Book Description
A total revision of the standard document on Fallingwater, the boldest, most personal architectural statement of Wright's mature years. Updated with valuable new material from the recently opened Frank Lloyd Wright Archives, the book gives special emphasis to Fallingwater's architectural innovations. "Fascinating. " — The New York Times. 116 illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
Mr. Kaufman Builds His Dream House.......2007-03-31
Forget everything you know about building a house--a dream house--and read this book. If you are a Wright fan, then you will relish every page and delight in knowing about how various aspects of the most famous house in the world came to be built.
No doubt you will enjoy knowing that the final work was indeed a collaborative effort between Mr. Wright (who had strong opinions about everything) and Mr. Kaufman who was if anything, one of those ideal clients in the vein of Darwin Martin before him and Hib Johnson soon thereafter. Some of the most celebrated details of the building were Edgar Sr.'s input (i.e. no gold leaf paint on the parapets, routing out the stone and letting the glass simply meld into it). These things help make the house what it is.
The story--it must be true, it has been told by so many and so often--of the house's design springing from the master's hand as Mr. K. was on his short drive to Taliesin, is worth savoring.
The role of the Taliesin apprentice on site as clerk of the works is important to note--Mr. Wright would use this concept again and again for the remainder of his life, to assure that what was built was what he had in mind. In many cases the apprentice became almost adopted-family to the clients and their association became lifelong.
Mr. Hoffmann is to be congratulated again and again for giving us this marvelous record of the building of Fallingwater.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT'S FALLINGWATER.......2007-01-12
EXCELLENT HISTORY OF THE BUILDING OF FALLINGWATER. MANY INSIGHTS INTO THE CHARACTER OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT.
complete but black and white pictures.......2001-08-14
This is an historical books about this house but all the pictures are in B & W. And it's so sad for such a masterpiece of frank Lloyd Wright.
The Awful Problems of Turning Genius into Reality.......2001-07-10
This book is one of the best I have seen for describing in detail the challenges of creating one of America's architectural landmarks. Anyone who reads this book will be reminded of Thomas Edison's comment about genius being 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.
Fallingwater came as a commission after one of the longest dry spells of Frank Lloyd Wright's career. Despite having no work to do, no money, and few prospects, Mr. Wright dawdled with the project while trying to sell his client, Edgar Kaufmann, as many other projects as possible. Contemporary accounts suggest that Wright only began sketching something on paper when Mr. Kaufmann was about to arrive at Taliesin in Wisconsin, where Wright did his work.
Mr. Kaufman was not an easy client. He was the head of a major department store, and was used to getting his own way. Client and architect often clashed, with bent feelings on both sides. Independent "experts" got involved who also added to the controversy, mistakes, and misunderstandings. Mr. Kaufmann deserves credit, though, for sticking with Wright as the costs soared way above the original budget for this most unique house.
Interestingly, the two were brought together by Mr. Kaufmann's son who had come to study with Wright in Taliesin. The book contains a brief introduction by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. who ultimately gave the home to a local nature conservancy.
Even without the challenges of the human relationships, Fallingwater was a most ambitious commission. In a remote part of the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania, Fallingwater is sited on top of a waterfall. The potential for the water to undermine the house is enormous. Mr. Wright also wanted to keep as many of the original rocks and trees as possible. The site survey was often wrong, and the designs had to be adjusted to reflect the reality. The design also provided other unusual problems, and the first cantilever was built incorrectly due to changes made under Mr. Kaufmann's direction.
The book contains a wealth of maps, letters, summaries of interviews with those who worked on the project, drawings, plans, and photographs of the work in progress in black and white. This detail brings the challenges to life in a very real way.
The fascinating part of this book to me is that Fallingwater's final effects are the opposite of its creation. The home seems to float above the water, like a mirage. It seems to exude tranquility and peace. Yet, its every stage of movement toward becoming a reality was like a Sumo wrestling match with enormous heavyweight egos and ideas colliding at high speed and with little regard for the impact on the other fellow.
As much as I love Fallingwater, I love understanding more about how it was created even more. Anyone who wants to leave a mark of greatness behind should read this book.
After you finish thinking through the implications of Mr. Wright's vision and ways of implementing it, I suggest that you think about your own personal life and work. Where are you lacking in vision? Where are you lacking in the processes to implement worthwhile visions?
Turn your dreams into beautiful realities . . . for everyone!
