Travels with Frank Lloyd Wright: The First Global Architect

By retracing Frank Lloyd Wright’s footsteps on journeys he made beyond his homeland of the USA, this book explores his global ambitions and his lasting legacy and offers an original and contemporary view of Wright and his architecture. While Lloyd Wright is perceived as the quintessential American architect, in fact he was well-travelled, and these six journeys were to develop and promote his globalizing ‘organic’ philosophy. The author first takes off to Japan and Germany to explore the way Wright’s visits to these countries informed and framed his ‘Prairie House’ period. He then travels to Russia and the UK, where Wright presented his global ‘Usonian’ manifesto. The final two chapters pursue Wright to Italy and the Middle East as part of his ‘Legacy’ period. Beautifully illustrated with his own sketches and photographs, as well as some historical photographs of Wright’s original journeys and works, the author meets people who are living and coping with Wright’s ‘organic’ architecture today and asks them whether their homes are still true to Wright’s intent or whether there is something else that made their home particular. By considering Wright beyond America, his architecture is critiqued against different cultural settings so that his architecture can be evaluated as emerging from a new globalized era of architectural production. It reflects on Frank Lloyd Wright as an early promoter of globalization – in fact, as the first international ‘starchitect’.