Comprehensive check

Task 1. Answer the questions.

1. What is “organic architecture”?

2. What unusual features can be found in the Larkin House?

3. What was the purpose of the Taliesin Fellowship?

4. How did Wright believe homes should be designed?

5. Did Wright’s buildings fit in with the neighborhood?

Task 2. Decide whether these sentences are true or false. Correct the false ones.

1. Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses use the box as their basic model.

2. While building the Imperial Hotel Wright used reinforced piles to respond to the wavelike motions of an earthquake.

3. Wright had a profound influence on industrial and office design in the second half of the 20^th century.

4. In Wright homes, the inside is not divided into tiny rooms but instead has open living space.

5. The Imperial Hotel was ruined during a devastating earthquake in 1922.

6. In Falling Water great sweeping supporting beams extend from a core of fire, rock and water to the landscape beyond.

7. Wright had a great love for European culture.

Task 3. Complete the following sentences.

1. The typical house was a box-like … of wood and brick.

1. affair

2. deal

3. cabin

2. This building became a … for young and creative architects.

1. exception

2. supporter

3. pace setter

3. The interior courtyard was lighted naturally by a … .

1. skylight

2. LED

3. floodlight

4. The high … of the building site created a serious engineering problem.

1. subsoil

2. water table

3. wind

5. After a … crash in 1929, a long depression followed and little building took place.

1. building

2. scaffold

3. stock market

6. To protect the building from earthquakes Wright used … foundations which supported sections of the hotel.

1. moving

2. floating

3. stable

Language activity

Task 4. Find synonyms to the following words.

foremost enrol elaborate devise pace setter poor frequent devastating masterpiece apprentice

conceive outstanding repeated leader ruined below standard trainee finest work destructive complicated enter

Task 5. Complete the following sentences using one of the words in the box.

although, unlike, however, other hand, than that, instead, compared

1. Carbon nanotubes are going to replace copper wires in computer chips, because their electrical resistance is much lower … of copper wires.

2. … with today’s touch screens, those of the future will be cheap to manufacture at high resolutions and in larger sizes. On the …, perhaps touch screens will be replaced by a totally different technology.

3. … many nanomaterials are currently at the laboratory stage of manufacture, a few of them are being commercialized.

4. Speech input is already common in many cars today. Background noise, …, is still a problem with this technology.

5. In the future, notebook computers will respond to facial gestures … of requiring touch screen or mouse-based input.

6. … other manufacturers, Sony delivers top-class picture quality across the price range.

Task 6. Find words in the text that mean:

1. An area of land that is beautiful to look at or that has a particular type of appearance.

2. Someone whose job is to draft official or legal documents.

3. A large house, especially a beautiful one.

4. An excellent painting, book, piece of music etc., or the best work of art that a particular artist, writer, musician etc. has ever produced.

5. The room in a house under the roof.

6. The part of a building that is partly or completely below the level of the ground.

7. A large open section of a building, often with a glass roof.

8. The part of a structure of a building that is below the ground and supports the rest of it.

Task 7. Find antonyms to the following words.

tiny enrol brilliant elaborate smooth broad depression dissolve appropriate innovative

simple narrow rise, boom leave inappropriate, irrelevant stupid, untalented dense uneven, rough obsolete condense huge