History book on Fallingwater.......2000-08-02
Of all the books on Fallingwater, this is the best when you want to know about how the house came into being. I have 2 copies of the book, one that accompanies me on all my travelling, and one to keep in my library. I have at least read it 8 to 10 times, and already look forward to the next time. The black and white photography is quite good, although the book would even be better with some color takes. Hoffman did a great job researching on the subject, and reading the book, it occurs that this was no easy task to get everything in order, chronoligically.
Customer Reviews:
creative helper.......2001-07-06
This book motivated me to get out my paint and brushes and try some of the ideas on a few of the drab pieces of furniture I had planned to yard sale. They now are focal points in my home. The ideas in this book are well presented in pictures and how-to discriptions. I highly recommend this book if you are needing a jumpstart for your imagination.
Book Description
A collection of unique portraits by British born, New York based, fashion photographer Platon, which includes over 120 photographs constituting a unique and dynamic cross-section through the cult of fame and power. Platon's subjects are all leaders in their field and include Al Pacino, Bill Clinton, Vivienne Westwood, Leonard Cohen and David Beckham.
Customer Reviews:
A stylish collection of contemporary portraits.......2006-06-20
I'm surprised at the negative comments posted about this book, which is easily one of my favourite photo books of recent years. In contrast to the other reviewers I think Platon's work stands out exactly because it's clearly stylish and formulaic - he's a magazine photographer and that's what they are paid to do!
Platon's pictures are modern, elegantly composed portraits mostly of well known people - often rather stark and shot in a plain white studio setting, using a wide angle lens. Simple, and highly effective.
Until I found this book I was unfamiliar with Platon, who it seems shot regularly for George magazine and consequently many portraits include political figures as well as people from the media, arts and sports. There's certainly an 'Englishness' about the style of the photos, in many ways I find Platon's work similar to that of Nick Knight, Rankin or even David Bailey. Perhaps that's NOT what the other reviewers were expecting.
All in all, a very well produced book. If modern magazine portraiture is your thing, then this is an excellent source of reference.
a-v-r-age yawn.......2005-01-13
a second to the review above, may be a bit more realistic at the cheaper price..but still cant understand how this got so much hype..this guy sure has alot of confidence tho, gotta hand it, I mean, Plato is one of the greatest, who is this other small fry anyway? Rather peruse the Enquirer thanks.
Whatever.......2004-08-16
Wide-angle magazine photos that you've seen when they were in magazines. No surprises here, and not worth the trouble. The idea that it is paired here on Amazon with J. Sternfeld and E. Richards (among others) is a joke.
Book Description
This engaged, provocative reading of the ancient classic examines The Republic's philosophical meaning in the context of the text's dramatic, narrative, and mythical dimensions. The overall structure of the work is analyzed to offer insight into the key questions Plato presents about the human soul, human community, proper objects of worship and reverence, the nature of philosophy, and the relationship between the philosopher and the political community. Consideration of the connection of this work to other key writings including Homer's Odyssey and Socrates' teachings illustrates how Plato's dialogue reflects Greek tragedy's preoccupation with illuminating the paradoxical nature of philosophical quest.
Customer Reviews:
A straightforward discussion of Plato's classic text.......2005-01-04
Thoughtfully penned by a professor of philosophy at the University of Tulsa, The Republic: The Odyssey Of Philosophy is a straightforward discussion of Plato's classic text "Republic", which addresses matters ranging from the soul to human community, the nature of the philosopher himself vs. the community, and more. Meticulously dissecting the message and insights of Plato's conjecture, The Republic: The Odyssey Of Philosophy is especially meant for intermediate and advanced scholars of Greek classics, but does not presupposed any knowledge of the Greek language itself. An stimulating contribution to classical literature and philosophy shelves.
On the philosopher-poet Plato.......2003-12-04
Howland's reflections, insights, and challenging reading of Plato's REPUBLIC is an instanciation of what I might call "the joy of philosophy!" Platonic Socrates' "friendship for Homer" (X, 595b) is made manifest in a definitive way in this careful and critical interpretation. I am pleased to include Howland's work on my "top 5%" list of outstanding books (which already includes works by Klein, Sallis, Brann, Nichols, and Hyland) on Plato's great dialogue.
