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Frank Lloyd Wright

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Architecture

   Frank Lloyd Wright
                 Personal Information
           Name          Frank Lloyd Wright
        Nationality      American
        Birth date       8th June 1867
        Birth place      Richland Centre, Wisconsin
       Date of death     9th April 1959
      Place of death     Phoenix, Arizona
                     Working Life
   Significant Buildings Robie House

                         Fallingwater
                         Johnson Wax Building
                         Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
   Significant Projects  The Illinois

   Frank Lloyd Wright ( June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was one of the most
   prominent and influential architects of the first half of 20th century.
   He not only developed a series of highly individual styles over his
   extraordinarily long architectural career (spanning the years
   1887-1959), he influenced the whole course of American architecture and
   building. To this day he remains probably America's most famous
   architect.

Biography

Early years

   Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the agricultural town of Richland
   Centre, Wisconsin, United States, on June 8, 1867, just two years after
   the end of the American Civil War. He was brought up with strong
   Unitarian and transcendental principles (eventually, in 1905, he would
   design the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois). As a child he spent a
   great deal of time playing with the kindergarten educational blocks by
   Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (known as Froebel Gifts) given to him
   by his mother. These consisted of various geometrically shaped blocks
   that could be assembled in various combinations to form
   three-dimensional compositions. Wright in his autobiography talks about
   the influence of these exercises on his approach to design. Many of his
   buildings are notable for the geometrical clarity they exhibit.
   Wright's home in Oak Park, Illinois
   Enlarge
   Wright's home in Oak Park, Illinois

   Wright began his formal education in 1885 at the University of
   Wisconsin-Madison School for Engineering, where he was a member of a
   fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. He took classes part-time for two years
   while apprenticing under Allan Darst Conover, a local builder and
   professor of civil engineering. In 1887, Wright left the university
   without taking a degree (although he was granted an honorary doctorate
   of fine arts from the university in 1955) and moved to Chicago,
   Illinois, where he joined the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman
   Silsbee. Within the year, he had left Silsbee to work for the firm of
   Adler & Sullivan. Beginning in 1890, he was assigned all residential
   design work for the firm. In 1893, Wright was fired from Adler &
   Sullivan by Louis Sullivan himself, after Sullivan discovered that
   Wright had been accepting clients independently from the firm. Wright
   established his own practice and home in the Chicago suburb of Oak
   Park, IL. He had completed around fifty projects by 1901, including
   many houses in his hometown.
   Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York
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   Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York

   Between 1900 and 1910, his residential designs were " Prairie Houses"
   (extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines,
   suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces, using unfinished
   materials), so-called because the design is considered to complement
   the land around Chicago. These houses are credited with being the first
   examples of the " open plan."

   In fact, the manipulation of interior space in residential and public
   buildings, such as the Unitarian Unity Temple, in Oak Park, are
   hallmarks of his style.
   Hillside Home School, 1902, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin
   Enlarge

        Hillside Home School, 1902, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin

   He believed that humanity should be central to all design. Many
   examples of this work can be found in Buffalo, New York, resulting from
   a friendship between Wright and an executive from the Larkin Soap
   Company, Darwin D. Martin. In 1902 the Larkin Company decided to build
   a new administration building.

   Wright came to Buffalo and designed not only the first sketches for the
   Larkin Administration Building (completed in 1904, demolished in 1950),
   but also three homes for the company's executives:
     * George Barton House, Buffalo NY, 1903
     * Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo NY, 1904
     * William Heath House, Buffalo NY, 1905
          + and later, the Graycliff estate, Derby, NY 1926

   The houses considered the masterpieces of the late Prairie period
   (1907–9) are the Frederick Robie House and the Avery and Queene Coonley
   House, both in Chicago. The Robie House, with its soaring, cantilevered
   roof lines, supported by a 110-foot-long channel of steel, is the most
   dramatic. Its living and dining areas form virtually one uninterrupted
   space. This building had a profound influence on young European
   architects after World War I and is sometimes called the "cornerstone
   of modernism." Wright's work, however, was not known to European
   architects until the publication of the Wasmuth Portfolio in 1910.

