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The Darwin D. Martin House Complex is a residence located in Buffalo, NY. It was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and it was built between 1903 and 1905. It is one of Wright’s greatest works, among the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, NY and Fallingwater in Pennsylvania. The Martin House Complex was designed during Wright’s Prairie House period. The Prairie House period was a new approach to domestic architecture that Wright decided to take. It was inspired by the flat landscape in the Midwest and it is a unique style of architecture. (“The Prairie Style | Frank Lloyd Wright Trust”) Prairie houses have low, horizontal lines that were designed to resemble how prairies are flat and they are built around a central point which is the chimney. Prairie houses contain mainly open spaces rather than confined rooms. The purpose of this was to show the contrast between the interior spaces and the surrounding terrain. (“Prairie Style”) In the Martin House Complex lived Dar...

View from Street The Palais Stoclet designed by Josef Hoffmann in 1905 for the Belgian banker Adolphe Stoclet in Brussels is a total work of art. The project is part of the “Vienna Secession movement (which) bears witness to a profound conceptual and stylistic renewal of Art Nouveau.”(1) The total work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk) refers to everything, the furniture, the materials, every space, every garden, and every view from each space. It may not seem that way from the street, as you are greeted by a gray façade which is hidden behind tall hedges. It’s exterior gives a sense of inward focus as the windows are placed only where there is not much of a view, and seem to only exist for the purpose of allowing light to enter. The decorative copper elements including the four men, the homes tower, and other smaller decorative roofing elements have now patinaed and add a luxuriously artistic detail to the exterior. On the interior the amalgamation of geometry is everywhere, but allows...