Frank Lloyd Wright was a prolific architect designing more than 1,100 projects, with 500 being built. He was a mainstream modernist, driven to mix nature, materials, and forms to create inspiring and sophisticated spaces. His architecture was known as “organic” and he used materials as intended such as such as wood for wood and steel for steel.
INTERESTING FACTS
Born in Wisconsin and worked on the farm his mother a teacher, encouraged him to learn about music, art, and nature.
He studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin for two years time and left without a degree.
HIs first job was with
Louis Sullivan whom he later borrowed $5,000 from to build his first house. He also designed
Louis Sullivan’s home.
He experimented with creating and designing new building blocks; concrete blocks stamped with different patterns. He built four homes with blocks and they were arranged to create walls and windows, and by rotating them he was able to make interesting patterns inside and outside.
In 1905 he visited Japan taking many photographs, and purchasing art and books. He was greatly influenced and inspired by the Japanese in both art and architecture. He said the Japanese had an innate ability to eliminate everything except for the essential elements of design. He became an avid collector of Japanese Art during his lifetime.
Designed stained glass, doors, lamps, and large array of furniture.
Usually found wearing very expensive suits, flowing neckties, and capes his career lasted 75 years completing approximately 500 buildings with hundreds remaining unbuilt. He holds the record for the highest output of any architect creating individual masterpieces. Another amazing individual, who worked for 75 years, was the world’s greatest dancer,
Martha Graham.
He opened Taliesin East and Taliesin west where he trained many architects at his Taliesin School. He preached that students needed to learn by doing and thus students had to build their own cottages, and to work with their hands so he had them work on the farm as he did as a young man.
In 1956 he designed one of his final buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in New York.
He never retired in life or from
architecture and in 1957, at the age of 90, he received a record-breaking 40 commissions.
DEPARTURE
April 9, 1959: He died in Phoenix Arizona due to a failed surgery of an intestinal blockage at 91. His first wife wife, Kitty, died just two weeks before him at 92.