Frank Lloyd Wright (redirected from Franklin Lloyd wright)

Wright, Frank Lloyd 

Born June 8, 1869, in Richland Center, Wis., died Apr. 9, 1959, at Taliesin West, Ariz. American architect; founder and leading exponent of the school of organic architecture.

Wright, who did not complete his professional education, worked in Chicago for the architects J. L. Silsbee (1887) and L. Sullivan (from 1888). Sullivan’s influence upon Wright was decisive. However, even in Wright’s earliest buildings the symmetry characteristic of his teacher was given an expressive romantic treatment (Charnley House, Chicago, 1891).

The romantic tendencies in Wright’s work increased after 1893, when he began to work independently, and became especially strong after 1900, with his series of “prairie houses.” Outstanding among these are the Willitts House in Highland Park, 111. (1902), and the Robie House in Chicago (1909), in which Wright, inspired by Japanese architecture, for the first time employed a unified system of “interflowing” interior spaces. The interiors are linked with the surrounding environment by means of overhanging roofs, terraces, loggias, and unin-terrrupted horizontal strips of windows. Wright integrated architectural form with the landscape, revealing structural devices and the specific properties of building materials. Elements of Wright’s prairie style also appear in his larger buildings of the early 20th century, such as the Larkin Building in Buffalo (1905) and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1916–22; razed in the 1960’s).

An exhibition of Wright’s designs in Berlin in 1910 greatly influenced the subsequent development of European architecture. Yet in the United States, Wright’s work failed to win recognition until the end of the 1930’s.

In the early 1920’s, Wright used concrete blocks as his principal building material, rhythmically articulating his facades with the repetition of standard elements (for example, the Millard House in Pasadena, Calif., 1923). In the 1930’s he became a leading exponent of architecture as a link connecting man and nature—in opposition to the conformist and technical tendencies of functionalism. Wright’s archetypal work of this period was the Kaufmann House (“Falling Water”) in Bear Run, Pa. Its boldly projecting overhangs extend beyond the edge of cliffs over a forest stream.

Following analogies with natural forms, Wright created “treelike” high-rise structures, with concrete “trunks” to accommodate vertical service cores and with cantilevered floors extending from the trunks like “branches” (Laboratory Tower, Racine, Wis., 1949; Price Tower, Bartlesville, Okla., 1956).

In a number of structures built between the 1930’s and 1950’s, Wright abandoned the principle of rectangularity and organized space on the basis of circles, spirals, and 60° and 120° angles (for example, the Hanna House, Palo Alto, Calif., 1937). This series of experiments culminated in the design for the Guggenheim Museum in New York (designed 1943–46; constructed 1956–59), whose main interior space is given form by a spiral ramp around a central well topped by a skylight dome. The unbroken, “flowing” form of the exterior echoes the wholeness of the interior space.

Wright’s views as a theoretician of deurbanism were given expression in his design for Broadacre City (1935), which provided for the complete integration of urban construction and the landscape.

Wright’s work was a direct link between the achievements of late-19th-century and mid-20th-century architecture. While remaining faithful to the sentimental dream of a life amid nature and seeking possibilities to humanize man’s existence according to the principles of organic architecture, Wright was also one of the founders of rationalism in modern architecture. On a sociophilosophical level, Wright’s humanism was combined with an individualism, often in the spirit of F. Nietzsche, that was aimed more at freeing the individual from society than at guaranteeing freedom within society.

WORKS

An Organic Architecture, the Architecture of Democracy. London, 1939.
On Architecture: Selected Writings. New York(1941).
An Autobiography. New York, 1943.
The Future of Architecture. New York, 1953.
American Architecture. New York, 1955.
A Testament. New York, 1957.
The Living City. New York, 1958.
In Russian translation:
Budushchee arkhitektury. Moscow, 1960.

REFERENCES

Gol’dshtein, A. F. Frank LloidRait. Moscow, 1973.
Hitchcock, H. R. In the Nature of Materials. New York, 1942.
Zevi, B. Frank Lloyd Wright, 2nd ed. Milan, 1954.
Scully, V. J. Frank Lloyd Wright. New York [I960].