Europe and personal troubles

   In 1904, Wright designed a house for a neighbour in Oak Park, Edwin
   Cheney, and immediately took a liking to Cheney's wife, Mamah Borthwick
   Cheney. The two fell in love, even though Wright had been married for
   over a decade. Often the two could be seen taking rides in Wright's
   automobile through Oak Park, and they became the talk of the town.
   Wright's wife, Kitty, would not grant him a divorce however, and at
   first, neither would Edwin Cheney grant one to Mamah. In 1909, even
   before the Robie House was actually completed, Wright and Mamah Cheney
   eloped to Europe. The scandal that erupted virtually destroyed Wright's
   ability to practice architecture in the United States.

   Architectural historians have speculated on why Wright decided to turn
   his life upside-down. It has been said that he enjoyed living on the
   edge. Offered as proof of this are the facts that he was always digging
   himself into problems. He spent money almost as soon as he received it,
   and almost always seemed to be in debt. This argument has been
   completed with speculation that Wright was himself having a
   professional midlife crisis (in 1907 he was already forty years old).
   Scholars argue that he felt by 1907-8 that he had done everything he
   could do with the Prairie Style, particularly from the standpoint of
   the one-family house. To illustrate, one can ask the question, "How
   many different permutations of the Prairie Style residence can you do
   without eventually feeling like you are going nowhere?" Wright was not
   getting larger commissions for commercial or public buildings, which
   frustrated him not only because of the desire for bigger and better
   work, but also because of his immense ego and desire to be recognized
   as the architectural genius he saw himself as.

   Wright and Mamah Cheney traveled extensively throughout Europe, where
   Wright absorbed a great amount of architectural history. In 1910,
   during a stop in Berlin, Wright, with virtually all of his drawings,
   visited the publishing house of Ernst Wasmuth, who had agreed to
   publish his work there. In two volumes, the Wasmuth Portfolio was thus
   published, and created the first major exposure of Wright's work in
   Europe.

   Wright remained in Europe for two years, though Mamah Cheney left for
   the United States a few times, and set up home in Fiesole, Italy.
   During this time, Edwin Cheney granted her a divorce, though Kitty
   Wright again refused to grant one to her husband. After Wright's return
   to the United States in 1911, he moved to Spring Green, Wisconsin, to
   land that was held by his mother's family, and began to build himself a
   new home, which he called Taliesin.

More personal turmoil

   On August 15, 1914, while Wright was in Chicago completing a large
   project, Midway Gardens, Julian Carlton, a Barbadian male servant whom
   he had hired several months earlier, set fire to the living quarters of
   Taliesin and murdered seven people with an axe as the fire burned. The
   dead were: Mamah; her two children, John and Martha; a gardener; a
   draftsman; a workman; and the workman’s son. Two people survived the
   mêlée, one of whom helped to put out the fire that almost completely
   consumed the residential wing of the house.

   In 1923, Wright's mother, Anna (Lloyd Jones) Wright, died. Wright wed
   Miriam Noel in November 1923, but her addiction to morphine led to the
   failure of the marriage in less than one year. In 1924, after the
   separation, Wright met Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg, at a
   Petrograd Ballet performance in Chicago. They moved in together at
   Taliesin in 1925, but in 1926, Olga's ex-husband, Valdemar Hinzenburg,
   sought custody of his daughter, Svetlana. In Minnetonka, Minnesota,
   Wright and Olgivanna were accused of violating the Mann Act and
   arrested in October 1925. The charges were dropped in 1926. During this
   time period, Wright designed his last residential complex for Darwin D.
   and Isabelle Martin in the Buffalo, NY area, the Graycliff estate. The
   couple married in 1928.

Enduring legacy

   Wright is responsible for a concept or a series of extremely original
   concepts of suburban development united under the term Broadacre City.
   He proposed the idea in his book The Disappearing City in 1932, and
   unveiled a very large (12 by 12 feet) model of this community of the
   future, showing it in several venues in the following years. He went on
   developing the idea until his death.

   It was also in the 1930s that Wright first designed " Usonian" houses.
   Intended to be highly practical houses for middle-class clients, the
   designs were based on a simple, yet elegant geometry. He would later
   use similar, elementary forms in his First Unitarian Meeting House
   built in Madison, Wisconsin, between 1947 and 1950.

