Frank
Lloyd Wright
was born in Richland, Wisconsin
on 8th June, 1867. His father, William
Cary Wright, was a preacher and musician. His mother, Anna Lloyd Jones,
a teacher, was the daughter of Welsh immigrants.
Wright studied civil engineering at Wisconsin University and while
there developed an interest in architecture.
Wright moved to Chicago in 1889 and found
work with the architectural firm of Adler and Sullivan. He was greatly
influenced by one of the partners, Louis Sullivan, who believed in
a architecture that was "based on American themes and not on
tradition or European styles".
Wright's mother joined him in Chicago
and she became a volunteer worker at the Hull
House Settlement. His uncle, Jenkin Lloyd
Jones, a Unitarian minister, was
also very involved in this community project and encouraged Wright
to give free lectures at Hull House. Although Wright supported the
social reform activities
of Jane Addams and her followers, he was
critical of the emphasis the movement placed on preserving past art
and handicrafts.
In 1894 Wright established his own architectural firm in Oak Farm
and began to build low-built prairie-style bungalows designed to fit
into the landscape. Made of native stones and woods, Wright houses
were examples of what he called organic architecture: buildings that
attempted to "reflect the individual needs of the client, the
nature of the site, and the native materials available."
Wright later produced more daring and controversial
designs that exploited modern technology. This included the Unity
Temple, America's first important architectural work in poured concrete
and the Larkin Building in Buffalo, with its innovative use of metal
furniture.
In 1913 Wright began work on designing the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.
Acclaimed for its earthquake resistant supporting structure, the hotel
was one of the few buildings that survived the Kanto earthquake that
destroyed much of Tokyo in 1923.
After the Wall Street Crash Wright
received few commissions and so he concentrated on writing. This included
An
Autobiography
(1932) and the highly influential, The
Disappearing City
(1932). These books renewed interest in Wright's work and this led
to him producing a series of important buildings including the Johnson
Wax Administration Building (1936), the Jacobs House (1937), Fallingwater
(1936), Wingspread (1937), the Winckler-Goetsch House (1939) and the
Florida Southern College (1940).
In his eighties Wright went into semi-retirement and wrote two more
important books on architecture: The
Natural House
(1954) and The
Living City
(1959). His final work, the Guggenheim
Museum, was finished
shortly before his death in Phoenix, Arizona, on 9th April, 1959.
(1)
In 1903 Frank Lloyd Wright gave a lecture at the Hull
House Settlement on architecture and technology.
Though
he does not know it, the artist is now free to work his rational will
with freedom unknown to structural tradition. Units of construction
have enlarged, rhythms have been simplified and etherealized, space
is more spacious and the sense of it may enter into every building,
great or small. The architect is no longer hampered by the stone arch
of the Romans or by the stone beam of the Greeks. Why then does he
cling to the grammatical phrases of those ancient methods of construction
when such phrases are in the modern work empty lies, and himself an
inevitable liar as well.
Already, as we stand today, the machine has weakened the artist to
the point of destruction and antiquated the craftsman together. Earlier
forms of art are by abuse all but destroyed. The whole matter has
been reduced to mere pose. Instead of joyful creation we have all
around about us poisonous tastes - foolish attitudes. With some little
of the flame of the old love, and creditable but pitiful enthusiasm,
the young artist still keeps on working, making miserable mischief
with lofty motives: perhaps, because his heart has not kept in touch
or in sympathy with his scientific brother's head, being out of step
with the forward marching of his own time.
The new American Liberty is of the sort that declares man free only
when he has found his work and effective means to achieve a life of
his own. The means once found, he will find his due place. The man
of our country will thus make his own way, and grow to the natural
place thus due him, promised - yes, promised by our charter, the Declaration
of Independence. But this place of his is not to be made over to fit
him by reform, nor shall it be brought down to him by concession,
but will become his by his own use of the means at hand. He must himself
build a new world.
The day of the individual is not over - instead, it is just about
to begin. The machine does not write the doom of liberty, but is waiting
by man's hand as a peerless tool, for him to use to put foundations
beneath a genuine democracy. Then the machine may conquer human drudgery
to some purpose, taking it upon itself to broaden, lengthen, strengthen
and deepen the life of the simplest man. Although the power is now
murderous, chained to botch-work and bunglers' ambitions, the creative
artist will take it surely into his hand and, in the name of liberty,
swiftly undo the deadly mischief it has created.
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