Dudek 1 Ryan Dudek Ms.

Jackson Honors English 10 16 April 2009 The Great American Architect Countless men and women throughout history have made marks on the world, but architects have the unique opportunity to create a lasting, physical manifestation of their influence. For Frank Lloyd Wright, however, that influence stemmed not only from the hundreds of structures he himself created, but also from the revolutionary ideas and the wisdom he passed down to new architects to further his vision. In a career lasting over seventy years, Wright changed the face of architecture, and he showed his countrymen new ways to both build and see the world around them (The Life and Work of Frank Lloyd Wright). He bridged the gap between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, taking the tradition of romantic design and infusing it into modern architecture. Wright created a new branch of organic architecture, which blended structures into their surroundings; an example is Fallingwater, a house cantilevered over a waterfall. A genius and a pioneer, Wright is regarded by many as the greatest architect of the 20th century (Wright, Frank Lloyd Current Biography 651). Due to both his architectural feats and new philosophies, Frank Lloyd Wright has left a lasting impression upon the world. The early years of Frank Lloyd Wrights life set the stage for a great architectural career. Wright was born on June 8, 1867, in the small town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, to William and Anna Wright. William Wright had two main occupations as a musician and as a preacher (Wright, Frank Lloyd Current Biography 651). The man

Dudek 2 was a strict disciplinarian and a very controlling parent who wanted young Wright to excel at the organ and piano, going so far as to rap his sons knuckles if he hit an incorrect note. Anna Lloyd Wright, Wrights mother, worked as a schoolteacher. Long before Frank Lloyd Wright was born, Anna had decided that her son would become an architect (The Life and Work of Frank Lloyd Wright). She encouraged her son to build with colorful strips of paper and maple blocks. As a young man, Wright attended high school in Madison, Wisconsin for a short time. He then enrolled at the University of Wisconsin as a civil engineer, and for three fruitless years he pursued courses in engineering (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). Wright left the university without graduating, and in the spring of 1887, he obtained a job as a draftsman in Chicago. At this point, earning eight dollars a week, Wright began his earliest works. In the year 1888, Wright joined the offices of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, becoming a designer and acquiring a five-year contract (Wright, Frank Lloyd Current Biography 652). At the time, the firm of Sullivan and Adler was the most progressive architectural firm in the country. Wright worked for almost six years under Louis Sullivan, and he would later acknowledge Sullivan as his master and inspiration (qtd. in Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). The mentor Sullivan worked mainly on commercial buildings, so Wright was free to work on the domestic projects that came to the firm. The first independent project that Wright undertook was his home in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago; this house was completed in 1889, but Wright continued to make additions over the next eight years. Wright moved into the home with his new wife, Kitty Tobin, four years his junior. They married and had six children (The Life and Work of Frank Lloyd Wright).

Dudek 3 Due to an increasing mountain of debts, Wright started bootlegging houses from the Sullivan and Adler firm in 1892, and upon finding out, Sullivan fired him (Hurder). Now an independent architect, Wright set up his own practice in Chicago in 1893. After enjoying local success in the years prior to 1900, Wright became very ambitious; it was in these early years that he stated, having a good start, not only do I intend to be the greatest architect who has yet lived, but fully intend to be the greatest architect who will ever live. Yes, I intend to be the greatest architect of all time (qtd. in Hurder). With the new name he created for himself, the aspiring architect aimed to challenge the European avant-garde. With a modest base of success established, the turn of the century would provide Frank Lloyd Wright with the international renown he desired. In a time of prevailing European modernist architecture, Frank Lloyd Wright would become an influential pioneer of a more romantic and traditional, yet modern, form of architecture in the first half of the twentieth century. Following the year 1900, professional and popular publications in both America and Europe began to notice the work of Wright (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). His first major original design was that of the prairie house, which started Wright on the path to success. Wright conceived most of his houses as a compact block, later designing interiors of a single flowing space, suggesting spaces but not enclosing them. He was therefore able to achieve extending, interweaving, horizontal compositions of space (Frank Lloyd Wright 399). Also in the first decade of this century, Wright became the chief architect in two major projects: the Larkin Building of Buffalo and the Unity Temple Church in Oak Park. In the Larkin Building (1904), Wright used metal-bound, plate-glass doors and windows (Wright, Frank Lloyd Current Biography 652). In the Unity Temple Church

Dudek 4 (1906), Wright used poured concrete for the first time in a monumental public edifice (Wright, Frank Lloyd Current Biography 652). It was after this project that Wright began an extramarital affair with an Oak Park client, Mamah Cheney. The scandal was publicized, and in the year 1909, Wright left his wife, who refused a divorce. He and Cheney departed for Europe. Wrights European exile would ironically help to create his international status as an architect. The Wasmuth Firm, based in Berlin, became interested in Wrights architectural drawings and published them. The resulting portfolio, Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwurfe (also commonly known as the Wasmuth Portfolio), was released in 1911 (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). The portfolio influenced European architects, and therefore, helped to create the international reputation of Wright. However, this book was not seen in America until the 1960s, several years after Wrights death. Upon returning to America, Wright had a very cold reception. He received few clients; his first major project of the period was Taliesin, a home for himself, which began in Spring Valley, Wisconsin in 1911 (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). The namesake of Wrights homestead and fortress, Taliesin, literally means, shining brow in Welsh (Hurder). Unlike mainstream architects, who tended to practice from a professional office, Wright combined his home and studio. He believed in having one door for all purposes, and he incorporated that trait into the original Taliesin. The principle would prove to be a grave mistake; in the year 1913, one of Wrights servants set Taliesin ablaze, and subsequently bludgeoned the seven people who attempted to escape the burning homestead with a hatchet. Those murdered included Mamah Cheney and two of her children (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). Wright was distraught,

