Walter Burley Griffin in America

One of the most original architects the United States has produced, Walter Burley Griffin worked in the shadow of his early colleague and employer, Frank Lloyd Wright. This has obscured Griffin's contributing role in Wright's architecture as well as the superb accomplishments of his own work as architect, landscape architect, and town planner. A Chicago area native and a graduate of the University of Illinois, Griffin worked for five years as Wright's chief associate, then established his own practice in 1906. His personal style emphasized harmony between buildings and their surroundings and featured strong, elemental shapes, the experimental use of new materials, and simple, open floor plans. In 1912 Griffin won an international competition with his design for the proposed new Australian capital city of Canberra. His subsequent travels to oversee development of that design eventually led to Griffin's decision to settle permanently in Australia. Walter Burley Griffin in America combines the richly detailed photographs of Mati Maldre and extensive research of Paul Kruty to provide the first complete visual record ever published of Griffin's surviving American work.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.