Frank Lloyd Wright-A Man Far Ahead of His Time

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 projects, which resulted in more than 500 completed works. Wright promoted organic architecture (exemplified by Fallingwater), was a leader of the Prairie School movement of architecture (exemplified by the Robie House, the Westcott House, and the Darwin D. Martin House), and developed the concept of the Usonian home (exemplified by the Rosenbaum House). His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types, including offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, and museums. Wright also often 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 in Europe. His colorful personal life often made headlines, most notably for the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio.



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".



His work includes original and innovative examples of many different building types such as offices, churches, schools, hotels, and museums. He was the architect of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan and spent almost three full years in Tokyo between 1917 and 1922 to design the hotel. During this time, he acquired thousands of woodblock prints for himself and other prominent American collectors. In his later years, he sold these woodblock prints to support himself financially.



Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the farming town of Richland Center, Wisconsin in 1867. He changed his name from Frank Lincoln Wright to Frank Lloyd Wright after his parents' divorce in 1881 when he was 14 years old, to honor his mother's Welsh family, the Lloyd Joneses. Prior to his parents' divorce, Anna, his mother, had been unhappy for some time with his father, William's inability to provide for his family. After the divorce, Frank assumed financial responsibility for his mother and two sisters as the only male left in the family.



Interest in Japanese Art
Wright attended a high school in Madison, Wisconsin but there is no evidence he ever graduated. He was admitted to the University of Wisconsin at Madison as a special student in 1886. He took classes part time and in 1887, he left the school without taking a degree, although he was granted an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the University in 1955. He moved to Chicago and joined an architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee in 1887. While working for Silsbee, Wright meets Silsbee's cousin, Ernest Francisco Fenellosa, who happened to be America's foremost expert on Japanese art. Fenellosa stayed with Silsbee on his visits and at one meeting, Wright was shown the Japanese woodblock prints which Fenellosa had brought with him. Wright later recalls that "when I saw the fine prints, it was an intoxicating thing". Seeing these prints sparked an interest in Wright on Japanese art and architecture. What especially interested him was harmony with nature, simplification, honest use of materials and minimal decoration.



As background information, Japan had been closed to foreigners for more than two centuries beginning in the 1630s; this foreign policy remained in effect until the arrival of Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853. This led to the opening of Japanese ports to foreign trade and the artistic benefits which came from it were to be seen almost immediately in Europe. By the 1870s, there was a steady flow of Japanese art and artifacts to Europe, particularly France. The Japanese woodblock prints, or the "uki-yo-e" (meaning "pictures of the floating world") especially inspired the leading artists of the time, such as Manet, Degas, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. What was happening in Europe, particularly France, eventually made its way to America. In America, at this early stage, until the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, interest in Japanese art was confined to a few artists and collectors in the major cities.

Wright's first direct experience of Japanese architecture came at the World's Colombian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the New World. Carpenters from Japan were sent to reconstruct a replica of Ho-o-den, a residential temple complex which had been the private home of the imperial regent Yorimichi Fujiwara (990-1074). It was the merging of religious and domestic forms in the building that appears to have made a lasting impression on Wright.

Wright's architecture was influenced by the Japanese concept of architectural space where "space was one of total flexibility. The ceiling,columns, and floor were the only fixed structural members of a building: what little there was in the way of furniture was easily movable and rooms could be completely changed by addition or removal of screens and doors and the temporary placement of appropriate objects, as the occasion demanded". (from Margo Stipe, "Frank Lloyd Wright and the Inspiration of Japan",p.6)

Similarly, Wright's houses rejected the idea of the house as a large box which contains smaller boxes and introduced the idea of continuous space. He was one of the first architect to introduce this concept.

Visit to Japan
Wright visited Japan for the first time in 1905. By that time, Wright had undoubtedly become familiar with Fenellosa's ideas on Japanese art and how its aesthetic principles could be applied to architecture. Apparently, not much is known about his three month stay in Japan in 1905. He stayed in various cities, including Shikoku, Nagoya and Kyoto. When Wright sailed back to America, he took back a head full of architectural ideas and boxes of woodblock prints, several hundred by the artist Hiroshige alone. Hiroshige was one of the most famous woodblock print artist of his time.