   Wright was awarded the RIBA Royal Gold Medal in 1941.
   The iconic Kaufmann residence (Fallingwater) is now a museum
   Enlarge
   The iconic Kaufmann residence (Fallingwater) is now a museum
   Fallingwater is one of the most famous of Frank Lloyd Wright's works
   Enlarge
   Fallingwater is one of the most famous of Frank Lloyd Wright's works

   His most famous private residence was constructed from 1935 to 1939—
   Fallingwater—for Mr. and Mrs. E.J. Kaufmann Sr., at Bear Run,
   Pennsylvania. It was designed according to Wright's desire to place the
   occupants close to the natural surroundings, with a stream and
   waterfall running under part of the building. The construction is a
   series of cantilevered balconies and terraces, using limestone for all
   verticals and concrete for the horizontals. The house cost $155,000,
   including the architect's fee of $8,000. Kaufmann's own engineers
   argued that the design was not sound. They were overruled by Wright,
   but workmen secretly added extra steel to the horizontal concrete
   elements. There is a difference of opinion as to whether Wright's
   original design would have withstood the test of time. In 1994, Robert
   Silman and Associates examined the building and developed a plan to
   restore the structure. In the late 1990s, steel supports were added
   under the lowest cantilever until a detailed structural analysis could
   be done. In March 2002, post-tensioning of the lowest terrace was
   completed.

   Wright practiced what is known as organic architecture, an architecture
   that evolves naturally out of the context, most importantly for him the
   relationship between the site and the building and the needs of the
   client. Houses in wooded regions, for instance, made heavy use of wood,
   desert houses had rambling floor plans and heavy use of stone, and
   houses in rocky areas such as Los Angeles were built mainly of cinder
   block. Wright's creations took his concern with organic architecture
   down to the smallest details. From his largest commercial commissions
   to the relatively modest Usonian houses, Wright conceived virtually
   every detail of both the external design and the internal fixtures,
   including furniture, carpets, windows, doors, tables and chairs, light
   fittings and decorative elements. He was one of the first architects to
   design and supply custom-made, purpose-built furniture and fittings
   that functioned as integrated parts of the whole design, and he often
   returned to earlier commissions to redesign internal fittings. His
   Prairie houses use themed, coordinated design elements (often based on
   plant forms) that are repeated in windows, carpets and other fittings.
   He made innovative use of new building materials such as precast
   concrete blocks, glass bricks and zinc cames (instead of the
   traditional lead) for his leadlight windows, and he famously used Pyrex
   glass tubing as a major element in the Johnson's Wax building. Wright
   was also one of the first architects to design and install custom-made
   electric light fittings, including some of the very first electric
   floor lamps, and his very early use of the then-novel spherical glass
   lampshade (a design previously not possible due to the physical
   restrictions of gas lighting).

   As Wright's career progressed, so as well did the mechanization of the
   glass industry. Wright fully embraced glass in his designs and found
   that it fit well into his philosophy of organic architecture. Glass
   allowed for interaction and viewing of the outdoors while still
   protecting from the elements. In 1928, Wright wrote an essay on glass
   in which he compared it to the mirror's of nature; lakes, rivers and
   ponds. One of Wright's earliest uses of glass in his works was to
   utilize strung panes of glass along whole walls in an attempt to create
   light screens to join together solid walls. By utilizing this large
   amount of glass, Wright sought to achieve a balance between the
   lightness and airiness of the glass and the solid, hard walls.
   Arguably, Wright's most well-known art glass is that of the Prairie
   style. The simple geometric shapes that yield to very ornate and
   intricate windows represent some of the most integral ornamentation of
   his career.

   One of his projects, Monona Terrace, originally designed in 1937 as
   City and County Offices for Madison, Wisconsin, was completed in 1997
   on the original site, using a variation of Wright's final design for
   the exterior with the interior design altered by its new purpose as a
   convention centre. The "as-built" design was carried out by Wright's
   apprentice Tony Puttnam. Monona Terrace was accompanied by controversy
   throughout the sixty years between the original design and the
   completion of the structure.

   A lesser known project that never came to fruition was Wrights plan for
   Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe . Few Tahoe Locals are even aware of the iconic
   american architects plan for their natural treasure.

