Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower

Wednesday, 19 October 2005 12:46

BARTLESVILLE, OK.-Described by its creator as “The Tree that Escaped the Crowded Forest,” the Price Tower was visionary in its time—and remains relevant today—as Frank Lloyd Wright’s only skyscraper. First imagined in the 1920s for a New York site, St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie, then redesigned and built on the Oklahoma prairie for the H.C. Price Company, the Price Tower realized one of Wright’s cherished ideals: integrating office, commercial and residential space within a tall, richly decorative structure whose cantilevered floors “broke the box” of conventional construction. Since completion in early 1956, the Price Tower has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places, praised by architect Tadao Ando as “one of the most important buildings of the 20th century” and transformed into the home of Price Tower Arts Center as the centerpiece of the museum’s permanent collection. Now, to mark the building’s 50th anniversary, the Arts Center will present a major exhibition, Prairie Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Price Tower. With an installation designed by the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid. Organized by Price Tower Arts Center, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in cooperation with The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona, Prairie Skyscraper presents for the first time a comprehensive selection of the Arts Center’s collection of historic artworks and objects relating to the Price Tower, including never-before-exhibited Wright documents and drawings from its own holdings and from those of the Wright Foundation’s archives. On view will be approximately 108 drawings, models, photographs, documents, building components (such as exterior copper panels and louvers) and furnishings. The latter objects include desks, chairs, tables and textiles designed for the Price Tower by Frank Lloyd Wright, in keeping with his conception of the building as an integrated work of art. According to Richard Townsend, “Zaha’s installation design combines the past, present and future in a beautiful conversation that amply speaks to the influence that Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece, Price Tower, has had on modern and contemporary architecture and design.”

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