Considered the most influential architect of his time, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-
1959) was born in the small rural community of Richland Center, Wisconsin. He entered
the University of Wisconsin at the age of 15 as a special student, studying engineering
because the school had no course in architecture. At the age of 20 he then went to work
(5)as a draughtsman in Chicago in order to learn the traditional, classical language of
architecture. After marrying into a wealthy business family at the age of 21, Wright set up
house in an exclusive neighborhood in Chicago, and after a few years of working for a
number of architectural firms, set up his own architectural office.
For twenty years he brought up a family of six children upstairs, and ran a thriving
(10)architectural practice of twelve or so draughtsmen downstairs. Here, in an idyllic American
suburb, with giant oaks, sprawling lawns, and no fences, Wright built some sixty rambling
homes by the year 1900. He became the leader of a style known as the “Prairie” school -
houses with low-pitched roofs and extended lines that blended into the landscape and
typified his style of “organic architecture”.
(15)By the age of forty-one, in 1908, Wright had achieved extraordinary social and
professional success. He gave countless lectures at major universities, and started his
Taliesin Fellowship – a visionary social workshop in itself. In 1938 he appeared on the
cover of Time magazine, and later, on a two cent stamp. The most spectacular buildings
of his mature period were based on forms borrowed from nature, and the intentions were
(20)clearly romantic, poetic, and intensely personal. Examples of these buildings are Tokyo’s
Imperial Hotel (1915-22: demolished 1968), and New York City’s Guggenheim Museum
(completed 1959) He continued working until his death in 1959, at the age of 92, although
in his later years, he spent as much time giving interviews and being a celebrity, as he did
in designing buildings. Wright can be considered an essentially idiosyncratic architect
whose influence was immense but whose pupils were few.