   Wright's personal life was a colorful one that frequently made
   headlines. He married three times: Catherine Lee Tobin in 1889, Miriam
   Noel in 1922, and Olga Milanov Hinzenberg (Olgivanna) in 1928.
   Olgivanna had been living as a disciple of the Armenian-Greek mystic
   G.I. Gurdjieff, and her experiences with Gurdjieff influenced the
   formation and structure of Wright's Taliesin Fellowship in 1932. The
   meeting of Gurdjieff and Wright is explored in Robert Lepage's The
   Geometry Of Miracles. Olgivanna continued to run the Fellowship after
   Wright's death, until her own death in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1985.
   Despite being a high-profile architect and almost always in demand,
   Wright would find himself constantly in debt thanks in part to his
   lavish lifestyle. In one instance Wright was over $1,000 in debt, and
   reportedly would borrow $1,500 from a friend only to spend more than
   half of it on clothes, gifts, and trips.
   Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Upper East Side, New York
   Enlarge
   Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Upper East Side, New York

   Wright died on April 9, 1959, having designed an enormous number of
   significant projects including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New
   York City, a building which occupied him for 16 years (1943– 59) and is
   probably his most recognized masterpiece. The building rises as a warm
   beige spiral from its site on Fifth Avenue; its interior is similar to
   the inside of a seashell. Its unique central geometry was meant to
   allow visitors to experience Guggenheim's collection of nonobjective
   geometric paintings with ease by taking an elevator to the top level
   and then viewing artworks by walking down the slowly descending,
   central spiral ramp, which features a floor embedded with circular
   shapes and triangular light fixtures, in order to complement the
   geometric nature of the structure. Unfortunately, when the museum was
   completed, a number of important details of Wright's design were
   ignored, including his desire for the interior to be painted off-white.
   Furthermore, the Museum currently designs exhibits to be viewed by
   walking up the curved walkway rather than walking down from the top
   level.
   1966 U.S. postage stamp honoring Frank Lloyd Wright
   Enlarge
   1966 U.S. postage stamp honoring Frank Lloyd Wright

   Wright built 362 houses. About 300 survive as of 2005. Three have been
   lost to forces of nature: the waterfront house for W. L. Fuller in Pass
   Christian, Mississippi, which was destroyed by Hurricane Camille in
   August 1969, the Louis Sullivan Bungalow of Ocean Springs, Mississippi,
   which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the James
   Charnley Bungalow of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, which was also gutted
   by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The Ennis House in California has also
   been damaged by earthquake and rain-induced ground movement. While a
   number of the houses are preserved as museum pieces and millions of
   dollars are spent on their upkeep, other houses have trouble selling on
   the open market due to their unique designs, generally small size and
   outdated features. As buildings age their structural deficiencies are
   increasingly revealed, and Wright's designs have not been immune from
   the passage of time. Some of his most daring and innovative designs
   have required major structural repair, and the soaring cantilevered
   terraces of Fallingwater are but one example. (A common joke was once
   how " Fallingwater" is falling into the water.) Some of these
   deficiencies can be attributed to Wright's pushing of materials beyond
   the state of the art, others to sometimes less than rigorous
   engineering, and still others to the natural wear and tear of the
   elements over time.

   Turmoil followed Wright even many years after his death in 1959. In
   1985, following the death of Olgivanna, Wright's third wife and often a
   source of controversy, it was learned that her dying wish had been that
   Wright, her daughter by a first marriage and herself all be cremated
   and relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona. During the nearly 30-year period
   prior to Olgivanna's death, Wright's body had lain interred near his
   birthplace and later-life home in Wisconsin. This place, called The
   Valley, was also home to one of his many unfinished projects, The Unity
   Temple. Olgivanna's plan to exhume her late-husband and cremate him,
   her daughter and herself called for a memorial garden, already in the
   works, to be finished and prepared for their remains. Despite the fact
   that the garden had yet to be finished, the remains were prepared and
   sent to Scottsdale where they waited in storage for an unidentified
   amount of time before being interred in the memorial area. Today,
   anyone who visits a small cemetery attached to a corn field near
   Richland Centre, Wisconsin to look upon a gravestone marked with
   Wright's name, will be visiting an empty grave.

