[Audio Guide]
This sturdy-looking office desk is equipped with many drawers and partitioned shelves. Looking toward the bottom, one notices that the chair is attached to the desk. The chair can be moved back and forth, and also rotates. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned by the Larkin Company, a mail-order soap business, to design a new six-story building with a central atrium brightly illuminated by skylights, and he designed the building’s office desks and chairs as well. They were created in line with company management’s belief that a healthy and comfortable office environment was necessary to encourage diligence among employees. The furniture is made of steel, suitably for a modern office, but this efficiency is balanced by decorative touches typical of Wright’s work, including an exquisite balance of dark and light brown hues and grid patterns incorporated into the detailing.
[Audio Guide]
The intricacy and delicacy of the lines make this a captivating architectural drawing. Wright left his home country, the US, to live in Fiesole, Italy from 1910 to 1911. During this period, he made lithographic versions of 100 of his early architectural drawings and published them as a collection through the German publishing house Ernst Wasmuth AG. Many drawings from this period are believed to have been rendered by Marion Mahony, a staff member in Wright’s office. Wright, along with his son Lloyd Wright and draftsman Taylor Woolley, traced these drawings so as to refine and simplify their lines. While not a single Wright design was built in Europe, this publication of a collection of his designs early in his career served to disseminate his architectural thinking and profoundly influenced young European architects.