The best study of the Republic that I have read.......1999-05-19
This relatively small volume is an essential addition to the library of anyone who has an interest in the Republic, Plato or the classics in general. Unlike many other studies I have read, Howland's focuses on the relationship of the Republic to the Greek literary tradition, Homer's Odyssey in particular, but also tragedy and comedy. This perspective not only informs us about the philosophical content, but it helps to resolve many of the apparent contradictions in the Republic, and gives us some clues as to what Plato was trying to say. This volume has increased my understanding of the Republic, and has encouraged me to go back to the original text over and over again, for each subsequent reading is rewarded by new insight. Well worth the price.
Average customer rating:
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Die Einheit Der Polis: Eine Studie Uber Platons Staat (Mnemosyne , Vol Suppl. 106)
J. F. M. Arends
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Platon - Politeia (Klassiker Auslegen)
O Hoffe
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Platon's Republic
Platon
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Pour interpreter Platon (Collection d'etudes anciennes)
Yvon Lafrance
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Customer Reviews:
Classic Monograph on Platonic Number/Sound Forms In English.......2004-08-25
A Translation of Arthur Ahlvers' Zahl Und Klang Bei Platon/Number and Sound in Plato by Arthur Ahlvers, translation by John Black (Studies in the History of Philosophy, 67: Edwin Mellen Press) Excerpt from Translator's introduction: The motivation for producing this translation arose while I was writing a short monograph on Plato's Timaeus. So many of the topical articles in the literature made reference to the Arthur Ahlvers work that I began to feel that it might be of service to present-day classicists to make it available in English, it being less true nowadays than it was fifty years ago that a reading knowledge of German is an unconditional pre-requisite for serious classical scholarship. My casual entertaining of this idea was transmuted into firm resolve by the value of Zahl und Klang bei Platon for my own research. Despite the comparative obscurity of its Swiss author, and both despite and as a result of the unorthodoxy of his interpretations of Timaeus, it threw light on many questions, reinforced a few speculations as to their answers, and thus led me to the no doubt overblown conceit that in my own work I had something to offer the academic public. Translating Ahlvers' book for English-speaking classicists is thus repaying in a small way the multiple favours, presumably posthumous and certainly inadvertent, he has done me.
Zahl und Klang bei Platon was published by Verlag Paul Haupt, of Bern, in 1952, as part of the romantically-titled series Noctes Romanae: Forschungen über die Kultur der Antike, under the general editorship of Walter Wili. It deals with a number of interpretative issues surrounding Plato's mathematically-based accounts, derived from Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, of reproduction among the ruling class of the Republic, of terrestrial and celestial music, and of atomic stereometry.
More than this, it indicates surprising ways, to be explained later, in which these accounts are essentially connected.
Thus, in Chapter I, Ahlvers offers a re-analysis of Plato's derivation of the nuptial number in the Republic, while Chapters II, III and IV are devoted mainly to Timaeus. Chapter II examines the issue of whether or not the Greeks recognized the musical intervals of a third, both major and minor, as consonant. Chapter III proposes a way to explain, by drawing upon a musical interpretation of the geometry of the triangles which compose their faces, Plato's choice of the "fairest," half-equilateral, right-angled triangle as the basic unit of this composition, as well as some of the relationships between the atomic shapes of the four elements. In Chapter IV, which in many ways constitutes a postscript, Ahlvers argues that Plato's work in these areas is best understood as Pythagorean rather than Democritean in inspiration.
The significant contribution made by Ahlvers to the discussion of the nuptial number concerns not its identification (as 12,960,000) - in which he agrees with most other commentators - but its precise derivation, which occurs in an exceedingly obscure passage of the Republic (VIII 546b3-d3). Ahlvers argues convincingly that Plato wishes the reader to conceive of this number as essentially constituted in terms of the factors 3, 4 and 5, multiplied together, the result being raised to the fourth power. Other commentators, as Ahlvers shows, have reached the same number via differing interpretations of Plato's intentions as to its derivation. To be fair to all, it must be admitted that Plato gives a number of compatible derivations all reaching the same figure of 12,960,000: it is only one part of the relevant passage whose interpretation Ahlvers disputes.
