preview

Frank Lloyd Wright's Influence On American Architecture

Decent Essays

Architecture is one of the great arts of the world. It expresses a designer’s style and interests, and can also show the style of the city or country it is in. And individual architects, like Frank Lloyd Wright, do this very well. How was Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture influential today’s world? Frank Lloyd Wright was influential to today’s architecture because helped free builders from traditional European architecture.
Frank Lloyd Wright was born on June 8, 1867, and was a child of Anna Lloyd Jones and William Carey Wright, a preacher and musician. His family lived in Wisconsin, and Frank was inspired by building blocks, a gift from his mother, and music played by his father, in addition to the landscape of the prairie in Wisconsin. Later, …show more content…

In 1887, Wright worked with Louis Sullivan in Chicago, a well-known architect of the time who also wanted to separate from European style, until 1893. After Wright had stopped working with Sullivan’s firm, he made what is considered his first masterpiece, his home in Oak Park, Illinois known as the Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio. This structure was also his first work designed with his “Prairie” style. This style involved single-story homes with many horizontal lines, spacious living areas, and many casement windows. They were built with nearby materials and the wood used was not painted, expressing natural beauty. Wright later designed many more of his works in this styles, such as the Robie House and Unity Temple. In later years, he designed more well-known buildings, such as Taliesin, his home in Wisconsin, and Fallingwater, a building built on a waterfall in Pennsylvania. Later, he built public buildings, for instance, the Monona Terrace Civic Center, the SC Johnson Wax Administration, and the Guggenheim Museum. Wright also designed Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel in 1915, which he stated was “earthquake-proof” and, later, ended up being the only building involved in the 1923 Japanese earthquake to remain unscathed. Wright had also designed Usonian houses, which were the predecessors of today’s ranch-style homes. These homes had natural heating and cooling, and included carports, which were invented by Wright. All in all, Wright designed more than 1,100 structures. Frank Lloyd Wright died on April 9th, 1959, at age 91.
Frank Lloyd Wright was an influence to today’s world of architecture. This is because he had helped free America from traditional European-style architecture. He had designed more than 1,100 structures separate from European style. He was a large influence in making American architecture

Get Access