Frank Lloyd Wright
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Frank Lloyd Wright | |
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Frank Lincoln Wright | |
Birthday | |
Birthplace | Richland Center, Wisconsin |
Died | |
Nationality | American |
Wright, Frank Lloyd
The Prairie Style
Innovative Techniques and Styles
Important Works
The Larkin Office Building (1904; destroyed 1950), Buffalo, and Oak Park Unity Temple (1908), near Chicago, were early monumental works that exerted wide influence. Among other notable works are the Imperial Hotel (1916–22; demolished 1968; partially reconstructed, Meiji Mura Mus., Inuyama, Japan), Tokyo, Japan, which withstood the effects of the 1923 earthquake; the Midway Gardens (1914; destroyed 1923), Chicago; and Wright's own residence “Taliesin” (1911; twice burned and rebuilt) at Spring Green, Wis. Among his later projects were “Taliesin West” (1936–59), Scottsdale, Ariz. (which has continued since his death as a school of architecture); the Johnson administration building (1936–39; research tower, 1950), Racine Wis.; and the house for Edgar Kaufmann, “Fallingwater” (1936–37), Bear Run, Pa., which is dramatically cantilevered over a waterfall.
After World War II, Wright continued a large and ever-inventive practice until his death. He created dynamic interior spaces with spiral ramps for the V. C. Morris Gift Shop (1948–49), San Francisco, and for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1946–59), New York City. Other notable later buildings include a Unitarian church (1947), Madison, Wis.; the Price Tower (1955), Bartlesville, Okla.; and Beth Sholom Synagogue (1959), Elkins Park, Pa. He left numerous unrealized projects, including one for a mile-high skyscraper (“The Illinois”) for Chicago and an ambitious design for a civic center in Madison, Wis. The latter was later reconceived as the Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center and opened in 1997.
Writings and Bibliography
Wright's architectural philosophy was expressed in his lectures and writings. Among them are On Architecture (1941); When Democracy Builds (1945); Genius and the Mobocracy (1949, enl. ed. 1971), an evaluation of his master Louis H. Sullivan; The Future of Architecture (1953); An American Architecture (1955); and A Testament (1957). His influence can be seen throughout Europe. Volumes illustrative of his works were published in France and Germany as early as 1910. In 1995 about 5,000 of his architectural drawings were published in CD-ROM form as Frank Lloyd Wright: Presentation and Conceptual Drawings.
See complete catalog of his buildings by W. A. Storrer (upd. 3d ed. 2007); his autobiography (enl. ed. 1977); biographies by F. Farr (1961), I. Lloyd Wright, his daughter (1962), O. Lloyd Wright, his third wife (rev. ed. 1970), R. C. Twombly (1973), M. Secrest (1992), A. L. Huxtable (2004), and P. Hendrickson (2019); studies by H. R. Hitchcock (1942, repr. 1973); V. Scully (1960), P. Blake (rev. ed. 1964), H. A. Brooks (1972), D. L. Johnson (1990), and D. Hoffmann (1995); W. A. Storrer, The Frank Lloyd Wright Companion (1994); bibliography by R. L. Sweeney (1978).
Wright, Frank Lloyd
(1867–1959)








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].