Issue 457 April 2nd 2025

Announcements

Pre-Order The Living Architecture Of David Dodge

The OA+D Archives recently announced the upcoming release of their new publication, The Living Architecture of David Elgin Dodge and the opportunity to be one of the first people to get a copy when they begin shipping in late April 2025.

For some architects, especially those who follow the organic design principles in the tradition of Louis H. Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, their profession is not a career but a vocation in service to an ideal. David Elgin Dodge (1930–2021) was one of these architects.

By every measure the life of David Dodge is a remarkable journey. Born to a family of great wealth and influence, he chose a unique engagement with creative communal endeavor by joining the Taliesin Fellowship. His direct contact with Frank Lloyd Wright was formative from early adulthood. After Mr. Wright’s death in 1959, Dodge remained as a lifetime member of the Fellowship and participant in the successor architectural firm called Taliesin Associated Architects (TAA).

Lavishly illustrated with never-before-published drawings and historic photographs, plus stunning new photography by Jake Case, this monograph highlights a wide array of David's architectural projects both personal and for Taliesin. These include nine “box projects,” which were speculative compositions presented as gifts to Mr. Wright up to twice a year from 1953 to 1959. Following Mr. Wright’s death, Dodge helped complete major buildings in progress. As a member of TAA, he is known to have contributed as lead designer to twenty-eight client commissions from 1964 to 2001. In addition, he produced several unbuilt designs for personal and speculative residences, as well as a significant cultural facility in Europe.

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY HERE

BOOKS SCHEDULED TO SHIP LATE APRIL 2025

Hardcover with Dustjacket :: 192 pages :: 11" x 8.5" :: $60.00 Written by William B. Scott, Jr. :: Photography by Jake Case

NOTE: This is a special publication and is not included as part of the Journal OA+D subscription. It must be purchased separately.

The Headlines

Price Tower To Be Auctioned Through Chapter 7 Bankruptcy Sale

Frank Lloyd Wright's iconic Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma is set to be auctioned through a Chapter 7 bankruptcy sale on May 6 in Tulsa’s U.S. Bankruptcy Court, according to Commercial Oklahoma. The building’s previous sale to McFarlin Building Company for $1.4 million was approved in January, but ownership disputes led the sellers—Green Copper Holdings and Copper Tree Inc.—to file for bankruptcy, moving the case to bankruptcy court.

The auction includes all real estate and personal property tied to the tower. A stalking horse bid of $1.4 million has been submitted by McFarlin, but the minimum bid is $1,539,287, with qualified bids accepted starting March 31. Final approval is pending court confirmation.

Commercial Oklahoma’s Scott Schlotfelt emphasized the importance of finding a buyer who values the tower's historical and cultural legacy. Interested parties can contact Schlotfelt at sschlotfelt@commercialoklahoma.com.

Phoenix Can Learn From Frank Lloyd Wright's Desert Architecture

The summer of 2024 marked a climate milestone in Phoenix, Arizona, with 113 consecutive days over 100°F, and by March 2025, the city already broke another heat record. As climate risks grow, Phoenix’s sprawling development and greenhouse gas emissions threaten livability and up to $1.23 trillion in real estate.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who spent winters in the region, foresaw these environmental challenges. His concept of organic architecture sought harmony between buildings and the natural environment, inspired by desert plants like the saguaro cactus, Indigenous architecture, and natural elements like sun, wind, and stone.

Wright’s Arizona projects — such as Taliesin West and the David and Gladys Wright House — use passive cooling techniques, strategic wind alignment, and high thermal mass desert masonry to reduce energy use and blend into the landscape. His ideas, including biomimicry and natural ventilation, are now echoed in modern climate-responsive designs by Phoenix firms like Studio Ma.

While Wright wasn’t “sustainable” in a modern sense, his site-specific, low-energy designs offer a blueprint for regenerative architecture that goes beyond sustainability by giving back to the environment. As Phoenix faces worsening drought and heatwaves, architects and city planners are turning to Wright’s legacy — not just to preserve the past, but to build a more livable future.

A Love Letter To Wright's Tomek House

San Rafael, California resident Maya Moran Manny has written a memoir titled "Love Letters to a Frank Lloyd Wright House" that reflects on the 27 years she spent living in and lovingly restoring the Tomek House, one of Wright’s early Prairie-style homes in Riverside, Illinois. Purchased in 1974 in disrepair, the home became a source of healing, inspiration, and artistic expression for Manny, influencing her art, home decor, and garden design.

Through her deep connection with the house, she meticulously restored it to Wright’s original vision, earning historic landmark status and several preservation awards. Her book, filled with personal reflections, photographs, and artwork, answers the question she’s most often asked: What’s it like to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright house?

Manny sold the house in 2001 and moved to California, but her love for the Tomek House endures. Her story echoes Wright’s belief that people draw sustenance from the spaces they inhabit.

