| The Gordon House
Frank Lloyd Wright: Master Architect
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is widely considered to be the greatest American architect of the 20th century and is hailed as the "father of modern architecture." He designed more than 1,100 houses, museums, churches, schools, office towers, hotels, and even a gas station.
Wright rejected conventional European influences and freed Americans from the Victorian "boxes" of the 19th century. His "Prairie Houses" echoed the flat Midwestern landscape with strong horizontal profiles and open floor plans, where complex partitions replaced traditional walls. His houses blended with the natural surroundings and were designed with comfort and convenience in mind. His innovative architecture changed the way Americans lived.
Throughout his seven-decade career, Frank Lloyd Wright believed that a building should integrate form and function into an organic whole, blending with the site. His early designs were the earth hugging Prairie Houses exemplified by the 1909 Robie House in Illinois and the 1911 Taliesin in Wisconsin. The 1936 Fallingwater in Pennsylvania with its cascading cantilevers is described as "the most famous house ever designed for non-royalty." The 1936 Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin features a sky-lighted "forest" of mushroom-shaped, concrete columns. In 1937 he designed Taliesin West outside of Scottsdale, Arizona, which served as his architectural and design laboratory for more than 20 years. Wright's final masterpieces included the spiraling 1959 Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Marin County Civic Center, which bridges facing hills in San Rafael, California.
Wright's creative mind was not confined to architecture. He also designed furniture, fabrics, art glass, lamps, dinnerware, silver, linens, graphic arts and landscapes. He authored more than a dozen books and countless articles and lectured throughout the U.S. and Europe. Nearly one-third of Wright's work was created during the last decade of his life. Several of his important innovations in building design and construction can be see in the Gordon House, which he designed in 1957 at the age of 89. At the time of his death in 1959, Frank Lloyd Wright had completed 460 projects with over 600 designs waiting to be accomplished.
Photo Captions:
- Robie House
- Kentuck Knob
- Fallingwater
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
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