Natural Design Organic Architecture
Lessons for Building Green from an American Original
Photographs: Alan Weintraub
Text: Alan Hess
Rizzoli New York
The full title of this book is Frank Lloyd Wright Natural Design (Organic Architecture). Frank Lloyd Wright is the infamous American architect from the Midwest who built houses (and other buildings) that blended into their natural surroundings. Born during the Industrial Revolution (1867) and raised on a farm, Frank Lloyd Wright's worldview would be much different than our contemporary view in that he came from an era when fossil fuels and new technologies were seen as boosts that would make life easier. And yet, author Alan Hess makes the case that today's green designers would bode well to employ Lloyd Wright's low-tech and even natural solutions to conserving resources (not just electricity), to heat and cool a building through convection (Wright used fireplaces for this), cross breezes, wide eaves, window placement, door placement, and using local materials.
While Hess mentions that Wright had other reasons such as working with tight budgets (in the case of middle income home builders), and living comfortably in different climates, his low-tech approaches could be applied to green design of our time. Wright didn't consider himself a green designer, and that term didn't even exist during that time. Some of his experiments failed while others succeeded, such as the radiant heat carried through hot water pipes under concrete floors, building thicker walls as insulation and the inclusion of breezeways in his houses. He also took ideas from other parts of the world such as including pools of water in the terraces of houses in hot and dry climates (Arizona) and he learned about the radiant heat underneath the floors on a visit to Japan. He also worked closely with landscapers and many times, he positioned houses on the land so that the home owners could make best use of the sun. He also designed houses with banks of windows on one side and window slits on the side of the house facing a busy street or other distraction.
Hess makes the argument also that Wright supported urban sprawl by moving people out of the city centers, but with his background living on a farm as a child, Wright also supported urban farming and in a sense the self-sufficiency of eating locally grown foods. His concepts often contradicted each other. The last two chapters would appeal to the do-it-yourself crowd (building your home), and green city planners (The Living City chapter).
This thick coffee table book offers stunning photographs (by Alan Weintraub) of mainly houses across the US that Wright designed, including his summer home in Wisconsin and winter home in Arizona. There's also enough text here to whet the appetite of architect enthusiasts, green designers, city planners, and prospective home owners who want their home to blend in with natural surroundings.
http://www.rizzoliusa.com