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Ralph Rapson on Frank Lloyd Wright

Fallingwater, near Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1934, 1938, 1948.

Color sketch by Ralph Rapson, from Ralph Rapson Sketches and Drawings from Around the World, courtesy of the Afton Press.
"While a student at Michigan, I traveled to Taliesin with two of my peers to meet the great Frank Lloyd Wright. The architect had started a fellowship program at Taliesin, where students worked and studied in the shadow of the master.  
"While I admired Wright's designs, his Spring Green, Wisconsin retreat seemed to me too somber and monastic. There wasn't the laughter, joy, and chaos that I was used to. 

Taliesin West, in Scottsdale, Arizona, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, 1937 onward.

Color sketch by Ralph Rapson, from Ralph Rapson Sketches and Drawings from Around the World, courtesy of the Afton Press.

Wright, meantime, seemed to realize that we didn't have sufficient money to attend Taliesin and made my friends and I the butt of a screed on the perils of architectural education.""Years later, whenever I encountered him at Cranbrook or the University of Minnesota, he would look me up and down and say, 'So this is where you ended up.'"  
"While I appreciate his work greatly and have since encountered a house he built in Okemos, Michigan, near my hometown of Alma, I have never attempted–nor should others–to use his personal architectural vocabulary." – Ralph Rapson




Price Tower, in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright1952 to 1956

Color sketch by Ralph Rapson, from Ralph Rapson Sketches and Drawings from Around the World, courtesy of the Afton Press.


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