The Urbanism of Frank Lloyd Wright

摘要

Given the universal understanding of Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas on the design of cities as having been definitively embodied in his antiurbanist and pro-ruralist design for Broadacre City of 1929-35, which Wright published as "the disappearing city," Neil Levine notes in the very first sentence of his introduction that this book's title, The Urbanism of Frank Lloyd Wright, "might strike many as an oxymoron" (ⅹⅳ). The extent of Levine's new book (matching his 1996 work The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright) and the wide range of designs he examines from across Wright's career are deployed to construct an alternate view of Wright as an architect who, both before and after Broadacre City, was continually engaged in making projects that contribute to the field of urban design. Levine has chosen to present a series of Wright's projects, prefacing each with a compact but comprehensive summary of both the preceding and parallel developments in the larger discipline of urban design as well as discussion of the character and history of the physical context.