Personal Life:

While Wright was still married to his first wife, he began an affair with Maymah Cheney, the wife of Edwin Cheney for whom Wright designed a house. In 1909, Wright abandoned his first wife and six children and left for Europe with Maymah. They stayed mainly in Italy and upon his return to the States a year later, Wright began constructing his home called "Taliesin" in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The term "Taliesin" in Welsh means "shining brow".

The Imperial Hotel

In 1913, Wright and Maymah Cheney, his mistress, visited Japan. Wright asserted that the trip was the invitation of the Emperor, but the real purpose of the trip was to purchase Japanese prints for re-sale to American collectors. During the course of the visit, Wright was contacted by the representatives of the Emperor who informed him of of the Court's wish to replace the old Imperial Hotel in Tokyo built in the 19th century by German investors with a new, deluxe building which would attract foreign visitors to the city. The commission was important to Wright because it gave him the opportunity to design on a grand scale, something which had been denied to him until then.

The following year in 1914, the fire at Taliesin devastated Wright's blossoming professional and personal life. While Wright was away in Chicago, one of the servants set fire to the house and killed Maymah and her two children. After this tragedy, he started a self destructive relationship with Miriam Noel, who took drugs and was emotionally unstable.What saved him was the commission to design the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which became official in 1916. Wright came to Tokyo in 1917 with Miriam. Until 1922, Wright basically lived in Tokyo with occasional trips home.

Wright's version of the Imperial Hotel was designed in the "Maya Revival Style" of architecture. It incorporates a tall, pyramid-like structure and also loosely copies Maya motifs in its decorations. The main building materials are poured concrete and concrete block, and it was completed in 1923.

In the same year, the Kanto Great Earthquake struck Tokyo and the surrounding area. The earthquake measured a magnitude of 7.9.

A telegram reported the following:

Hotel stands undamaged as monument to your genius. Congratulations.

In reality, the building had damage; the central section slumped, several floors bulged, and four pieces of stonework fell to the ground. The major damage was on the foundation. The foundation was an inadequate support and did nothing to prevent the building from sinking into the mud to such an extent that it had to be demolished decades later. But most importantly, despite the damage, the hotel remained standing.

In 1968, more than 40 years after it was built, the facade and pool were removed to the museum called Meiji Mura, a collection of buildings mostly from the Meiji Era located near Nagoya. The rest of the structure was demolished to make way for a new hotel on the site.



Later Years
Wright began collecting Japanese woodblock prints when he first visited Japan in 1905. He became an active dealer in these prints and frequently served as both architect and art dealer to the same clients after he returned to the U.S. For many years, Wright was a major presence in the Japanese art world, selling a great number of works to prominent collectors.







His last visit to Japan was in 1922, the year before the earthquake. He was unable to buy more prints during his visit so presumably, he bought prints off one collector and sold it to another when he returned to the U.S. Wright, however, had the tendency to live beyond his means and this led to great financial trouble for him. He was forced to sell off much of his art collection in 1927 to pay off outstanding debts. The Bank of Wisconsin claimed his Taliesin Home the following year. Wright continued to collect and deal in Japanese woodblock prints until his death in 1959. The sale of these prints saved him financially throughout his life. Wright's life work was architecture, but dealing in these prints paid Wright's bills. That aside, he is still regarded as one of the greatest architects of the 20th century.

Le Corbusier : "Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris"

1887: Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, better known to the world as Le Corbusier, is born in the Swiss city of La Chaux-de-Fonds. He will change his name and take French citizenship in his 30s. More importantly, he will help pioneer the International Style of architecture and is one of the most influential proponents of the machine aesthetic.

Jeanneret-Gris’ interest in design and architecture came early in life. He attended the local art school, where he studied under architect Rene Chapallaz, who became a major influence. After moving to Paris in 1907, he toiled for Auguste Perret, an architect renowned for his work in reinforced concrete construction. A few years later he continued on to Berlin, where he became fluent in German and schooled under Peter Behrens, another architect with bohemian predilections esteemed for his industrial designs.

