Sometime in 1932, Frank Lloyd Wright ( 1867-1959) sarcastically characterized my architect-father Richard Neutra's recently built Lovell Health House as "cheap and thin". My father would have been justified in protesting that criticism from the man whose fundamental architectural strategies he deeply admired. You see, in order to make his envisaged prefabricated housing, schools, libraries, and health centers economical, he had to make them thin. It was part of his plan to capture the essence and lessons of the Arts and Crafts movement-and of Wright's machine-friendly evolution of it-without the conspicuous consumption of materials, space, costly craftsmanship, and allusions to other epochs and social classes.

This book explores the forty-year relationship between my parents and the great Frank Lloyd Wright. I attempt to explain how someone could still feel loyal to Wright and his design strategies, even if that person aspired to be cheap (in the good sense of being inexpensive and affordable) and beautifully thin (light and easy to transport). The book ends with my speculations about the nature of "influence" of a powerful personality like Frank Lloyd Wright on other powerful personalities like my Austrian father Richard Neutra ( 1892-1970) and my Swiss mother Dione Neutra (1901-1990).