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Wright commenced his formal education in 1885 at the University
of Wisconsin 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 Allen 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, where
he joined the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Within
the year, he had left Silsbee to work for the firm of Adler and
Sullivan. Beginning in 1890, he was assigned all residential design
work for the firm. In 1893, after a falling out that probably concerned
the work he had taken on outside the office, Wright left Adler and
Sullivan to establish his own practice in the Chicago suburb of
Oak Park, IL. He had completed around fifty projects by 1901.
Between 1901 and 1911, his residential designs were "Prairie
Houses" (extended low buildings with shallow sloping roofs,
clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces, using
unadorned natural materials), so called because the design is considered
to complement the land around Chicago. Wright also played a significant
role in "open plan" ideas for residential interiors and
he came to regard interior space as a more significant part of his
designs. He believed that humanity should be central to all design.
He designed his own home-studio complex, called Taliesin (after
the 6th century Welsh poet, whose name means literally 'shining
brow'), which was built near Spring Green, Wisconsin in 1911. The
complex was a distinctive low one-storey L-shaped structure with
views over a lake on one side and Wright's studio on the opposite
side. Taliesin was twice destroyed by fire; the current building
there is called Taliesin III. The first time it burned, seven people
were killed, including Wright's mistress, Mamah Borthwick, and her
two children (by her husband Edwin Cheney).
He visited Japan, first in 1905, and Europe (1909), opening a Tokyo
office in 1915. In the 1930s Wright designed his winter retreat
in Arizona, called Taliesin West; the retreat, like much of Wright's
architecture, blends organically with the surrounding landscape.
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 (about 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 designed many of his "Usonian"
houses—essentially designs for working-class people that were based
on a simple geometry, yet elegantly done and practical. He would
later use such designs in his First Unitarian Meeting House built
in Madison, Wisconsin between 1947-1950.
His most famous house was constructed from 1935 to 1939—Fallingwater
for E.J. Kaufmann at Bear Run, Pennsylvania, which was designed
according to Wright's desire to place the occupants close to the
natural surroundings, with a stream running under part of the building.
The construction is a series of cantilevered balconies and terraces,
using stone for all verticals and concrete for the horizontals.
The house cost $155,000, including the architect's fee of $80,000.
Kaufmann's own engineers argued that the design was not sound. They
were overruled, but they were later proven to be correct—the cantilevered
floors began to sag shortly afterwards. In the late 1990s, steel
supports were added under the lowest cantilever, until a detailed
structural analysis could be done. In March of 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.
One of his projects, Monona Terrace in Madison, Wisconsin, was completed
in 1997 on the original proposed site, using Wright's original design
for the exterior with an interior design by his apprentice Tony
Puttnam. Monona Terrace was accompanied by controversy reminiscent
of Wright's own life, partly involving the authenticity of the combined
interior and exterior designs, and partly due to the covering-up
of a locally-venerated roadside mural.
Wright's personal life was a colorful one that frequently made news
headlines. He married three times. His third (and last) wife was
Olgivanna Hinzenberg (née Olgivanna Ivanovna Lazovich), who
had been a student of G. I. Gurdjieff who came to visit the couple
at Taliesin. The meeting of Gurdjieff and Wright is explored in
Robert Lepage's The Geometry Of Miracles.
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 (1943–1959)
and is probably his most recognized masterpiece. The building rises
as a white spiral from its site on Fifth Avenue. Its unique central
geometry allows visitors to experience temporary exhibits on the
slowly-descending central spiral ramp.
Many speculate that the character of Howard Roark, an architect
in Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead, is based, at least in part,
on Frank Lloyd Wright. Rand herself, however, denied this.
His son Frank Lloyd Wright Jr., known as Lloyd Wright, was also
a notable architect.
Other works
Winslow House, near River Forest, IL, 1894
Ward W. Willits House, Highland Park, IL, 1901
Susan Lawrence Dana House, The Dana-Thomas House Springfield, IL,
1902 - 1904
The Dana-Thomas House, Springfield, Illinois
Dwight D. Martin House, Buffalo NY, 1904
Unity Temple, Oak Park, IL, 1906
Avery Coonley House, Riverside, IL, 1907
Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, IL, 1909
Imperial Hotel (mostly demolished), originally Tokyo, Japan, 1915,
lobby and pool reconstructed in 1976 in at Meji Village, near Nagoya,
Japan
Aline Barnsdall House Hollyhock House, Los Angeles, CA, 1917
Charles Ennis House, Los Angeles, CA, 1923
Johnson Wax Headquarters, Racine, Wisconsin, 1936
Paul R. Hanna House, (Honeycomb House), Stanford, CA, begun 1936
Herbert F. Johnson House (Wingspread), Wind Point, WI, 1937
V.C. Morris Gift Shop, San Francisco, CA, 1948
Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 1952
Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, CA, 1957-1966, (featured
in the movie Gattaca)
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