In Chapter II the topic switches to the apparently unrelated one of whether Greek music acknowledged the third as a consonance. Contrary to the extant works of early commentators,' Ahlvers believes that the practice of Greek music did involvetreating the thirds as consonant, and, what is more, that Plato's theoretical contributions were fully cognizant of and fully in accordance with this practice. How plausible are his arguments on this score is difficult to assess: yet, while Ido not find them decisive, I think they are well worth examining in detail. The freshness of approach must commend them, even if they offend against orthodoxy. Of particular interest is Ahlvers' suggestion as to Plato's meaning in the passage (Timaeus 35b4-36a5) about inserting arithmetic and harmonic means between the notes defined by the musical tetractys in order to produce the series of consonant intervals, prior to the insertion of the whole tones and semitones required to generate the entire diatonic scale. This suggestion differs markedly, yet plausibly, from the received interpretation, with the result that both major and minor thirds are admitted to the realm of the consonant.
Ahlvers turns in Chapter III to the composition out of triangles of the four regular polyhedra which, in Timaeus, form the shapes of the atoms of the four elements.' His distinctive contribution is in the explanation of why Plato uses the right-angled half-equilateral triangle with sides 1, 3 and 2, instead of the equilateral triangle itself, as the basic building block of those polyhedra which have equilateral triangular sides. Briefly put, Ahlvers' explanation is that the ratios of the sides of this triangle are, within appropriate limits of approximation, those required for specifying the proportions' involved in the intervals of the enharmonic division of the fourth. Given certain ideas, here attributed to Plato, about the aesthetics of enharmonicism and thus of this "fairest triangle," Ahlvers draws a connection between the beauty of the style of music, the beauty of the triangle and the beauty of the universe constructed, he claims, on their basis. Plato's view then emerges as even more thorough than previously thought in its undisputed application of musical harmony to the composition of the elements of the world.
In an interesting digression, Ahlvers builds on the above to offer a fascinating explanation of the uneasy relationship between the equilateral-triangle-faced polyhedra associated with fue, air and water and the square-faced cube associated with earth. The faces of the latter are composed of right-angled isosceles triangles, as opposed to half-equilaterals, and thus do not allow earth to participate in the normal processes of transmutation occurring between the elements, which operate by the dissolution of the atoms into their faces and the reconstitution of these into the other relevant polyhedra.' Plato seems, however, to be uncomfortable with this consequence of his geometric stoichiometry, for elsewhere in Timaeus he appears almost to contradict himself by including earth in the mutual transmutations. By referring to a method of exhaustion attributed to Theaetetus, Ahlvers shows how the square face of the cube can also be regarded as composed, within limits of approximation themselves defined by musical analogy, of the half-equilateral triangles so crucial to the other elements. He thus offers Plato a way to include earth in the processes of transformation, which gives rise, if one wants to explain the apparent self-contradiction, to the suggestion that Plato may have been drawing upon a tradition whose detail he had not fully assimilated.
The final Chapter looks more closely at the question of what are the sources for the entire discussion in Timaeus, and in other dialogues which call upon the interrelated subjects of arithmetic, geometry, stereometry, cosmology and music. Ahlvers' conclusion, that Pythagoras looms much larger in the background to Plato than Democritus, seems unassailable on grounds independent of the analyses andinterpretations he offers in the earlier Chapters. Yet these also add to its support, and reaffirm the crucial place of both Plato and Pythagoras in the history of atomism...
My goal above all has been to preserve the technical clarity of the original, and to present it to a modem reader in readily accessible form. Ahlvers typifies an approach to academic writing which is less common now than it used to be: he oscillates between steady periods of closely-argued exposition and analysis, on the one hand, and occasional polemical outbursts against competing commentaries, and commentators, on the other. Despite its value as identifying areas where the author is perhaps on slippery ground, I have found it difficult to avoid toning down the vituperation; for one thing, it seems foreign to contemporary philosophical discourse, and thus unnatural; for another, the high degree of invective can only appear unwarranted to a reader who is unfamiliar, as now we all are, with the context of scholarly debate in which Ahlvers was a participant; in each case the danger is that a reader will be distracted from the interpretative point by the tone in which it is expressed.
Similar considerations have influenced my attitude to the complex syntax of the German, and in many cases I have resorted to simplification in the interests of clarity, while leaving some instances untouched for the sake of flavor. Ahlvers is fond of the inclusive "we," drawing the reader into collusion with him as a co-developer of his account: I have eschewed this attitude in the English, preferring the use of the first-person singular to identify a view or an intention as the author's, but have allowed some innocent "we"s to remain, when, for example, they are used to invite the reader to accompany the writer in a change of topic.
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