the most famous architect in the 20th century is awesome!  His life was a constant roller coaster, which also contained debt, tragedies, and a hard childhood.  Here is the last part of the book,

                        "Frank Lloyd Wright's most brilliant creation and most colorful
                 creation was Frank Lloyd Wright.  He was not entirely truthful,
                          not always pleasant, seldom easy, but he was an orginial chararcter. 
                    The old fox was a dandy, wit, loudmouth, trickster, and the greatest
                      con man we've ever had.  He was also a desciplined engineer
                             and a heavyweight creator whose heroic career went on for
                         seventy-three productive years.  He was what he was. 
                                                  If we don't like it, we can lump it."

- Up Close: Frank Lloyd Wright by Jan Adkins, pg. 287

Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9, 1959.  He died near Taliesin West from an intestinal obstruction and passed unexpectadly.  In the spring, before Wright's death, his first wife Catherine "Kitty" Wright died quietly right before her eighty-eighth birthday. 

I will be showing more parts of this book even after my report.  There still is a bunch to talk about on Frank Lloyd Wright!

Book Favorites #3

In my third book favorites post, I will be showing a part of the book where Wright creates Taliesin West, which is his winter home in Scottsdale, Arizona.  He was around 70 when he designed it.  The first Taliesin, Taliesin East, is in Wisconsin near Spring Creek.  This was Wright's summer home.  Here is a passage from the book about Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West.

"The new Taliesin was a long, low prism.  Angular vertical walls

 were spread out over nine hundred feet, backed by a low, connecting

horizontal wall.  Redwood beams covered by natural canvas panels

spanned these verticals.  The angles mirrored the angles of the mountain

ridges: low against a rear buttress wall, rising to a shallow peak, falling

more abruptly in a shed roof to the open side.  As it rose they began

to call it 'Taliesin West.'"

                                                            

                                                                - Up Close: Frank Lloyd Wright by Jan Adkins

Here is a picture of the beautiful "Taliesin West."  (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

 References:

1. Take a look at my full "Book Favorites" series here!
2. Taliesin West

Book Favorites #2

Welcome to the second installment in my Book Favorites series.  Here is another very interesting section of the biography I'm reading about one of the most famous architects off all time: Frank Lloyd Wright.  This next section of the book will talk about the D.D. Martin House that Wright designed.  It is a perfect example of the Prairie style.  Here is a picture of the house.

                                          "And then there were the flower pots.  Wright was
                                             obsessed with flower pots, big ones, five and six
                                           feet across, grand enough to be called "urns."  He
                                           used them to punctuate the long sills of walls and
                                              to finish majestic blocks of masonry with a flourish. 
                                               Lots of flower pots.  Some people didn't understand
                                               the need for all those pots, especially clients who
                                          hadn't requested the vast, expensive, custom-made

concrete cauldrons big enough to sleep in."

- Up Close: Frank Lloyd Wright by Jan Adkins

Book Favorites #1

Welcome to my new series on architecture books.  I'm not sure how long this series will last because I'm only planning on reading my biography book called Up Close: Frank Lloyd Wright by Jan Adkins.  The series will consist of my favorite sections of the book.  By me doing this it will also show you more about Frank Lloyd Wright and his amazing work!   I might start reading more in the future when I get more into architecture books, but right now I'm not that interested.  Enjoy.

"He cared about only one thing: architecture.  Clients
and laws and money weren't important.  The work was
everthing.  He used clients and their money to create his
architecture, whether they liked it or not.  Somehow he
swept his clients up into a kind of enchantment.  They
became hypnotized by his magical talk and fanciful
promises.  Under his spell, they wrote more

checks and put up with his insults and eccentricities." 

- Up Close: Frank Lloyd Wright by Jan Adkins

I never would have thought that Wright would be like that, but it is true.  I think it is because his early life was a constant roller coaster.  He was beaten by his mother, his dad left the house when he was a teenager, and worked on the farm constantly in the summer.  Wright's life was hard, and that is why I think that his personality was like this.  I will be showing more on Wright's childhood in another post.



Frank Lloyd Wright...Wow!

I bet a lot of you have seen my Quoted series, and if you looked closely you could tell that more than half of the quotes were by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Well, it just so happens that my English teacher assigned us a biography book report.  When I went into Best of Books (it's a bookstore) and went to the biography section, right in front of me was a book called, "Up Close: Frank Lloyd Wright."  It is like it was meant for me! :)  So it turns out that it will be my book for my book report coming up next month, and I'm very excited to start reading!  I will be posting my favorite sections of the book on my blog as soon as I start reading!  Enjoy the ARCHITECTURE!