The Oak Park Studio of Frank Lloyd Wright

In this magnificent offering, Schrenk (Building a Century of Progress), an architectural historian at the University of Arizona, takes a remarkably detailed look at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park Studio in Chicago. Established in 1898, the studio was “one of the most important sites in the development of modern architecture in the United States.” Wright built it in a small space adjacent to his home and decorated it with plants and sculptures. The idea, Schrenk notes, was to avoid the sterility of office spaces and to create a space that would allow Wright and his staff to engage in lively and productive exchanges. Schrenk also discusses the common visual themes in the projects that Wright and his team worked on in the studio, among them the Dana residence in Springfield, Ill. (1902); the Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo, N.Y. (1906); and the Robie house in Chicago (1909), for which “Wright used varying ceiling heights, creating compressed hallways that open up to spacious, vaulted rooms.” Nearly 200 gorgeous photographs of the building accompany the text—including a photo originally published in Ladies Home Journal in 1903 of the home’s impressive dining room after a raised platform was added under a set of bay windows. Architecture buffs won’t want to miss this extraordinary monograph. (Mar.)