Artist of the day: Artist of the day, May 7, 2020: Frank Lloyd Wright, an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator (#988)

Thursday, May 7, 2020

Artist of the day, May 7, 2020: Frank Lloyd Wright, an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator (#988)

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 –1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, whose creative period spanned more than 70 years, designing more than 1,000 structures, of which 532 were completed. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture." As a founder of organic architecture, Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing three generations of architects worldwide through his works.

Wright was the pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture, and he also developed the concept of the Usonian home in Broadacre City, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States. In addition to his houses, Wright designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums, and other structures. He often designed interior elements for these buildings, as well, including furniture and stained glass. Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and Europe. Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time." In 2019, a selection of his work became a listed World Heritage Site as The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Raised in rural Wisconsin, Wright studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin and then apprenticed in Chicago with noted architects Joseph Lyman Silsbee and Louis Sullivan. He opened his own successful Chicago practice in 1893 and developed an influential home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1898.

International success and acclaim

Wright gradually reemerged as a leading architect; when the national economy improved, two commissions came to him that he utilized magnificently. The first was for a weekend retreat near Pittsburgh in the Allegheny Mountains. This residence, Fallingwater, was cantilevered over a waterfall with a simple daring that evoked wide publicity from 1936 to the present. The second important commission was the administrative center for S.C. Johnson, wax manufacturers, at Racine, Wisconsin. Here Wright combined a closed, top-lit space with recurving forms and novel, tubular mushroom columns. The resulting airy enclosure is one of the most humane workrooms in modern architecture. Each of these buildings showed Wright to be as innovative as younger designers and a master of unique expressive forms.

Thereafter commissions flowed to Wright for every kind of building and from many parts of the world. His designs for the campus and buildings of Florida Southern College at Lakeland (1940–49) were begun, and the V.C. Morris Shop (1948) in San Francisco was executed. Among Wright’s many late designs, executed and unexecuted, two major works stand out: the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and the Marin County government center near San Francisco. The Guggenheim Museum was commissioned as early as 1943 to house a permanent collection of abstract art. Construction began in 1956, and the museum opened in 1959 after Wright’s death. The Guggenheim, which has no separate floor levels but instead uses a spiral ramp, realized Wright’s ideal of continuous space and is one of his most significant buildings. The Marin County complex is Wright’s only executed work for the government, and the only one that integrates architecture, highway, and automobile, a concept that had long preoccupied Wright.

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