Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator. He designed more than 1,000 projects, which resulted in more than 500 completed works. Wright promoted organic architecture, he was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture and developed the concept of the Usonian home. His work includes original examples of many different building types including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also designed many of the interior elements of his buildings such as the furniture and stained glass. Wright authored 20 books and many articles, and was a popular lecturer in the United States and Europe. Already well-known during his lifetime, Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "The Greatest American Architect of All Time.".

Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York, USA. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of impressionist, postimpressionist, early modern, and contemporary art. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, it is one of the 20th century's most important architectural landmarks.

The museum opened on October 21, 1959 and was the second museum opened by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. From the street, the building looks approximately like a white ribbon curled into a cylindrical stack, slightly wider at the top than the bottom. Its appearance is in sharp contrast to the more typically boxy Manhattan buildings that surround it.

Internally the viewing gallery forms a gentle helical spiral from the main level up to the top of the building. Paintings are displayed along the walls of the spiral and also in exhibition space found at annex levels along the way.

The exterior of the museum is made of gunite, a mixture of sand and cement that is sprayed on the inside of a wood and steel frame, which is later removed.

People are whisked to the top of the building via an elevator and led them downward at a leisurely pace on the gentle slope of a continuous ramp. The galleries were divided like the membranes in citrus fruit, with self-contained yet interdependent sections. The open rotunda afforded viewers the unique possibility of seeing several bays of work on different levels simultaneously. The spiral design recalled a nautilus shell, with continuous spaces flowing freely one into another.

Unity Temple
Unity Temple is a Unitarian Universalist church in Oak Park, Illinois and the home of the Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation. It was built between 1905 and 1908. Unity Temple is considered to be one of Wright's most important structures dating from the first decade of the 20th century.

Because of its consolidation of aesthetic intent and structure through use of a single material, reinforced concrete, Unity Temple is considered by many architects to be the first modern building in the world. This idea became of central importance to the modern architects who followed Wright, such as Mies Van Der Rohe, and even the post-modernists, such as Frank Gehry.

To accommodate the needs of the congregation, Wright divided the community space from the temple space through a low, middle loggia that could be approached from either side. This was an efficient use of space and kept down on noise between the two main gathering areas: those coming for religious services would be separated via the loggia from those coming for community events. This design was one of Wright's first uses of a bipartite design: with two portions of the building similar in composition and separated by a lower passageway, and one section being larger than the other. The Guggenheim Museum in New York City is another bipartite design.

To reduce noise from the street, Wright eliminated street level windows in the temple. Instead, natural light comes from stained glass windows in the roof or clerestories along the upper walls. Because the members of the parish would not be able to look outside, Unity Temple's stained glass was designed with green, yellow, and brown tones in order to evoke the colors of nature.