Review by Choice Review
For 20 years Storrer has been writing guides to Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture. The first effort, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog (CH, Nov'74; 2nd ed., CH, Jun'79) listed almost all of Wright's built work in North America. It has been indispensable for students and tourists as a travel guide to Wright's work. The Companion represents a quantum leap beyond and above these earlier publications, comprising a scholarly catalog of Wright's built work worldwide. What K"ochel was to Mozart, Storrer is to Wright. Paging through the voluminous black-and-white illustrations of excellent quality; the clear expository text, which summarizes the circumstances and layout of each commision; and the detailed, computerized plans of each building, one is inclined to believe that now, and only now, almost half a century after his death can we begin to encompass, measure, and analyze the staggering output and achievement of this man who could be arguably, the greatest architect of all time. Much of this analysis will flow from this book, which illustrates commissions heretofore unseen, unknown, or unillustrated. The book contains almost 1,000 photos and more than 700 floor plans illustrating more than 500 built works, one fifth of which have been destroyed. If a library owned just five books on Wright, this should be one of them. General; advanced udergraduate and above. P. Kaufman; Boston Architectural Center
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Wright expert Storrer has compiled the definitive Wright reference book. His splendid descriptive volume covers more than 450 buildings designed by master architect Wright between 1886 and 1959. Storrer documents each structure with plans, drawings, photographs, and commentary. Each presentation is both complete and concise, following each stage of Wright's aesthetic development, each leap of his imagination, and each instance of technical innovation. The surprisingly fluid text includes anecdotes about the circumstances leading up to important commissions and pithy discussions of the personalities and motivations of Wright's often unusual clients. Storrer is not only a scholar and writer, but a computer draftsman and photographer as well. He has painstakingly redrawn floor plans to accurately reflect the layout of the actual buildings, as opposed to Wright's preconstruction drawings, and taken most of the 965 photographs. Storrer carefully composed each shot to capture the play of light and shadow Wright orchestrated for both the interior and the exterior of his unique creations. While Storrer's "companion" is not as coffee-table pretty as some of the other Wright books out this past year, it is an invaluable, enjoyable, and authoritative resource. ~--Donna Seaman
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
With this volume, Storrer surpasses his previous catalog of Wright's work, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (MIT Pr., 1978), by compiling detailed plans, photographs, and brief histories of every structure built by America's most widely known architect. The very handsome oversized book details the range of Wright's output from cottages in Montana to the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Although the author denies its relevance, some color photography would have enhanced the text, and the lack of a bibliography is regrettable; also, Storrer continues his earlier use of zip codes as guides to locations, a device some users will find clumsy. Nevertheless, this volume is an essential purchase for serious architecture collections.-- Daniel J. Lombardo, Jones Lib., Amherst, Mass. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Choice Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Library Journal Review