Dudek 5 but moved to rebuild Taliesin. Taliesins design was not completely malevolent; a principle that would become a trademark of Wright was the marrying of the building and the hill itself. The idea evolved into the first principle of organic architecture, a concept that would be one of the most notable achievements of Frank Lloyd Wright (Hurder). The Imperial Hotel of Tokyo would become one of Wrights most notable commissions, lasting from 1915 to 1922 (Wright, Frank Lloyd Current Biography 653). Tokyo was more susceptible to earthquakes, and so Wright needed to engineer the Hotel to withstand those quakes. Wright solved the problem with an original solution of using concrete supports cantilevered floors, and a foundation that floated on soft mud. A 1923 earthquake that left most of Tokyo in ruin had little affect on the Imperial Hotel, and Wright earned praise for creating a brilliant, beautiful, and structurally innovative building (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). Meanwhile, Wrights personal life was once again interfering with his architectural career; after divorcing Miriam Noel, his second wife, a series of court battles (and a lightning strike that razed the second Taliesin to the ground) left him in near economic ruin. The popular press published his affairs (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). A new marriage to Olgivanna Milanoff in 1928 would mark new beginnings for Wright. Clients and admirers began a foundation to save Wright from ruin, and subsequently, the Taliesin Fellowship was created, an organization of students and apprentices. His designs of the Great Depression period would largely never be brought to life. (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). During the 1930s, Wright began to take a more scholarly course. He wrote and lectured, leading to the publication of what would become his most acclaimed books:

Dudek 6 Modern Architecture, of 1931, and An Autobiography, of 1932 (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). The latter quickly sold out, due in part to the controversy in Wrights life. At this time, Wright was also battling the European avant-garde more than ever, particularly men such as Le Corbusier, the French architect: Time and again, Wright found himself having to defend organic architecture against currents in modern design in engineering. Architectural tides drastically turned on him as Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus School began to define a new industrial aesthetic congruent with advances in technologies. (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors) The world around Wright was changing, as was its architecture, and Wright himself was one of the few trying to preserve the old romantic style of design. After a lull in his reputation in the 1920s and early 1930s, Wright returned with two-high profile commissions. The first is the Kaufmann House (1936), located in Bear Run, Pennsylvania (Wright, Frank Lloyd Current Biography 653). Commonly referred to as Fallingwater, the house is cantilevered over a waterfall. At this time, his reputation grew once again in prominence; his high opinion of himself, and his over budgeting and cost ratcheting, were now seen as a part of his genius. The other major project was the S.C. Johnson Administrative Building (1939). Beginning in 1936, Wright also began to design what he named Usonian houses (The Life and Work of Frank Lloyd Wright). These homes, priced at $5,000 but later ratcheted to twice that, were aimed at everyday Americans. When World War II arrived, the entire domestic building business slowed, and Wright secluded himself at Taliesin with his students. One of his last great projects was the desert retreat Taliesin West, outside of Phoenix, Arizona, constructed of what

Dudek 7 Wright called desert concrete (The Life and Work of Frank Lloyd Wright). Wright had always wanted to design a museum in New York City, and after five years of opposing the citys prevailing modernist buildings, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was commissioned to him. With failing eyesight, Wright lived to finish the design, but not to see the museum finished (The Life and Work of Frank Lloyd Wright). For the first half of the twentieth century, Wright worked to create structures that complemented their surroundings; in the process, the architect devised a new branch of architecture unto itself. The legacy left behind by Frank Lloyd Wright is labyrinthine, consisting of an incredible array of unique structures, an intricate architectural philosophy, and a series of new techniques and designs. From the late 1930s until his death in 1959, Wright gave many interviews and became something of a celebrity (Hurder). For the vast majority of his career, Wright viewed himself as a struggling and sometimes persecuted architect. Nonetheless, he was acclaimed for pioneering organic architecture, and Wright described it as one that proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man and his circumstances as they both change (qtd. in Hurder). He was never challenged by terrain; his designs always reflected the landscape in which they were built, and Wright wanted unique structures to cover every corner of the world (Frank Lloyd Wright 398). Wrights style was always distinctive, unique, and independent, but was also as ever-changing as Wright himself. He was in a constant state of war with the European modernists, many of whom ironically cited him as a primary influence (Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). Wright introduced countless principles into the established modern architecture, all while furthering his own organic version. One of his many

Dudek 8 profound beliefs was that as America was a new nation, with a new society and new technology, its architecture should reflect the conditions; Wright demonstrated by designing distinctive buildings that would speak of a Usonian, democratic environment (Frank Lloyd Wright 398). To this end, Wright passed down an intricate five-point architectural philosophy to ensure that his principles would be forever in the minds of generations to come. Over the course of his career, Wright designed about 1,000 structures, 400 of which were built (Hurder). The vision of Frank Lloyd Wright has been a major force in the twentieth century; he believed as much in the physical form of a building as he did in the search for truth that came with it (qtd. in Wright, Frank Lloyd World Authors). Wright appeared on the cover of TIME Magazine in 1938, and later appeared on a twocent stamp (Hurder). King George of England granted Wright the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 1941. A life of great achievements behind him, Frank Lloyd Wright passed away in Phoenix, Arizona on April 9, 1959. The world will never forget Wright, and every day, architects furthering his vision of organic architecture ensure that his revolutionary ideals will not be forsaken. In conclusion, Frank Lloyd Wright left a lasting impression on the world through his many new ideas and principles of architecture and his countless feats of design. His hundreds of structures spanned not only America, but also the international community. Wright helped to create modern architecture, as it is known, and introduced his own organic architecture to the world. He was the loyal opposition to the International Style, a creative pioneer of new architectural techniques, and overall a brilliant, innovative mind. Frank Lloyd Wright will go down in history as the greatest architect America has seen.