FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

He designed more then 1000 structures and completed 500 works.He believed In designing structures which are harmony with humanity and its environment , a philosophy called organic architecture

• After working as a draftsman in Joseph Lyman Silsbee office and as a co-architect with adler and Sullivan he established his own firm in Chicago.

• Died on April 9,1959 In Phoenix, Arizona

•An American architect, Interior designer, writer and educator Born on June 8,1867 In Richland center ,Wisconsin

Basic Principles of Wright Designs

Organic Colors

Simple Geometric Shapes

Integration of Building with Natural Surroundings

Strong Horizontal Lines

Hidden Entries

Prairie housesPrairie houses were characterized by low, horizontal lines that were meant to blend

with the flat landscape around them.

Typically, these structures were built around a central chimney, consisted of broad open spaces instead of strictly

defined rooms, and deliberately blurred the distinction between interior space

and the surrounding terrain.

Wright acclaimed "the new reality that is space instead of matter" and, about architectural interiors, said that the

"reality of a building is not the container but the space within."

Earliest Works

Some of Wright’s earliest homes are in Oak Park. They show a blend of Victorian and Prairie School elements. These are sometimes called “bread and butter”

houses.

Mr. Wright's "organic architecture" was a radical departure from the traditional architecture of his day, which was dominated by European styles that dated

back hundreds of years or even millenia.

While most of his designs were single-family homes his varied output also includes houses of worship, skyscrapers, resorts, museums, government

offices, gas stations, bridges, and other masterpieces showing the diversity of Frank Lloyd Wright's talent.

Thomas Gale House

Goodrich House

Foster House

Nathan Moore house (1895)

Smith Bank

Hartley House

FLW

Horizontal line is the line of domesticity

PRINCIPLES

A home should appear to grow organically From the ground

Bring the walls

towards the

function of a screen

Fewer Windows holes though much greater window area

Design dramatic overhangs to symbolize freedom

Important Works

Ward Willits House, Highland Park, IL, 1902

Willits house is considered the first of the great Prairie houses. Built in the

Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois

the house presents a symmetrical facade to the street.

The plan is a cruciform with four wings that extend out from a central

hearth.

In addition to art-glass windows and

wooden screens that divide rooms,

Wright also designed most of

the furniture in the house.

The Robbie House, Chicago, IL, 1908-9

•The projecting cantilevered roof eaves, continuous bands of art-glass windows, and the use of Roman brick emphasize the horizontal, which had rich associations for Wright.

•To further emphasize the horizontal of the bricks, the horizontal joints were filled with a cream-colored mortar and the small vertical joints were filled with brick-colored mortar. From a distance, this complex and expensive tuck pointing creates an impression of continuous lines of horizontal color and minimizes the appearance of individual bricks.

• Wright used similar designs in tapestries inside the house and for gates surrounding the outdoor spaces and enclosing the garage courtyard.

• Robbie's generous budget allowed Wright to design a house with a largely steel structure, which accounts for the minimal deflection of the eaves. The planter urns, copings, lintels, sills and other exterior trim work are of Bedford limestone.

•The design of the art glass windows is an abstract pattern of colored and clear glass using Wright's favorite 30 and 60-degree angles.

Plan,Main Floor

Plan, Lower Level

Interiors

The Larkin Company Administration Building, Buffalo, NY 1904-05

•The Larkin Building was designed in 1904 and built in 1906 for the Larkin Soap Company of Buffalo, New York .

• The five story dark red brick building used pink tinted mortar and utilized steel frame construction.

•It was noted for many innovations, including air conditioning, stained glass windows, built-in desk furniture, and suspended toilet bowls.

• Sculptor Richard Bock provided ornamentation for the building.

•Located at 680 Seneca Street, the Larkin Building was demolished in 1950.

Exterior details of the 200-foot-long (61 m) by 134-foot-wide (41 m) building were executed in red sandstone; the entrance doors, windows, and skylights were of glass.

Floors, desktops, and cabinet tops were covered with magnesite for sound absorption. For floors, magnesite was mixed with excelsior and poured, and troweled like cement, over a layer of felt to impart its resiliency.

Magnesite was also used for sculptural decoration on the piers surrounding the light court and for panels and beams around the executive offices at the south end of the main floor. Wright designed much of the furniture.

The interior walls were made of semi-vitreous, hard, cream colored brick. A 76-foot-tall (23 m) light court was located in the center of the building which provided natural sunlight to all of the floors

Unitarian Universalist Church (Unity Temple), Oak Park, IL, 1906

Unity Temple is considered to be one of Wright's most important structures dating from the first decade of the twentieth 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 and clerestories along the upper walls

The main floor of the temple is accessed via a lower floor (which has seating space), and the room also has two balconies for the seating of the congregation. These varying seating levels allowed the architect to design a building to fit the size of the congregation, but efficiently: no one person in the congregation is more than 40 feet from the pulpit . Wright also designed the building with very good acoustics .

Bibliography

•“Wright Sized Home” – Diane Maddex

• Wikipedia

• WWW.GreatBuildings.com