Product Description

Organic Architecture: The Other Modernism illuminates the broad brush stroke of Organic residential architecture throughout the panorama of twentieth-century Modernism. A wide-ranging style that defies definition, Organic buildings are notable in their curves and colors, as well as their exuberant, opulent, and at times,extravagant complexity of line, form, texture, structure, and color.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #254185 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 276 pages

From the Inside Flap
Organic Architecture: The Other Modernism
Photographs by Alan Weintraub
Text by Alan Hess
A century of Organic architecture has given the world an opulent, exuberant, often defiant variety of houses based on the patterns and forms of nature. Frank Lloyd Wright, the best known of the Organic architects, blended his houses into spectacular natural settings using stone and natural wood. In addition to presenting a thorough evaluation of Frank Lloyd Wright, Organic Architecture: The Other Modernism also presents the wide range of architects who went far beyond Wright to turn Organic architecture into an ongoing school of Modern design.
The natural environment of their chosen sites often shaped the designs of Organic architects. They drew inspiration from the sun and winds, the stone and trees, the views and lessons of the natural world. Architect Bruce Goff created delicate flower-like structures out of high-tech materials; John Lautner used concrete to create great wave-like homes with free-flowing spaces; Fay Jones designed ethereal wood constructions that echo the forests of his native Arkansas. They and the other architects represented in this book constitute a deep and enduring stream of Modern design.
For most of the twentieth century, Organic architects battled the steel, boxy architecture of the Bauhaus for primacy in the world of Modern architecture. It was a struggle of Nature versus Machine. Rooted in a pioneering attitude of self-reliance and rugged individualism, the often uncompromising, often cantankerous Organic designers frequently found themselves outside the architectural establishment-they indeed were "the other Modernism." And yet they thrived. Popular shelter magazines celebrated their unconventional, often futuristic buildings. For a public bored with glass-box architecture, the dream of a home of warm natural wood, stone, and curving organic surfaces was widely appealing.
This volume reveals the full story of Modern architecture based on the Organic design principles. The revived enthusiasm for Mid-Century Modernism over the last decade has only begun to scratch the surface of the full range of superb design and architecture after 1940. Organic design was, in fact, a big part of avant-garde design in that period.
Beginning with the popular Prairie style in the Midwest around 1900, the Organic Architecture movement had its successes and failures as cycles of taste evolved. Reborn in 1935 with Frank Lloyd Wright's famous design for Fallingwater in western Pennsylvania, a generation of architects, which included Alfred Browning Parker, Charles Haertling, and Alden Dow, created a lively variety of Organic houses from Florida to Illinois, Texas to Colorado, Arizona to California. Today, the irrepressible forms of Organic design are alive and well in a new generation of architects featured in this book.
Organic Architecture is the story of a sometimes stubborn, sometimes transcendental struggle to create a modern habitation for humans in touch with nature by pushing back the frontier of what is possible. Organic architecture's longevity and its ongoing influence continue to exert a strong pull on the direction of Modern architecture.

About the Author
Alan Hess is an architect and historian who has written nine books documenting the architectural history of the West's suburban metropolises (including Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses; The Ranch House; Viva Las Vegas; and The Architecture of John Lautner). He has served as architecture critic for the San Jose Mercury News since 1986. He studied at UCLA's Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, and has been active in the preservation of roadside and post-War architecture, qualifying the nation's oldest McDonald's drive-in, the 1947 Bullock's Pasadena department store, the 1956 Valley Ho Motor Inn in Scottsdale, among others, for the National Register of Historic Places. He received a 1997 Honor Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation for his efforts to preserve the McDonald's. Hess has taught at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SciArc) and UCLA. He lives in Irvine, California.

Alan Weintraub is a widely published architectural photographer whose books include Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses; Lloyd Wright: The Architecture of FLW, Jr.; The Architecture of John Lautner; Oscar Niemeyer: Houses; Rancho Deluxe: Rustic Dreams and Real Western Living, as well as an ongoing work on the modern residential architecture of Brazil.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
It is this book's intention to illuminate the broad brush stroke of Organic residential architecture in America throughout the panorama of twentieth-century Modernism. Organic architecture is a style wide ranging enough to defy easy definition, yet vivid enough for people to know it when they see it. It reached a high point in the mid-twentieth century, but it has roots much deeper in American culture than the European Bauhaus architectural style that combined technology, craftsmanship, and aesthetics. Despite being marginalized at times by the tastemakers and professional magazines, Organic architecture has remained a strong, deep running current in American culture and design. There are, of course, Organic office buildings (the Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, by Wright), coffee shops (Pann's in Los Angeles, California, by Armet and Davis), churches (Sea Ranch Chapel in Sea Ranch, California, by James Hubbell), as well as other building types, but for the sake of clarity and comparison the focus of this book is on residences.