By the time he returned to Switzerland, where he spent the World War I years, Jeanneret-Gris’ guiding aesthetic was well formed.


Chapelle Notre Dame du Haut, Ronchamp, France. Built 1950-1954.
Le Corbusier’s later work, while still in machine-age reinforced concrete, assumed more sculptural forms, as in this hilltop chapel.


Villa Savoye, Poissy-sur-Seine, France. Built 1928.

In adopting the single-name pseudonym Le Corbusier, when he returned to Paris shortly after the war, Jeanneret was following a popular bohemian practice of the time. He took the name, in fact, during a brief period where he abandoned architecture for painting and sculpture. Like his artistic brethren, Le Corbusier was making a symbolic statement that anyone was capable of reinventing himself.

But his estrangement from the drafting table didn’t last long. By 1922, he was back at it, picking up where he had left off, this time in partnership with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret.

That meant continuing the theoretical development of the style that would come to define not only his own work but an entire school of architecture. If his early years were spent as a provincial architect, his aesthetic was anything but. His formative work, which included a number of private homes and villas, reflected his reverence for the machine aesthetic.

Le Corbusier admired the design of well-built automobiles and the great trans-Atlantic steamships of interbellum Europe. His attitude can be summed up by his most famous quote: “A house is a machine for living in.” (The man was born and raised in a town known for its watchmaking. How Swiss is that?)


Heidi Weber Museum (Centre Le Corbusier), Zurich, Switzerland. Built 1967.
This colorful, even playful, building is Le Corbusier’s last, completed two years after he died.


Sainte Marie de La Tourette, near Lyon, France. Built 1957.
The concrete monastery is appropriately severe, though still redolent of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye three decades earlier. This design was a precursor to concrete work by others around the world in a style dubbed the New Brutalism.

His signature buildings, for example the Villa Savoye outside of Paris (built in the late ’20s), embody this architectural style, which he referred to generally as Purism, after the art form that was itself a rejection of Cubism. The lines are clean and sharp (in contrast to the full and curvaceous lines of Streamline Moderne, then very popular), and the interior functions are precise and laid out in a modular way. Villa Savoye is also built on reinforced concrete stilts, another Le Corbusier trademark and one of his “five points of architecture.”

But Le Corbusier didn’t limit himself to the design of single structures. He’s also remembered for his theories on urban planning and renewal, which, again, reflected his rejection of traditional models. Never one to make modest proposals, Le Corbusier tried to interest Parisian officials in bulldozing the Marais and replacing the district with a forest of egalitarian skyscrapers surrounded by tracts of open space. For Le Corbusier, this radical plan represented a complete break with the past, something he continually advocated as necessary for society to advance.

Fortunately for Paris, if not the betterment of society, his idea was rejected.

Frustrated in his dream of becoming the latter-day Baron Haussmann, Le Corbusier looked elsewhere for opportunities to implement his Radiant City urban plan. Eventually, a number of these unités were built around Europe, the first (and most famous) of these in Marseilles. If they bear more than a passing resemblance to Soviet-style architecture, it’s worth noting that Le Corbusier was influenced by his study of an earlier communal project, the Narkomfin Building in Moscow.


Secretariat Building, Chandigarh, India. Built 1953.
This state-government building combines the formalism of Le Corbusier’s earlier Purist designs with a generous hint of the muscular, sculptural forms that appeared later.


Church of Saint-Pierre


Church of Saint-Pierre, interior

Like a lot of so-called visionaries, Le Corbusier was an active self-promoter. He authored numerous books on architecture and design and openly courted protégés. Like modern-day Apple devotees slobbering at the feet of Steve Jobs, Le Corbusier’s acolytes worshiped him with blind, near-religious fervor.

His critics, however, were less sanguine. The harshest of them argued that his urban designs, especially, were cold and sterile, and worse, the product of technical incompetence.

