Frank Lloyd Wright “I’VE BEEN ACCUSED OF SAYING I WAS THE GREATEST ARCHITECT IN THE WORLD AND IF I HAD SAID SO, I DON’T THINK IT WOULD BE VERY ARROGANT…”

Who was Frank Lloyd Wright   He was first and second generation modernist around Chicago and mid- western states of USA.  Pioneer of modern design.  He first designed houses.

Context  Wright served as senior draughtsman with Louis Sullivan, who was also his inspiration with American architectural design.  During his career that lasted till his death over 500 of his designs for buildings were constructed.  His career blossomed by designing homes for the wealthy during the , which became known as his Prairie Houses.  Wright continued working in his late 60s when the architects of his generation were already retired or dead. The next 20 years were the most prolific time of his career.  He built and designed over 140 Usonian houses for middle class Americans as well as his famous ‘masterpieces’ such as Fallingwater.

Context Cont…  He had a major influence in European style which resulted on his Europe tour in At the same time the Wasmuth Papers were published, a portfolio of his Prairie Houses, the Larkin Building and the Unity Temple. But it didn’t stop there, he also impressed Dutch and German architects with his simplistic geometric forms, his placement of three dimensional planes, his cantilevered structures and his open/flowing space. Which clearly influenced some designs by De Stijl designers and the early works of Mies Van Der Rohe.

Style  “Classicism is a mask and does not reflect transition. How can such a static expression allow interpretation of [modern American] life as we know it? A fire station should not resemble a French Chateau, a bank a Greek temple and a university a Gothic Cathedral” Frank Lloyd Wright  Wright rejected the traditional ideas of European architecture and thought that these ideas were not showing modern American style in architecture.  Wright believed that the buildings should be organic, meaning that they must be harmoniously conceived according to its time.

Wright’s Prairie Style  One of Wrights many styles is the Prairie Style which was designed between 1900 and 1916 and broke with the traditional American style homes in an European revival style. Traditional European architecture found in America Frank Lloyd Wright’s modern American Architecture