Wright in Hollywood

About this book

Wright in Hollywood, Visions of a New Architecture is the first book to examine a pivotal aspect of Frank Lloyd Wright's career: the so-called textile block system, which he pursued with a sense of mission between 1922 and 1932. Wright began the experiment in southern California, where four houses were built, but he soon demonstrated that the system was capable of a more universal application. Robert L. Sweeney explores the system's ramifications in each of approximately thirty projects envisioned by Wright, describing the formal and technological evolution that occurred. Though certainly form was the architect's primary concern, he began with structure, working with a sure hand toward a system of construction in which concrete block functioned in every situation. The process of simplification extended to the forms of the buildings as well. The early, exotic projects, described by Wright himself as "California-Romanza," gave way to designs that seem to acknowledge Wright's awareness of European modernism, which had developed simultaneously. The textile block system analyzed here continues Wright's exploration of what David De Long describes as "his sweeping view of a landscape as unified by architecture." They show Wright "reexamining his work at every possible level, as if he were questioning his own formulation of the world's first, truly modern architecture."