Mr Wright Is A Bit Of Alright
You may recall that a few weeks ago I wrote an article about Frank Lloyd Wright, in which I thinly disguised my slight dislike for him, however, I feel that he is a figure that requires a bit more respect than that, so here are another few words about a man that is as brilliant as he is complex.
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S CAREER spanned 70 years – an amazing length of time for a LIFE, let alone a career in the ever-changing, very competitive field of architecture. I recently visited the United States where I saw 10 of the 532 completed projects he designed.
To be competitive in architecture it is vital to move the goal posts and push boundaries, challenging people’s perception and urging the world forward to new frontiers. Frank Lloyd Wright was essentially a traditional thinker, but he pioneered many uses and applications of materials. He believed that a building should reflect and absorb its surroundings with nature and this is clearly illustrated in his early works, including many in Oak Park, just west of the city of Chicago, where he started his practice and designed and built his first family home and studio. His use of stone, timber and brick are beautifully and elegantly fused together to create some wonderful buildings.
The greatest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright’s private houses is in Oak Park. There is a never-ending stream of FLW devotees trawling through the leafy avenues photographing and sketching everything in sight. To own a FLW house comes with this legacy and the owners seem to know that this is their lot, remaining inconspicuous and tolerant.
As Sean Malone, President and CEO of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation comments, “Frank Lloyd Wright saw architecture as a way of life. He believed that architecture must reflect and reinforce the basic values and ideas of the society for which it is created”. Besides his ideas, ideals and philosophies, his private life was littered with controversy, tragedy and flamboyance, which makes him so appealing to so many people – interest in him is widespread, with the FLW Association having members in every US state and 27 other countries. He is regarded as one of the greatest artists that the US has ever produced.
Talliesin, another FLW masterpiece, in Wisconsin, the site of the murder of his lover, her two children and three others, is the cornerstone for the FLW Foundation, dedicated to preserving Talliesin, Talliesin West and the collections housed within. Talliesin also has a beautiful shell displayed, supposedly the shell he showed to Solomon Guggenheim to illustrate how he intended to design the brilliant and beautiful Guggenheim Museum in New York, a building so dramatically different to his earlier works it is hard to recognise that it is the work of the same man responsible for all those Prairie Houses back at the turn of the twentieth century. The Guggenheim was completed shortly after Wright’s death in 1959 – at the ripe old age of 91! Some of his most significant buildings were designed in the last ten years of his life – now that’s encouragement if ever I’ve heard it.