Frank Lloyd Wright, Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, 1908
Posts tagged chicago.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple, a pilgrimage site for architectural buffs, will get a face lift, thanks to a $10 million grant from a Chicago-based foundation.
Read the full story here.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House (1908) in Hyde Park, Chicago
Frank Lloyd Wright, the organic architect
In 1991, American Institute of Architects recognized Frank Lloyd Wright as “the greatest American architect of all time.” Talented, radical and passionate about his vocation, Wright was a visionary master. He defied architectural doctrines of his time, challenged the tyranny of the skyscraper and was recognized as a true iconoclast believing that form and function in building should be one, “joined in a spiritual union.”
For Wright, American cities of the 20th century were a bad dream come true: stagy grandeur, disruptive of surrounding environment, flashy structures, dwarfing the human spirit — they represented all those things that he despised. Wright once referred to New York as “a great monument to the power of money and greed… a race for rent.” He didn’t care much for Pittsburgh either. In 1935, he was quoted saying, “If I were remaking this city the first thing I’d do would be get rid of that damned smoke.”
His philosophy of architecture was reflected in the Prairie School movement. The movement focused on the importance of harmony and aesthetic congruence between humanity and the surrounding environment. The philosophy embraced structures that grew organically, shaped by their natural surroundings and the needs of their human inhabitants, buildings that ‘hugged the earth’ and merged with the landscape rather than dominated it.
“Simplicity and repose are qualities that measure the true value of any work of art,” Wright said. Simplicity was his mantra and the ability to simplify, he believed, was the hardest skill for an architect to perfect. “‘Think simple’ as my old master used to say — meaning reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles,” he said. It was exactly for simplicity and elegance of Wright’s creations that he received international praises from Germany to Japan.
Wright designed more than 500 structures, 300 of which survive to this date.
Robie House, built in 1910 in Chicago, Ill., has been recently included in the list of “Ten buildings that changed America.”
But one of people’s most favorite buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright is, of course, the famous Fallingwater. It was built from 1934 to 1937 for the Kaufmanns at Mill Run, Pa. Constructed over a thirty-foot waterfall, Fallingwater is unique; its design defines what ‘organic architecture’ is about.
Frank Lloyd Wright also had projects that were never meant to be. When his plans for a building in Yosemite were rejected, he was unhappy with the government, when Venice tabled his proposal for a glass and marble palace on the Grand Canal, he was mad at the tourists.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal life was tempestuous, filled with adventures, struggle and turmoil. Wright was married three times and fathered seven children. He died in 1959 at age 91.
He mentored a lot of successful architects and left behind many bits of wisdom in books and lectures. One advice he tried to sear into the minds of his apprentices was, “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”
The May 18th Wright Plus housewalk in Chicago, IL is right around the corner. This internationally renowned architectural housewalk features rare interior tours of nine private homes designed by Wright and his contemporaries, plus entry to three landmark Wright buildings.
Learn more here.
Frank Lloyd Wright, Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois, 1910.
Historic American Buildings Survey Cervin Robinson, Photographer, 20 August 1963
Chicago’s landmark The Rookery. Designed and completed by Burnham & Root in 1888, the lobby was remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905.
“Form follows function - that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House (1909), Chicago
Frank Lloyd Wright, Midway Gardens, Chicago, Illinois, 1914, demolished, 1929
Lobby of Rookery Building, Frank Lloyd Wright (1905). Chicago.