Nevertheless, by the time he died in 1965, Le Corbusier’s enormous influence on 20th-century architectural sensibilities was indisputable. He ranks in a select pantheon alongside such worthies as Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Architects and Their Masterpieces

An architect designs homes, libraries, museums and other structures or environments. Here are some famous modern architects and their signature creations.

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) Fuller was also an engineer and a poet. He was known for his revolutionary designs that were both innovative and efficient. He developed the Dymaxion principle, which called for producing the maximum while using the least possible amount of material and energy. His most famous creation was the geodesic dome.

Frank Gehry (b. 1929) Many of Gehry's designs are oddly shaped and made from a variety of materials, such as corrugated metal and chain-link fencing. His best-known project is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

Michael Graves (b. 1934) Graves is known for his postmodernist, often colorful projects. Postmodernism is a playful style of art and architecture that was developed after 1970. He also designs furniture and home accessories. Graves designed the Walt Disney Company headquarters in Burbank, California.

Maya Lin (b. 1959) Lin earned fame when, as a student at Yale, she won a contest to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. She also designed the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.

I. M. Pei (b. 1917) Pei, who was born in China and educated in the United States, has designed landmarks all over the world. He frequently incorporates marble, concrete and glass into his geometrically precise designs. Some of his most famous designs include the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, the expansion of the Louvre in Paris and the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1869-1959) Wright is widely considered the greatest American architect. He developed the prairie style of architecture in Chicago. The prairie style features low horizontal lines, earth-tone colors and protruding overhangs. Although he mostly designed homes and furniture, Wright also designed the Oak Park Unity Temple near Chicago and the Larkin Office Building in Buffalo, New York.

Architecture You Can Sit On

One of the most common pieces of furniture that we use in our everyday life is a Chair. How many times so we try and find out how this chair came into existence. Some of the most sought after chair design has been designed by famous architects. Usually we associate architect with building design and we always try and distinguish the interiors designed by architects with that designed by Interior designers.

Some tend to argue that Architects are very rigid and lack imagination when it comes to designing interior space. On the other hand architects themselves consider interior design as mere of decoration. Following are a few of the chairs designed by some of the greatest architects of our times.

Frank Lloyd Wright once said that "Every chair must be designed for the building it will be in." This "Barrel Chair" made of natural cheery wood with an upholstered leather seat was designed in 1937 for Herbert Johnson's house and apparently was a rework on a design he created in 1904. Wright saw the chair as an architectural challenge and used tall straight chairs as screens around tables. Unlike many of his contemporary stalwarts, Wright believed that machines could actually enhance the designs.



The Taliesin armchair 1949 by Frank Lloyd Wright

Architectural Quotes

“All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts, or stimulates the persons in that space.” - Philip Johnson



"Architecture is the reaching out for the truth." - Louis Kahn



"To be modern is not a fashion, it is a state. It is necessary to understand history, and he who understands history knows how to find continuity between that which was, that which is, and that which will be." - Le Corbusier



"Form follows function – that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union." - Frank Lloyd Wright



"Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness." - Frank Gehry



"We should work for simple, good, undecorated things... ...but things which are in harmony with the human being and organically suited to the little man in the street." - Alvar Aalto



"Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light." - Le Corbusier

The Pioneers of Interior Design

Jean-Henri Jansen (1854-1928)
Dutch designer, Jean-Henri Jansen, launched one of the first ever international interior design companies ‘Maison Jansen’ (House of Jansen) in 1880, which became renowned for designing and creating exceptionally beautiful and high quality furniture which would be utilized in a multitude of interior decoration projects. House of Jansen opened branches in 8 of the major cities of the world. Jansen worked closely with the talented interior designer Stephane Boudin whom he made director of the company. The clients of House of Jansen included Royalty and the rich and famous.

Elsie de Wolfe (1865-1950)
The first lady of interior decoration, Elsie de Wolfe considered herself an ‘ugly child’. This Victorian stage actress was a rebel of her times and was credited by many to be the inventor of the modern profession of interior design, even though there were already established interior designers in her time. Elsie disliked Victorian tastes altogether, her designs were therefore generally made up of light and bright colors, contrary to the drab and gloomy Victorian décor coupled with unnecessary excesses such as heavy velvet draperies. This was a pioneering departure from the contemporary designs of the time. Elsie’s influence continues to be felt in the modern world of interior design.

