Rebecca Penn (arch1390): Frank Lloyd Wright

Life and Work of Frank Lloyd Wright:

“I don’t think it’s unfair to say that there is no American architect who has ever lived who has done as much to touch the world, who has done as much to realize his vision of what a perfect architecture might be than Frank Lloyd Wright.” – William Cronon, Historian.

Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator who promoted organic architecture in many of his works. In his 70-year long career he worked on many different types of buildings such as museums, houses, schools, and hotels. Wright also often designed many of the interior elements of his buildings, such as furniture, carpets, windows, tables, chairs and light fittings, and his creations took concern with organic architecture down to the smallest details. He was one of the first architects to design and supply custom-made, purpose-built furniture and fittings that become integrated parts of the whole design.

He authored 20 books and countless articles, and was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as “the greatest American architect of all time.”

Fallingwater:

Fallingwater (built between 1936 and 1939) is a house located in Bear Run, Pennsylvania and was originally commissioned for the Kaufmann family and their friends as a weekend retreat. It is in the Expressionist Modern style, located over an active waterfall, and is now looked after by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and is a house-museum and US monument. When Wright visited the site originally he appreciated the powerful sound of the falls, “vitality of the young forest, the dramatic rock ledges and boulders”, which were elements that would be interwoven with the serenely soaring spaces of his structure.

Wright focused on the harmony between man and nature, and designed broad bands of windows and low ceilings to draw attention to the outside, but people are also sheltered as in a deep cave, with the sense of a hill behind them. The materials of the structure blend with the colourings of rocks and trees, while accents provided by bright furnishings.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum:

The art museum is located in New York, New York and was built between 1956-59. It is in the Modern style and is made of concrete, facing Central Park. It has unique spiral ramping gallery, and could be thought of as a sculpture in itself, not just a building in which artworks are held.

The tower’s simple facade and grid pattern highlight Wright’s unique spiral design and serves as a backdrop to the rising urban landscape behind the museum.

From the street, the building looks like a white ribbon curled into a cylindrical stack, slightly wider at the top than the bottom and its appearance contrasts sharply 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.

“Entering into the spirit of this interior, you will discover the best possible atmosphere in which to show fine paintings or listen to music. It is this atmosphere that seems to me most lacking in our art galleries, museums, music halls and theatres.” – Frank Lloyd Wright. “Frank Lloyd Wright”, The Architectural Forum, January, 1948, Vol. 88 Number 1. P89.

“...[Wright’s] great swansong, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York, is a gift of pure architecture – or rather of sculpture. It is a continuous spatial helix, a circular ramp that expands as it coils vertiginously around an unobstructed well of space capped by a flat-ribbed glass dome. A seemless construct, the building evoked for Wright ‘the quiet unbroken wave.’...” – Spiro Kostof. A History of Architecture, Settings and Rituals. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. P740.