Why “The Studio” Created A Faux Frank Lloyd Wright And Filmed At Multiple Lautners

In television program The Studio, Seth Rogen’s satirical series about Hollywood’s identity crisis, Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural legacy plays a starring role—at least in spirit. The fictional Continental Studios, the central setting of the show, is framed as a grand old film studio built in 1927 "in his signature Mayan style," a nod to Wright’s brief but striking Mayan Revival period. Though Wright never actually built such a studio, the show leans heavily into his aesthetic and personal history to ground its themes of decay, nostalgia, and reinvention.

Production designer Julie Berghoff, working closely with Rogen and Evan Goldberg, used Wright’s architectural ethos as the blueprint for Continental Studios’ fictional headquarters. The trio specifically drew inspiration from Wright’s early 1920s Los Angeles works, like the Ennis House, and incorporated design elements that mirrored his use of textile blocks, dramatic geometric patterns, and brooding, tomblike spaces—a reflection of Wright’s own grief-stricken years after personal tragedy.

Berghoff’s team reimagined these iconic Wright motifs using modern methods like CNC routing and plaster casting, creating a space that feels like a tribute to a bygone cinematic era. The building’s details—like the atrium pillars, stylized sunburst doors, and light-permeable design—evoke Wright landmarks such as the Palmer House and Imperial Hotel. Even the camera work in the show capitalizes on Wrightian principles, with soaring shots that mimic his attention to spatial flow and light.

This reverent yet playful homage to Wright isn’t just aesthetic—it reinforces the show’s central metaphor: a once-revered industry wrestling with irrelevance. The temple-like design of the studio, inspired by Wright’s funerary forms, mirrors the decline of traditional Hollywood in the streaming age. As Berghoff puts it, the building’s antiquated, almost sacred feel helps amplify the idea that cinema, as it once was, is fading into the past.

Ultimately, the show doesn’t just nod to Wright—it uses his architectural legacy as a visual metaphor for everything it’s trying to say about the old guard of Hollywood clashing with the absurdity of the present.

A Wronged Wright On Chicago’s West Side Could Receive Long-needed Repairs

The Walser House, a 122-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright-designed residence in Chicago, Illinois' Austin neighborhood, is set to receive much-needed repairs. The bank holding the mortgage has committed to addressing long-standing building code violations, a crucial step in preserving the home. Preservationists, including local organizations like Austin Coming Together and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, have been advocating for its restoration.

Built in 1903, the house is one of Wright's early attempts to create affordable, well-designed homes, marking a key moment in his career. It shares design elements with his later, more famous Prairie School homes. However, the house has been in disrepair for decades, with extensive damage including rotting wood, cracked stucco, and a deteriorating roof.

The goal is to eventually restore the house and repurpose it for community use. Austin Coming Together hopes to acquire the property, turning it into a space for meetings and tourism. A court hearing on the repairs is scheduled for April 1, as the home is also in foreclosure.

Marion Mahony, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Earliest Design Collaborator

Marion Mahony Griffin was a pioneering architect, artist, and urban planner whose work and influence were long overshadowed by her associations with two better-known men: Frank Lloyd Wright and her husband, Walter Burley Griffin. However, Mahony was a major force in her own right, known for her artistic renderings, architectural design, and contributions to the Prairie School of architecture.

Born in Chicago in 1871 and raised by strong, progressive women after her father's early death, Mahony became the second woman to graduate from MIT’s architecture program. Despite being actively discouraged from entering the profession, she became the first licensed female architect in Illinois and began her career at her cousin Dwight Perkins’s firm before moving to Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio.

In Wright’s office, Mahony likely served as a lead designer and was key in producing his celebrated architectural renderings. Her artwork was central to the success of Wright’s early commissions and the dissemination of Prairie Style architecture, including illustrations for the influential Wasmuth Portfolio. Her style, influenced by Japanese prints, combined nature and architecture in evocative, innovative ways.

Mahony and Wright had a complex relationship—professional collaborators and possibly friends, their bond fractured when Wright abruptly left his family and firm for Europe in 1909. Though she initially refused to take over his studio, she later worked under Hermann von Holst to complete several of Wright’s unfinished projects, but tensions remained high between them.

Mahony eventually redirected her talents toward Walter Burley Griffin, whom she married. Together, they won the international competition to design Canberra, Australia’s capital, with Mahony’s visionary renderings playing a critical role in their success. They pioneered new building methods like Knitlock construction and developed communities like Castlecrag in Sydney that emphasized harmony with nature and community living.

Despite her contributions, Mahony was often erased from architectural history. She later wrote The Magic of America, a memoir that both recounted her life and criticized Wright—whom she never named directly—for his ego and appropriation of others' work. Wright, in turn, dismissed Mahony and Griffin as imitators.

Yet, their parallel paths and mutual disdain may hint at a deeper respect. Mahony was a foundational influence in Wright’s early development and a trailblazer whose work helped shape modern American architecture, even if recognition came too late.

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