Ogden Codman (1863-1951)
American interior decorator and architect, Ogden Codman spent his childhood in his birthplace of Boston before heading to France in his youth for a period of time. Codman had two uncles who influenced him tremendously - architect John Hubbard and decorator Richard Ogden. Some of Ogden Codman’s works include Edith Wharton’s Newport home, Land’s End, the Rockefeller family estate of New York client John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and the Newport summer home of Cornelius Vanderbilt II. Along with novelist Edith Wharton, Codman co-authored a guidepost of American interior design, ‘The Decoration of Houses’ in 1897.

Frances Elkins (1888-1953)
Born in Milwaukee, Frances Adler Elkins was one of the most prominent interior decorator and designer of the previous century. Sister of the famed Chicago architect David Adler, Elkins was known for her futuristic designs that brought together different styles and elements from various periods. They included country French styles, chinoiserie and art deco. The furnishings featured in her designs included designers such as Jean-Michel Frank and Alberto Giacometti. The career of Elkins that spanned over three decades is glittered with many high profile commissions in Hawaii, the Midwest and northern and southern California, none more interesting than the restoration of the 1830s structure, Casa Amesti in Monterrey, California.

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959)
Frank Lloyd Wright was an interior designer and architect whose career included more than 1000 projects, 500 of them that have been complete. Wright was known for his promotion of organic architecture, an example of which is Fallingwater. The Robie House is an example of Wright’s leadership of the Prairie School architectural movement, while the Rosenbaum House depicts Wright’s Usonian home concept. Wright also had refreshing ideas for every kind of building, be it church, office, school, hotel or museum. Along with excellent architectural renderings, Wright also designed much of the interiors of his buildings including the Décor, layout and furniture.

Modern interior decorators offer services such as Home Remodeling to improve the chances of selling your house. This process is also known as Home Staging and is designed to make the house more appealing to a wider demographic.

THE STORY OF FALLINGWATER

Fallingwater is recognized as one of Wright's most acclaimed works, and in a 1991 poll of members of the American Institute of Architects, it was voted "the best all-time work of American architecture."

It is a supreme example of Frank Lloyd Wright's concept of organic architecture, which promotes harmony between man and nature through design so well integrated with its site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition.

Wright embraced modern technology to achieve this, designing spaces for living which expressed architecturally the expansive freedom of the American frontier.

For Fallingwater, designed in 1935 for the Edgar J. Kaufmann family of Pittsburgh, Wright responded to the family's love for a waterfall on Bear Run, a rushing mountain stream.

Mimicking a natural pattern established by its rock ledges, Wright placed the house over the falls in a series of cantilevered concrete "trays," anchored to masonry walls made of the same Pottsville sandstone as the rock ledges. Although the house rises over 30' above the falls, strong horizontal lines and low ceilings help maintain a sheltering effect.

Almost as much floor space is taken up by outdoor terraces as indoor rooms.Construction began in 1936, and ended with the completion of the guest house in 1939. The Kaufmann family used Fallingwater in all seasons as a weekend or vacation home until the 1950's, when their son inherited it.

Edgar Kaufmann, jr., by then a Curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art, continued to use Fallingwater until he entrusted it to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy in 1963. His gift was lauded by the architectural community as a commendable act of preservation during a time in which many Wright-designed buildings were being demolished or in serious states of disrepair.

Fallingwater is the only great Wright house open to the public with its setting, original furnishings, and art work intact. Almost all of the original Wright-designed furnishings are still in place. Fine art, textiles, objets d'art, books, and furnishings collected by the Kaufmann family from the 1930's through the 1960's are on view, and represent the eclectic tastes of a sophisticated, world-traveled family. Included in the collections are works by Audubon, Tiffany, Diego Rivera, Picasso, Jacques Lipchitz, Richmond Barthe, and woodblock prints by Japanese artists Hiroshige and Hokusai - gifts from Frank Lloyd Wright to the Kaufmanns.