Aaron G. Green: Organic Architecture Beyond Frank Lloyd Wright by Randolph C. Henning
“Everything I know about architecture I
know from Frank Lloyd Wright,” Aaron G. Green, FAIA, unequivocally said. However,
Green was unusual among doting apprentices. He established a shared office with
the master—acting as Wright’s west coast representative—while also embarking on
his own projects. This very impressive volume exhaustively chronicles the
architect’s work after Wright, and his further explorations into Organic
architecture.
Before
joining the Taliesin Fellowship in 1940, Green was the ultimate fanboy,
plotting the perfect way to meet Wright—offering him a commission. By 1943, war
service ended his Fellowship, but he started working with Wright again in 1951,
when the senior architect suggested they open an office together in San
Francisco. From 1951 to Wright’s death in 1959, Green worked on more than 30
Wright projects, including the well-known Marin County Civic Center, while also
doing commissions under his own name.
After
a foreword by architectural historian Alan Hess, an introduction by Wright
archivist Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, preface by Green mentee Jan Novie, the author
Henning—himself an architect—gives a brief biographical overview before delving
into 375 pages of project profiles, including single-family residences, houses
of worship, large-scale city planning, and various commercial projects. Color
and black-and-white drawings are beautifully reproduced, as are classic
black-and-white photos. The quality of color photography ranges from poor to
uneven, unfortunately detracting from the presentation. But in the work itself,
the debt to Wright is obvious on each page, though what emerges most is Green’s
life-long interpretation of the concepts of Organic architecture. As noted by
Hess, Green “contributed to Organic architecture at both the macro and micro
scale.” This book shows it all.