Customer Reviews

Organic Architecture is a Super Introductory Survey of the topic: a Review by Michael Hawker
As an avid collector of books on Organic architects and architecture, I attest there is relatively little available on the specific subject, aside from all that available on Frank Lloyd Wright. Organic architects continue to remain outside mainstream criticism and publications, notably magazines - maybe for good reason - yet there are dozens, if not hundreds, of exceptionally creative organic architects whose designs could be easily celebrated.

I eagerly anticipated the release of this book and wasn't disappointed. Organic Architecture is perhaps among the most authoritative surveys on the Organic history and its attempt to present many seldom published or possibly forgotten worthy architects. Examples include work by Alden Dow, Paul Schweikher, Karl Kamrath, Charles Haertling, and Alfred Browning Parker. Unfortunately, because of so many architects who could have been included in this volume, this book falls far from encyclopedic.

The book is not a perfect study of the subject, due mainly for space limitations. Despite its sweeping title, the author focuses solely on the history of the American Organic (since there is a European Organic to consider) since 1900 and presents only houses. It is a bit heavy on homes built between 1940 and 1960. I hoped more from the 1970's to present could have been included, as well as some significant Organic architects that did not appear at all, such as Arthur Dyson, Vernon Swaback, or Daniel Liebermann, among others. This lacking is not to take away from this book, but rather point out the extent to which this book could have explored. To Hess' credit, his narrative does offer much to be explored for forthcoming authors with more in depth books.

The photographer is well known and many of Mr. Weintraub's photos are exceptional, particularly since photographing organic works of architecture can be difficult at best. However, some of the photos do seem affected from less-than-perfect conditions or timing, such as a "high sun" that casts too sharp of shadows on some of the subjects' surfaces. The photographer's interior shots are best.

Overall, this is a 275-page "must purchase" book for those interested in Organic architecture because of its broad historical survey. I would encourage anyone to research further some of the architects profiled in this book, such as Alden Dow, Lloyd Wright, or Wallace Cunningham. Be advised that there are no illustrations in the book, such as plans and section drawings. In my estimate, this places this volume far from any serious critical acclaim from scholars and keeps it in the "nice coffee table" category. This book on my coffee table suits me fine.

Beautiful survey of Organic Architecture
This book offers a broad survey of American organic architecture beginning with, of course, Frank Lloyd Wright. It's chief limitation is that it skips many great architects in the organic tradition (Paolo Soleri, John Randall McDonald, Jim Hubbell, Art Dyson, etc.) and gives many others only fleeting attention. And, as an earlier reviewer pointed out, it's exclusive focus on residential designs omits great masterpieces such as Lloyd Wright's Wayfarers Chapel, Thorncrown Chapel by E. Fay Jones and Soleri's Cosanti complex. Also missing are Cuban, Indian and Hungarian architects in the organic tradition. Ideally, this should be the first of several volumes exploring the continuing relevance of Frank Lloyd Wright and organic architecture in the world of design.

Eye candy
This is a gorgeous introduction to organic architecture, which paralleled, although was never as popular as, the International style, especially among architectural critics. The most famous proponent was Frank Lloyd Wright, but Hess introduces numerous other architects working in the style beginning at the turn of the 19th-20th century and continuing until the present.

"Organic" architecture refers to a match between the architecture, the landscape, and all of the decoration and interior elements. To laymen, the term can reflect designs that almost seem to grow out of the earth and to follow nature. In this sense, Organic architecture often strikes me as an abstract form of Art Nouveau, with its strong lines and mixture of the natural and the machine age. Hess argues that the highly individualistic designs work very well for the particulars of the owners' personal lifestyles.

The book is an introduction because it has very little text and consists almost entirely of wonderful photographs of residential buildings. The less academic among us will have no complaint about that, but others will want to follow up with items from Hess's bibliography.