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Frank Lloyd Wright
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Word Count: 1446
Page Count: 6 Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
“.......having a good start not only do I fully intend to be the greatest architect who
has yet lived, but fully intend to be the greatest architect who will ever live. Yes, I
intend to be the greatest architect of all time.” - Frank Lloyd Wright 1867-1959
CHILDHOOD
Born in Richland Center, in southwestern Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867
(sometimes reported as 1869), Frank Lincoln Wright, who changed his own middle
name to Lloyd, was raised under the influence of a Welsh heritage. The Lloyd-Jones
family, his mother’s side of the family, had a great influence on Wright throughout his
life. The family was Unitarian in faith and lived close to each other. Major emphasis
within the Lloyd-Jones family included education, religion, and nature. Wright’s family
spent many evenings listening to William Lincoln Wright read the works of Emerson,
Thoreau, and Blake. His aunts Nell and Jane opened a school of their own, pressing
the philosophies of the German educator, Froebel. Wright was brought up in a
comfortable, but certainly not warm household. His father, William Carey Wright, who
worked as a preacher and a musician, moved from job to another, dragging his family
across the United States. Possibly as a result of this upheaval, Wright’s parents
divorced when while he was still young. His mother, Anna, relied heavily upon her
many brothers, sisters and uncles, and Wright was intellectually guided by his aunts
and his mother.
Before Wright was even born, his mother had decided that her son was gong
to be a great architect. Using Froebel’s geometric blocks to entertain and educate her
son, Mrs. Wright must have struck the genius that her son possessed. Use of
imagination was encouraged and Wright was given free run of the playroom filled
with paste, paper, and cardboard. On the door were the words, SANCTUM
SANCTORUM (Latin for place of inviolable privacy). Wright was seen as a dreamy and
sensitive child, and cases of him running away while working on the farmlands with
his uncles were noted. This pattern of running away from one thing or another
continued throughout his lifetime.
WRIGHT’S FIRST BREAK
In 1887, at the age of twenty, Frank Lloyd Wright moved to Chicago. During the late
nineteenth century, Chicago was a booming, crazy place. With an education in
engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Wright found a job as a draftsman in a
Chicago architectural firm. During this short time with the firm of J. Lyman Silsbee,
Wright started on his first project, the “Hillside Home” for his aunts, Nell and Jane.
Impatiently moving forward, Wright got a job at one of the best known firms in
Chicago at the time, Adler and Sullivan. Sullivan was to become Wright’s greatest
mentor.
LOUIS SULLIVAN: LIEBER MEISTER
Wright referred to Sullivan as “Lieber Meister” (beloved master). He admired his
talent for ornamentation, and his skill of drawing intricate plans and designs. Wright
picked up on the ways of Sullivan and soon became ahead of Alder in importance
within the firm. Wright’s relationship between him and his employer caused great
amounts of tension between Wright and his fellow draftsmen, as well as with Sullivan
and Adler. Wright was assigned the residential contracts of the firm. His work soon
expanded as he accepted jobs outside of the firm. When Sullivan found out about
this in 1893, he called Wright on a breach of contract. Rather than to drop the “night
jobs”, Wright walked out on the firm. When Wright left the company, Sullivan’s
quantity of contracts declined quickly. Sullivan soon ran into economic troubles and
his international reputation dwindled by 1920. Sullivan was soon regarded as
worthless to the architectural world. He resorted to alcoholism and died in 1924
without regaining the glory of what was held in his early years in Chicago.
LIFE AFTER THE FIRM
Wright quickly built up a practice in residential architecture. At one point in his career,
Wright would produce 135 buildings in ten years. Wright took a different approach to
architecture by designing the furniture, light fixtures, and other things that were in the
structures that he made. He developed a unique type of architecture that was known
as the “Prairie” style. Dominated by the horizontal line, the style would make-up the
type of buildings designed in the 1900-1913 era of his career. Wright had two other
distinctive styles and a period for each one of them, one being the Textile block
(1917-1924) and the other the Usonian (1936-1959), which is the most familiar to
modern world.
