An Organic Architecture: The Architecture of Democracy by Frank Lloyd Wright
Lund Humphries, 2017
Hardcover, 104 pages

I should start by stating that I'm not a big fan of Frank Lloyd Wright's writing. In my 2009 review of Robert Twombly's Frank Lloyd Wright: Essential Texts, I wrote that "the texts are far from readable ... with a certain anachronistic style ... distancing Wright's language from today but also requiring a patience from the reader to distill the main ideas." I've yet to muster enough patience to tackle Wright's 500-plus-page autobiography from 1943, but his earlier An Organic Architecture offers a suitable, shorter alternative. Its publication by Lund Humphries coincides with the 150th anniversary of Wright's birth, a good time for people to look once again at the master architect's works ? buildings and writings.
For the most part, An Organic Architecture is a more enjoyable read than other texts by Wright, and this stems partly from the fact it is a transcription of four lectures he gave at the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1939; his words appear to be more spoken than read. Commissioned by the Sulgrave Manor Board, the lectures were moved to RIBA when the organizers realized his talks would interest professionals rather than a general audience. Accordingly, Wright acknowledges in his introduction that the "spontaneous talks were not meant to be 'lectures' on Architecture," so he focused on "the place ...