   In 1992 The Madison Opera in Madison, Wisconsin commissioned and
   premiered the opera Shining Brow, by composer Daron Hagen and
   librettist Paul Muldoon based on events early in Wright's life. The
   work has since received numerous revivals. In 2000, Work Song: Three
   Views of Frank Lloyd Wright, a play based on the relationship between
   the personal and working aspects of Wright's life, debuted at the
   Milwaukee Repertory Theatre.

   One of Wright's sons, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., known as Lloyd Wright,
   was also a notable architect in Los Angeles. Lloyd Wright's son, (and
   Wright's grandson) Eric Lloyd Wright, is currently an architect in
   Malibu, California.

   Another son and architect, John Lloyd Wright, invented Lincoln Logs in
   1918.

   The Oscar-winning actress Anne Baxter was his granddaughter.

   Wright also designed his own clothing. His fashion sense was unique and
   he usually wore very expensive suits, flowing neckties, and capes as
   well as driving a yellow convertible, which earned him many speeding
   tickets.

   Often, Wright designed not only the buildings, but the furniture as
   well. Some of the built-in furniture remains, while other restorations
   have included replacement pieces created using his plans.

Influences on architecture

   Wright responded to the transformation of domestic life that occurred
   at the turn of the twentieth century, when servants became a less
   prominent or completely absent feature of most American households, by
   developing homes with progressively more open plans. This allowed the
   woman of the house to work in her 'workplace', as he often called the
   kitchen, yet keep track of and be available for the children and/or
   guests in the dining room. Much of modern architecture, including the
   early work of Mies van der Rohe, can be traced back to Wright's
   innovative work.

   His 'Usonian' homes set a new style for suburban design that was
   followed by countless developers. Many features of modern American
   homes date back to Wright; open plans, slab-on-grade foundations, and
   simplified construction techniques that allowed more mechanization or
   at least efficiency in building are amongst his innovations.

Works

   The Robie House on the University of Chicago campus
   Enlarge
   The Robie House on the University of Chicago campus
     * Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Oak Park, Illinois, 1889
     * William Herman Winslow Residence, River Forest, Illinois, 1894
     * Ward Winfield Willits Residence, and Gardener’s Cottage and
       Stables, Highland Park, Illinois, 1901
     * Dana-Thomas House State Historic Site, Springfield, Illinois, 1902
     * Larkin Administration Building, Buffalo, New York, 1903
     * Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York, 1903-1905
     * Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, 1904
     * Frederick C. Robie Residence, Chicago, Illinois, 1906
     * Taliesin I, Spring Green, Wisconsin, 1911
     * Midway Gardens, Chicago, Illinois, 1913
     * Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, Japan, 1915 demolished, 1968, lobby and pool
       reconstructed in 1976 in at Meiji Mura, near Nagoya, Japan
     * Hollyhock House (Aline Barnsdall Residence), Los Angeles,
       California, 1917
     * Ennis Residence, Los Angeles, California, 1923

   Taliesin West Panorama from the "bow" looking at the "ship"
   Enlarge
   Taliesin West Panorama from the "bow" looking at the "ship"
     * Kaufmann Residence, Fallingwater, Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1935
     * Johnson Wax Headquarters, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936
     * Herbert F. Johnson Residence ("Wingspread"), Wind Point, WI, 1937
     * Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona, 1937
     * Frank Lloyd Wright's Florida Southern College Works, 1940s
     * First Unitarian Society, Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin, 1947
     * Herman T. Mossberg Residence, South Bend, Indiana, 1948
     * Thomas Keys Residence, Rochester, Minnesota, 1950
     * Louis Penfield House, Willoughby Hills, Ohio, 1955

   Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma
   Enlarge
   Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma
     * Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 1956
     * Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, designed
       in 1956, completed in 1961
     * Marin County Civic Centre, San Rafael, CA, 1957–66 (featured in the
       movies Gattaca & THX 1138)

     * The Illinois, mile-high tower in Chicago, 1956 (unbuilt)

Trivia

     * Simon and Garfunkel honored the architect in their song So Long,
       Frank Lloyd Wright on their album Bridge over Troubled Water (Track
       5, length 3:47, released January 26, 1970, Columbia Records).

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