Anthony Alofsin - Böcker

In "When Buildings Speak", Anthony Alofsin explores the rich yet often overlooked architecture of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire and its successor states. He shows that several different styles emerged in this milieu during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Moreover, he contends that each of these styles communicates to us in a manner resembling language and its particular means of expression.Covering a wide range of buildings - from national theaters to crematoria, apartment buildings to warehouses, and sanatoria to postal savings banks - Alofsin proposes a new way of interpreting this language. He calls on viewers to read buildings in two ways: through their formal elements and through their political, social, and cultural contexts. By looking through Alofsin's eyes, readers can see how myriad nations sought to express their autonomy by tapping into the limitless possibilities of art and architectural styles. And such architecture can still speak very powerfully to us today about the contradictory issues affecting parts of the former Habsburg Empire.

A dazzling dual portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright and early twentieth-century New York, revealing the city’s role in establishing the career of America’s most famous architect“Traces the transitive relationship of the architect and the city, as well as the genesis of the bohemian culture of the East Village."—Patti Smith, New York TimesFrank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) took his first major trip to New York in 1909, fleeing a failed marriage and artistic stagnation. He returned a decade later, his personal life and architectural career again in crisis. Booming 1920s New York served as a refuge, but it also challenged him and resurrected his career. The city connected Wright with important clients and commissions that would harness his creative energy and define his role in modern architecture, even as the stock market crash took its toll on his benefactors.  Wright denounced New York as an “unlivable prison” even as he reveled in its culture. The city became an urban foil for Wright’s work in the desert and in the “organic architecture” he promoted as an alternative to American Art Deco and the International Style. New York became a major protagonist at the end of Wright’s life, as he spent his final years at the Plaza Hotel working on the Guggenheim Museum, the building that would cement his legacy.  Anthony Alofsin has broken new ground by mining the recently opened Wright archives held by Columbia University and the Museum of Modern Art. His foundational research provides a crucial and innovative understanding of Wright’s life, his career, and the conditions that enabled his success. The result is at once a stunning biography and a glittering portrait of early twentieth-century Manhattan.

A trove of insights into and images of an important, little-known Frank Lloyd Wright building  The house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Frederick C. and Katherine G. Bogk in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1916 occupies a unique position in Wright’s career: it is the only fully realized house designed in the teens that demonstrates his fascination with Primitivism, the use of non-Western sources as an inspiration for modern design. This book traces Wright’s exploration alongside the stories of an immigrant family’s rise and Milwaukee’s emergence as a vibrant city. It also documents the interiors, relatively unchanged for over a century, that represent Wright’s approach to total design.  Written by two eminent architectural historians and Wright scholars, Anthony Alofsin and Richard L. Cleary, this book offers new insight into the evolution of Wright’s design process during the least understood decade of his career. The book draws on a fascinating cache of unpublished letters, photographs, drawings, and documents in the private archive of the Elsner family, who owned the house from 1955 to 2023. The book also features new photography of the Bogk House by Alexander Vertikoff, renowned for his use of natural light.  Distributed for Frank Lloyd Wright’s Burnham Block, Inc.

Ask Americans to think of a famous architect and the person they are most likely to name is Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright's work, his reputation, and his long and colorful career have made him an icon of modern American architecture. But despite his status as America's most celebrated architect, his influence throughout an active practice spanning the years 1896 to 1959 is so wide and complex that it has been difficult to grasp fully. The essays in this book look not at the United States, the context usually associated with Wright, but at countries around the globe. Anthony Alofsin has assembled a superb collection of scholars to examine Wright's importance from Japan to Great Britain, France to Chile, Mexico to Russia, and the Middle East. Interwoven in the essays are stories of champions and critics, rivals and acolytes, books and exhibitions, attitudes toward America and individualism, and the many ways Wright's ideas were brought to the world. Together the essays represent a first look at Wright's impact abroad, some from the perspective of natives of the countries discussed and others from that of informed outsiders.Of special note is Bruno Zevi's firsthand account of traveling with Wright in Italy. Zevi was instrumental in bringing Wright's ideas to Italy and in helping launch the movement for organic architecture. Of unusual interest in light of today's events in Iraq is Mina Marefat's essay on Wright's elaborate designs for a cultural center for the city of Baghdad. The Baghdad projects, which were never realized after the assassination of King Faisal II, were Wright's principal focus in his last decade. In searching out the little known rather than reexamining the well-established aspects of Frank Lloyd Wright's work, this collection is a rewarding exploration of his vision and influence.