Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright spent more than 70 years creating designs that revolutionized the art and architecture of this century. In all he designed 1141 works - including houses, offices, churches, schools, libraries, bridges, museums and many other building types. Of that total, 532 resulted in completed works, 409 of which still stand.

However, Wright's creative mind was not confined to architecture. He also designed furniture, fabrics, art glass, lamps, dinnerware, silver, linens and graphic arts. In addition, he was a prolific writer, an educator and a philosopher. He authored twenty books and countless articles, lectured throughout the United States and in Europe, and developed a remarkable plan for decentralizing urban America (Broadacre City) that continues to be debated by scholars and writers to this day -- some 60 years after its conception.

Wright is considered by most authorities to be the 20th century's greatest architect. Indeed, the American Institute of Architects in a recent national survey, recognized Frank Lloyd Wright to be "the greatest American architect of all time." Architectural Record magazine (the official magazine of the American Institute of Architects) declared that Wright's buildings stand out among the most significant architectural works during the last 100 years in the world.

To get a perspective on Wright's long and productive life, it is useful to remember that he was born in 1867, just two years after the end of the Civil War and died in 1959, two years after the launching of Sputnik.

A Reverence for Democracy and Nature
Wright revered the American experience and believed that democracy was the best form of government. Throughout his life he strived to create a new architecture that reflected the American democratic values and human dignity. He often referred to the United States as Usonia. The city plan, Broadacre City, was the culmination of Wright's ideas on a new architecture for a new democracy.

Wright preached the beauty of native materials and insisted that buildings grow naturally from their surroundings. He freed Americans from the Victorian "boxes" of the 19th century and helped create the open plan with rooms that flowed and opened out to each other.

By changing architecture and changing the way America lived, Wright may have had an even more profound effect. As Wright said, "Whether people are fully conscious of this or not, they actually derive countenance and sustenance from the 'atmosphere' of the things they live in or with. They are rooted in them just as a plant is in the soil in which it is planted."

The soil that sprouted Frank Lloyd Wright was the rural Wisconsin countryside. Throughout his life Wright spoke of the influence of nature on his work and attributed his love of nature to those early years in the Wisconsin. During summers spent on his uncle's farm he learned to look at the patterns and rhythms found in nature - the branch of a tree (a natural cantilever), outcroppings of limestone, and the ever-changing sandbars.

Wright later advised his apprentices to "study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." The influence of nature is apparent in his work: The earth-hugging "Prairie" houses such as the 1909 Robie House in Illinois and Taliesin in Wisconsin, the cascading cantilevers of the 1936 Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, a sky-lighted forest of concrete columns of the 1936 Johnson Wax Administration Building in Racine, Wisconsin, the rugged beauty of Taliesin West in Arizona, and the spiraling, "snail-like" Guggenheim Museum completed in 1959 in New York City. His work shows a command of nature and native materials and an instinctive understanding of social and human needs.

No other architect so intuitively designed to human scale. No other architecture took greater advantage of setting and environment. No other architect glorified the sense of "shelter" as did Frank Lloyd Wright. "A building is not just a place to be. It is a way to be," he said.

A Timeless Contribution
Wright's work has stood the test of time. His buildings are still relevant to today's values. People have moved and found new jobs just to own a Wright house. Grass-roots efforts have developed to preserve his work. In 1970, there were only two Wright homes open to the public. Today there are more than twenty, which attract more than one million visitors a year. More than one-third of Wright buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or are in a National Historic District.

Text copyright The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

Learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright via these links:

Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

Wikipedia Entry on Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust