Frank Lloyd Wright

        389 Gradle Dr.
    Carmel, Indiana 46032
        317-846-4876

The History of Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright, widely considered the greatest American architect, was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867. After studying civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin (from which he did not graduate, though he was granted an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the university in 1955), he worked in the office of Dankmar Adler and Louis H. Sullivan in Chicago. In 1893, he received his first independent commission, the Winslow residence in River Forest, Illinois. He established himself in Oak Park, Illinois, and built a series of residences with characteristics that “echoed” the surrounding landscape; this came to be known as his Prairie Style. Wright built 362 houses; 300 are still surviving today. He died on April 9, 1959.

Wright introduced the word “organic” into his philosophy of architecture. It was an extension of the teachings of his mentor Louis Sullivan whose slogan “form follows function” became the mantra of modern architecture. Wright changed this phrase to “form and function are one,” using nature as the best example of this integration.

Although the word “organic” in common usage refers to something which has the characteristics of animals or plants, Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture takes on a new meaning. It is not a style of imitation, because he did not claim to be building forms which were representative of nature. Instead, organic architecture is a reinterpretation of nature’s principles as they had been filtered through the intelligent minds of men and women who could then build forms which are more natural than nature itself.

Organic architecture involves a respect for the properties of the materials—you don’t twist steel into a flower—and a respect for the harmonious relationship between the form/design and the function of the building (for example, Wright rejected the idea of making a bank look like a Greek temple). Organic architecture is also an attempt to integrate the spaces into a coherent whole: a marriage between the site and the structure and a union between the context and the structure.

As his skills developed, Wright believed that rooms in Victorian era homes were boxed-in and confining. He attempted to refine American housing by designing houses with low horizontal lines and open interior spaces. Rooms were often divided by leaded glass panels. Furniture was either built-in or specially designed. Wright's new style of housing was coined the prairie style after his 1901 Ladies Home Journal plan titled, “A Home in a Prairie Town.” Prairie houses were designed to blend in with the flat, prairie landscape. The features of this style were these: a low-pitched roof, overhanging eaves, horizontal lines, central chimney, open floor plan, rows of small windows, and one-story projections.

The homes that were designed in the first decade of the 20th, century were at the forefront in the development of this distinctive Midwestern residential architectural style. Frank Lloyd Wright was clearly the acknowledged master of the Prairie Style Home. His legacy lives on even to this day.