july 2003

recommended readings
student book review
by Jessten Murphy, University of Georgia

WRIGHTSCAPES - Frank Lloyd Wright's Landscape Designs, by Charles E. Aguar and Berdeana Aguar.  2002 from McGraw-Hill, New York.

(Originally published in The Georgia Landscape 2003, Reprinted with Permission)

The just-published book Wrightscapes documents the environmental designs of Frank Lloyd Wright. Authors Charles and Berdeana Aguar chronicle the life of this talented icon from his childhood in the harsh climates of Wisconsin through to his adult life in the warmer temperatures at Taliesin West in the Arizona desert.

The authors show Wright as having been extremely sensitive to site planning and other landscape-related issues. The Aguars detail how Frederick Law Olmsted, the Columbian Exposition, and the rebuilding of Chicago after the great fire of 1871 had a profound impact on the career of America's most famous architect.

Wrightscapes clearly delineates Wright's life into understandable stages and tackles each phase with a level of detail that is impressive since Wright's life has already been so well researched. To obtain their wealth of Wright knowledge, the authors conducted extensive site visits and studies, established personal relationships with former and present owners of Wright projects and created a productive relationship with the people of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

Wrightscapes will benefit those who believe landscape architects should strongly influence a site's design before the structural architecture is created. This book makes it clear that Wright took the landscape into consideration and consulted landscape architects, including the notable Jens Jensen, before designing houses and other buildings. Wright's interest in innovative landscape design can be seen early on in his career with the design of his Oak Park home and studio, which he sited to take advantage of views, privacy, trees, vegetation and microclimates. He was also an ardent proponent of the Prairie School, a modern architectural design style that promoted the use of native plants and creating a sense of place within designed landscapes.

Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's estate in Spring Green, Wisconsin, was one of his most mature landscape designs and upheld his Organic Architecture design principals. Wright took great pains to design the house and land into one element that combined American, Italian, and Japanese components of landscape design into one cohesive whole. The book points out that although Falling Water was his most famous design, it went against his Organic Architecture strategies. These design guidelines stated that architecture should be sited in a manner that lets the occupants enjoy the most prominent features of the site, instead of building on top of them. The in-depth study done on many of Wright's Organic Architecture design sites will benefit landscape architects because they show the importance that the sun, seasons, wind, and other natural parameters of the place play into designing our environment.

Wrightscapes may never have come to fruition without the persistence and dedication of Charles Aguar's wife Berdeana after the untimely death of her husband. Wright fans and landscape architects owe a great debt to her for this because without her diligence this important book may have never been published. Thanks to Berdeana, the world can enjoy a new book about Frank Lloyd Wright that is progressive and forward thinking, an extremely difficult feat to accomplish.

Unlike Wright, an architectural genius who realized fame and critical acclaim while living, it is sometimes difficult to assess a person's true accomplishments until after they have passed away. The extent a person impacts their community, profession and family can sometimes only be fully realized once they are gone. Such is the case with Charles Aguar who passed away before Wrightscapes was published. I have learned from many sources of Aguar's extreme devotion to his students, peers and his wife Berdeana, a bond that was undividable. Aguar also greatly impacted his community as seen through his contribution to the creation of Athens (GA)  greenway.

He also contributed a great deal of research to the profession of landscape architecture including an in-depth study into the life and works of landscape designer Earle S. Draper, whom Aguar dubbed "the unsung hero of Southern (U.S.) landscape architecture." Aguar's most significant research legacy nevertheless will most likely be the work that he and Berdeana compiled into Wrightscapes.