Frank Lloyd Wright captivated the world with his architecture - Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum, Taliesin - and his flamboyant, often tumultuous personal life added to his fame. This essay by architecture critic William Marlin paints a vivid portrait of all facets of the architectural genius.

The Roaring Twenties in New York was a time of exuberant ambition, free-flowing optimism, an explosion of artistic expression in the age of Prohibition. New York was the city that embodied the spirit and strength of a newly powerful America.In 1924, in the vibrant heart of Manhattan, a fierce rivalry was born. Two architects, William Van Alen and Craig Severance (former friends and successful partners, but now bitter adversaries), set out to imprint their individual marks on the gr...

Fallingwater Rising is a biography not of a person but of the most famous house of the twentieth century. Scholars and the public have long extolled the house that Frank Lloyd Wright perched over a Pennsylvania waterfall in 1937, but the full story has never been told.When he got the commission to design the house, Wright was nearing seventy, his youth and his early fame long gone. It was the Depression, and Wright had no work in sight. Into his orbit stepped Edgar J. Kauf...

**From Pulitzer Prize–winning critic Paul Goldberger, a full-fledged critical biography of Frank Gehry, undoubtedly the most famous architect of our time.“Fascinating. . . . An informative, startling journey into the inner sanctums of modern architecture’s power structure.” —The New York Times Book Review“Riveting. . . . Full of little-known facts about the Pritzker Prize-winner that will surprise the most knowledgable Gehry-philes.” —Architectural Digest*...

Richard Rogers, founder of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, is a pre-eminent architect of his generation, whose approach to buildings is infused with his enthusiasm for modernism, love of life and strong sense of social justice.From the Pompidou Centre in Paris to the Lloyds Building in the City of London, and from airports, to cancer care centres to low-cost homes, the buildings he and his partners have designed blend private use, public space and civic value.In part inspi...

The work of late commercial architect Wayne McAllister (1907-2000) is responsible for much of the character of Southern California today. His Fred-and-Ginger nightclubs and glinting-steel-and-blazing-neon circular drive-ins brought Hollywood to life. His Sands Hotel in Las Vegas became the home of the Rat Pack; the mythology of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. owes a great deal to the swank glamour of the Copa Room and the Sands Hotel, one of McAllister's finest.

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...

What should a television look like? How should a dial on a radio feel to the touch? These were questions John Vassos asked when the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) asked him to design the first mass-produced television receiver, the TRK-12, which had its spectacular premier at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Vassos emigrated from Greece and arrived in the United States in 1918. His career spans the evolution of central forms of mass media in the twentieth century and offers a template f...

If there is anything to be learned from the history of American architecture it is that it reflects the American adventure in creativity and inventiveness, and the desire to be unique and expressive. In The Groundbreakers, Charles E. Dagit, Jr. examines pioneering American architects and the historical events and trends that gave rise to their achievements. These architects, the caliber of Frank Lloyd Wright and Frank Gehry, created their own distinct, personal styles, and represented the ...

The Global Architect explores the increasing significance of globalization processes on urban change, architectural practice and the built environment. In what is primarily a critical sociological overview of the current global architectural industry, Donald McNeill covers the "star system" of international architects who combine celebrity and hypermobility, the top firms, whose offices are currently undergoing a major global expansion, and the role of advanced information technol...

This scholarly and well-researched study of the building industry documents the interplay of new materials and technologies, costs and the changing social and economic forces that affected the decision-making about our built environment over the last two centuries. The author provides a succinct and readable survey of the growth and development of British building which will be of interest to all building specialists and those training for a career in the construction industry.

Born in Warsaw in 1926, Joseph Rykwert is one of the best-known critics and historians of architecture. One of very few writers to be awarded the RIBA’s highest honour, the Royal Gold Medal, in 2014, and author of countless books and essays, his influence over the past 60 years cannot be underestimated. In this memoir he tells for the first time of how his life’s experiences shaped his working life. He addresses the dualities between which he had to navigate: Jewish/Polish, Polish/British ...