Frank Lloyd Wright. Complete Works. Vol. 2, 1917–1942 Hardcover – March 2, 2010

This is an in-depth and thorough treatment of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture from the period stated (1917-1942) which covers a great deal of his 'Prairie Style' and 'Usonian Style' genres, as well as some of his other burgeoning ideas. This book contains a lot of floor-plan prints (with dimensions) which is extremely useful to those with a deeper interest in his works. However, there is not quite enough detail of the textile blocks in order thoroughly examine their proportions (which was disappointing to me). One could purchase ten books on FLW's architecture and still fall short of the sheer amount of works covered in this book. A must have for architecture students and FLW devotees.

See my previous review of the first volume for an overview of my impressions on the series. This volume contains some really wonderful reproductions of drawings and sketches I have not seen before. For me they are worth the price of the book by themselves.

Super heavy and filled with amazing photos and history of Wright's projects

My wife and I have made a hobby of studying Frank Lloyd Wright's residential architecture. We've visited Wright designed homes throughout the country and hope to build a Wright inspired Usonian-type retirement home. We have collected 20+ books depicting Wright's work to better inform ourselves of the proportions and details required to create "the look" we want to achieve. We purchased this volume and the companion volume  Frank Lloyd Wright Complete Works, Vol. 3: 1943-1959 (v. 3)  because they contain Wright's original drawings (which are in and of themselves works of art) and because they are so comprehensive--including projects that were never built. The drawings are reproduced from Wright's original works so they are authentic. They are beautifully printed. The downside is that reproducing detailed images of large drawings requires spacious pages so the volumes are large and heavy. This makes them difficult to shelve and tiring to use. Even though the format is over-sized for a book, it is not large enough to reproduce Wright's original drawings without significant reduction so a magnifying glass is required to see finer details. (I suspect the finest lines in Wright's original work have been lost altogether.) Every public library should probably have this set and we will probably add Volume I to our collection when it is released. But we are pretty fanatical. For most home libraries it is probably overkill.

great book !

I didn't mind the oversize shape of the book to terribly. Nor does using a magnifying glass to view the drawings bother me enough to bestow a negative review. These are compromises I'm willing to accept in order to have a complete overview of Wright's work. However, I could do without the tri-lingual text. I suspect that is/was a mandate of the publisher, but it does nothing for me but add needless pages and cost. And actually, I'd be more than happy with the extra pages (and cost) if they contained more or larger photos/drawings instead of the other languages.

Good gift for super organized friends especially those with design interests.Much more appropriate than publishers "Big Boobs in 3D"VERY handsome looking coffee table book, interesting to boot.

First comments are about series, applicable to all three volumes: they are exactly what they claim to be, complete record of Wright's work with great photos and plans. Some have griped that many plans and drawings too small: it would be impossible to do unless you either made this a 20 volume series or make the books bigger... and they are HUGE already. We live in a golden age of architecture publishing: 30 years ago there were few books with color photographs of Wrights work, in fact one of about 8" x8" on his drawings and then various hard-to- obtain books by Japanese publisher GA. Now there are too many books too list. This Taschen series has unusual photos, never seen-before drawings and good summaries by Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer. Yeah, I can complain too about not having enough photos or some I don't like but it is easy enough to buy other Wright books to fill the gaps for bigger and more photos. As a Wright fan-atic, I am thrilled to have these books where one gets the entire span of his remarkable career, from renderings with horse and carriages to private atomic-powered helicopters. If you are not a Wright fan, there are far cheaper and smaller books that will be more than enough; if you are a Wright fan or into the history of architecture, all three volumes are worth having.If you are only getting one volume, Volume 2 is the one to get, for it shows the transition from his early work into a regional, and international modern response to architecture, including most of his mature work when he "got it", coming into himself and his design powers, and had one of the most spectacular creative runs, from about 1936-8 to 1948 of any architect in history. The range is astounding and even if you don't like Wright as a person or an architect, there is no one in architectural history who can compare, for no one did giant monuments and as many small projects as he did (can you imagine any big shot "starchitect" of today doing tiny low budget homes for people of the street that come in and ask for such to build themselves?). He never stopped studying how to do low-budget housing, in all iterations from the single family home to large high rises, and he never gave up good design to do this, as his first Jacobs house attests to, feeling as good inside as the most large and luxurious of his homes. Most impressive to me is how he in effect invented many regional vernaculars, as if it was the easiest thing in the world, that in past ears would have become entire, beautiful communal villages. A fantastic book to see this development.

Good synthesis.Alas, like quite every Taschen product, the French contents is awful.It seems that the translation was made by an automate.Most of the time, the old frenchy is forced to read the English text to understand what is printed.

This is a GREAT book. I'm looking forward to complete the collection with Vol.1 and Vol.3

Thank you very much.I am satisfied.The books are exellent Because I am interested in architecture I will often vistit your website.See you in the future.

beautiful book loads of excellent photos and designs

Ein wunderschönes Buch für jemanden, sehr sich für Architektur, Baustile und tolle Häuser interessiert. Das Buch ist sewhr teuer, aber seinen Preis wert!