FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

•An American architect, Interior designer,

writer and educator
Born on June 8,1867
In Richland center ,Wisconsin

• After working as a draftsman in Joseph

Lyman Silsbee office and as a co-architect
with adler and Sullivan he established his
own firm in Chicago.

He designed more then 1000 structures

and completed 500 works.
He believed In designing structures which
are harmony with humanity and its
environment , a philosophy called organic
architecture

• Died on April 9,1959 In Phoenix, Arizona

• Famous Buildings:
• Fallingwater (Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. Residence),
Bear Run, Pennsylvania, 1935–1937
• Frederick C. Robie Residence, Chicago, Illinois, 1909
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City,
1956–1959
• Unity Temple, Oak Park, Illinois, 1904
• Price Tower,Bartlesville, Oklahoma, 1952–1956
Basic Principles of Wright
Designs
Organic Colors

Simple Geometric Shapes

Integration of Building with Natural

Surroundings

Strong Horizontal Lines

Hidden Entries
 Houses like falling water, Robbie
house… wright
used only 4 materials to build Fallingwater
sandstone, reinforced concrete, steel and glass.
• Horizontal element – concrete. planes
differentiated and accentuate by changes in
colour, texture, and material .
• vertical element – native stone. gives a sculpture
quality highlighting the horizontal
• Interiors are simply through vibrant because of
use of triadic colors for furniture's and
monochromatic brown color for walls, ceiling ,
floor
 Prairie houses
Prairie houses were characterized by low,
horizontal lines that were meant to blend
with the flat landscape around them.

Typically, these structures were built around

a central chimney, consisted of broad open
spaces instead of strictly defined rooms,
and deliberately blurred the distinction
between interior space and the surrounding
terrain.

Wright acclaimed "the new reality that is

space instead of matter" and, about
architectural interiors, said that the "reality
of a building is not the container but the
space within."
Earliest Works
 Some of Wright’s earliest homes are in
Oak Park. They show a blend of
Victorian and Prairie School elements.
These are sometimes called “bread and
butter” houses.
Mr. Wright's "organic architecture" was a radical
departure from the traditional architecture of his day,
which was dominated by European styles that dated back
hundreds of years or even millenia.

While most of his designs were single-family homes his

varied output also includes houses of worship,
skyscrapers, resorts, museums, government offices, gas
stations, bridges, and other masterpieces showing the
diversity of Frank Lloyd Wright's talent.
Design dramatic
overhangs to symbolize freedom
Fewer Windows holes though much greater window area
A home should appear to grow organically From the ground
Bring the walls towards the function of a screen
Ward Willits House, Highland Park, IL, 1902
Willits house is considered the first of the great Prairie houses. Built in the Chicago
suburb of Highland Park, Illinois
the house presents a symmetrical facade to the street.
The plan is a cruciform with four wings that extend out from a central hearth
In addition to art-glass windows and wooden screens that divide rooms, Wright also
designed most of the furniture in the house.
The Robbie House, Chicago, IL, 1908-9
•The projecting cantilevered roof eaves, continuous bands
of art-glass windows, and the use of Roman brick
emphasize the horizontal, which had rich associations for
Wright.
•To further emphasize the horizontal of the bricks, the
horizontal joints were filled with a cream-colored mortar
and the small vertical joints were filled with brick-colored
mortar. From a distance, this complex and expensive tuck
pointing creates an impression of continuous lines of
horizontal color and minimizes the appearance of
individual bricks.
•The design of the art glass windows is an abstract pattern of colored and clear glass using Wright's
favorite 30 and 60-degree angles
•Wright used similar designs in tapestries inside the house and for gates surrounding the outdoor
spaces and enclosing the garage courtyard.

• Robbie's generous budget allowed Wright to design a house with a largely steel structure, which
accounts for the minimal deflection of the eaves. The planter urns, copings, lintels, sills and other
exterior trim work are of Bedford limestone.
Plan,
Main Floor

Plan,
Lower Level
The Larkin Company Administration Building,
Buffalo, NY 1904-05
•The Larkin Building was designed in 1904 and
built in 1906 for the Larkin Soap Company of
Buffalo, New York .

• The five story dark red brick building used

pink tinted mortar and utilized steel frame
construction.

•It was noted for many innovations, including

air conditioning, stained glass windows, built-
in desk furniture, and suspended toilet bowls.

• Sculptor Richard Bock provided

ornamentation for the building.

•Located at 680 Seneca Street, the Larkin

Building was demolished in 1950.
• Exterior details of the 200-foot-long (61 m) by
134-foot-wide (41 m) building were executed in
red sandstone; the entrance doors, windows,
and skylights were of glass.

• Floors, desktops, and cabinet tops were

covered with magnesite for sound absorption.
For floors, magnesite was mixed with excelsior
and poured, and troweled like cement, over a
layer of felt to impart its resiliency.
• Magnesite was also used for sculptural
decoration on the piers surrounding the light
court and for panels and beams around the
executive offices at the south end of the main
floor. Wright designed much of the furniture.

• The interior walls were made of semi-vitreous,

hard, cream colored brick. A 76-foot-tall (23 m)
light court was located in the center of the
building which provided natural sunlight to all of
the floors
Unitarian Universalist Church (Unity Temple),
Oak Park, IL, 1906

• the solid concrete construction, as well as

• the incorporation of other typical Wright elements.
• Simple geometric shape
• Hidden entries
Unity Temple is considered to be
one of Wright's most important
structures dating from the first
decade of the twentieth century.

Because of its consolidation of

aesthetic intent and structure
through use of a single material,
reinforced concrete, Unity
Temple is considered by many
architects to be the first modern
building in the world.

This idea became of central

importance to the modern
architects who followed Wright,
such as Mies Van Der Rohe, and
even the post-modernists, such
as Frank Gehry .
To accommodate the needs of the congregation,
Wright divided the community space from the
temple space through a low, middle loggia that
could be approached from either side. This was
an efficient use of space and kept down on noise
between the two main gathering areas: those
coming for religious services would be separated
via the loggia from those coming for community
events.
This design was one of Wright's first uses of a
bipartite design: with two portions of the
building similar in composition and separated by
a lower passageway, and one section being
larger than the other. The Guggenheim Museum
in New York City is another bipartite design.
The main floor of the temple is accessed via a lower floor
(which has seating space), and the room also has two
balconies for the seating of the congregation. These varying
seating levels allowed the architect to design a building to fit
the size of the congregation, but efficiently: no one person
in the congregation is more than 40 feet from the pulpit .
Wright also designed the building with very good acoustics .
 GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, New York , united states.

Established in 1937 Type Art museum

Frank Lloyd Wright created the Guggenheim
Museum as a series of organic shapes.
Circular forms spiral down like the interior of a
shell.
Visitors to the museum begin on the upper
level and follow a sloping ramp downward
through connected exhibition spaces.
Other examples