In 1909 Wright took off for Europe, once again leaving a stable life, with six children,
..
...a wife and a well established business. He traveled to Europe to seek greater fame
and recognition. Wright did not stay long in Europe. He left in 1910 and returned to
Chicago and Wisconsin to start construction of his second home, Taliesin in 1911. In
the year 1913 he got a contract for Midway Gardens in downtown Chicago, which
today exists only in drawings. In 1914, disaster struck Wright’s life when his mistress,
two children and four of Wright’s leading workmen were murdered by a crazed
servant. Taliesin was also burned to the ground. He would rebuild in the desert
southwest. Wright soon left to Japan.
WRIGHT’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS IN LIFE
By the time Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959, he had produced architecture for more
than seventy years. Wright had changed many styles and set new standards. His
organic approach still influences many drafters of today. In the design of the house,
he would use natural materials to blend the house into the setting. He manipulated
stone, brick, glass, wood, stucco, concrete, and copper in ways that had never been
done before.
There are many amazing buildings designed by Wright. The amount seems almost
uncountable. The Robie house is considered to be a masterpiece of Wright’s career.
Made of a many different materials, the house was intended by Wright to have a
“homey” feeling, a feeling of unity. The light fixtures and other items were built into
the house to keep the unity effect alive. The house was designed and built between
1906 and 1910, and is located in Chicago. The building was commissioned by
Frederick C. Robie, a 30 year old engineer at the time he approached Wright. The
house, in my opinion shows the exact definition of the “Prairie” style. The way that it’s
built on a narrow city lot and the way it’s horizontal lines appear, show the short, flat
look of that style.
The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo provided Wright with an architectural as well as
engineering challenge. The hotel was finished in 1922 and was criticized for its
aesthetic design, but when it survived the 1923 earthquake that left Tokyo in
shambles, it was praised. Wright designed a “floating foundation” for the building. I
believe that Wright had designed the hotel perfectly for the Japanese. The
simpleness and horizontal line of his Prairie style, fit in the culture perfectly. Wright’s
trait of using natural material was, and still is, common to the Japanese culture.
Fallingwater was another one of Wright’s masterpieces. It also sought to embody the
exact definition of organic architecture. Wright utilized mostly concrete and stone to
create his masterpiece. The concrete gives this house a smooth look and allowed
Wright the ability to cantilever a portion of the house, making it appear as if it were a
stone ledge reaching over the brook the house sets next to. The different layers
make the building look like a cascading waterfall. Wright built the house around
existing trees, following his practice of disturbing nature as little as possible during
construction. The chimney is made around an existing boulder that the owner used
to sit on as a child. Fallingwater is one, if not the best, of Wright’s houses. The
rooms and ledges are all dramatically different from the traditional boxy houses of
Wright’s time period.
The Guggenheim Museum has been considered Wright’s last great feat. Sadly, but
true, Wright passed away shortly before the museum was publicly opened. It has a
unique spiral/snail shell design that seems to grow out of the ground in the heart of
New York City. The huge skylight provides light for the entire museum. The design
allows people to see the art in a continuous manner. Visitors are intended to take an
elevator to the top and walk all the way down, viewing all the exhibits as they
descend. Today, after an exhaustive competition, a second building is attached to
the museum, providing even more display space. The winning design is a simple,
thin tower that is designed not to distract from the beautiful spiral. In true Wright
fashion, the architect stated that he did not want to disturb nature, giving the
museum its own place in the environment.
Wright never retired; he died on April 9, 1959 at the age of ninety-two in Arizona. He
was interred at the graveyard at Unity Chapel (which was considered to be his first
building) at Taliesin in Wisconsin. In 1985, Olgivanna Wright passed away and one of
her wishes was to have Frank Lloyd Wright’s remains cremated and the ashes put
next to hers at Taliesin West. After much controversy, this was done. The epitaph at
his Wisconsin grave site reads: “Love of an idea is the love of God.”
Biographies
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