Wasmuth Portfolio drawings 《Wasmuth Portfolio》收錄的繪圖

These drawings of the Avery Coonley and Darwin Martin houses, both designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, appeared in a 1910 portfolio produced by Berlin publisher Ernst Wasmuth. The portfolio included a selection of one hundred lithographs depicting the American architect’s ‘Prairie style’ work, particularly houses in the Midwest.

The Coonley and Martin houses—located in Riverside, Illinois, and Buffalo, New York, respectively—were two of the three multi-building residential complexes Wright realised in his career. Their asymmetrical, centrifugal layouts are visible in a plan of the Coonley House and a bird’s-eye view of the Martin House. The latter drawing surrounds the house in vegetation, a visual thread that carries throughout the portfolio. An interior of the Coonley living room emphasises horizontality and a systematic application of abstracted patterns, evident in the lined planes of the prismatic roof, solid hearth, and carpet. Along the wall on either side of the fireplace, vegetation reappears in figurative wallpaper.

Executed with consistency and depth, the Wasmuth portfolio allowed Wright to consolidate his early work into a cohesive whole. Though not a commercial success, its publication brought European attention to Wright’s output during a formative moment in architectural modernism.