Frank Lloyd Wright

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Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) was born in Wisconsin but spent most of his early years and professional life in Chicago, Illinois. Wright had dreamed of becoming an architect since his youth, and, after studying civil engineering, he moved to Chicago in 1887 to work for architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee, where he drafted his first building, Unity Chapel. A year later Wright joined Chicago’s Adler and Sullivan Architects. Under his mentor, Louis Sullivan, who advocated the philosophy of blending form with function in architecture, Wright expanded his viewpoint to develop the idea of “Form and Function Are One.” With Sullivan as a main influence on his budding career, Wright continued designing buildings that had a style never before seen in American design.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings in the United States contain several core features that have made them unique and collectors’ items in the world of architecture. The most common hallmarks of Wright’s designs are: emphasis on the horizontal plane; no basements or attics; no paint; low-pitched rooflines with deep overhangs; uninterrupted walls of windows; liberal use of skylights; large, stone fireplaces in the building’s heart; and emphasis on the use of natural materials, such as woods and stone.

As Wright’s career and designs progressed, he increasingly integrated nature into his buildings. Sloping roofs matched the slope of the hillsides; large doors and windows lessened the distinction between the indoors and outdoors; and flowing brooks ran under, around, and sometimes through a building. Wright likely became the first person to use organic to express a new way of developing and designing an object or even a lifestyle. “Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders’ spinning,” he remarked, “buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to everyone and married to the ground.” Wright probably never used sustainable in connection with his architecture, yet Wright’s designs provide excellent guides for present-day sustainable or green houses. Wright followed his own path to sustainability decades before it became fashionable and even necessary. By favoring natural materials, natural cooling and ventilation, and using landscape to create part of a building’s structure and support, Wright certainly contributed to today’s environmental engineering.

By the end of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life, he had developed 1,141 home or building designs and completed 532 of them. His designs and the philosophy behind them influenced architecture in North America, Europe, and Asia. Ten Wright-designed buildings were nominated in 2008 by the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy to be included on the World Heritage List of the most significant cultural or natural treasures. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Built between 1936 and 1939 in
the Bear Run watershed in western Pennsylvania, the house contained features rarely seen in architecture at
the time. Portions of the house appear to float free over a natural waterfall—the house is built directly on
top of a stream—and the entire house is in harmony with the woods around it.

Organization (UNESCO) oversees the competition; the nominations and selections will take place between 2009 and 2019. The 10 buildings that have been nominated because they best demonstrate Frank Lloyd Wright’s scope, quality, and unique design are the following:

1. Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois (completed 1904)
2. Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago, Illinois (1906)
3. Hollyhock House, Los Angeles, California (1921)
4. Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin (1925)
5. Fallingwater, Mill Run, Pennsylvania (1939)
6. S. C. Johnson and Son, Inc., Administration Building and Research Tower, Racine, Wisconsin (1936, 1944)
7. Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona (1937)
8. The Price Tower, Bartlesville, Oklahoma (1952)
9. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, New York (1956)
10. Marin County Civic Center, San Rafael, California (1957)

 The sites listed here and hundreds of other Wright buildings continue to serve as study models in environmental and civil engineering, landscaping, and ecological design.