MA IN INTERIOR DESIGN

1. Frank Lloyd Wright Style
Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest figure in modern American architecture. Wright
worked in Chicago for the firm of Adler and Sullivan from 1887 to 1893, when he began
his own practice. Wright gained international attention for a series of houses he designed
from about 1900 to 1910 in the “prairie style”. The houses had low, horizontal shapes
because Wright believed that such a design blended with the open Midwestern prairies.
He said that a building should “grow” from its site. Wright selected materials in earth
colours and emphasised the natural appearance of those materials.
Wright revolutionised the arrangement of interior space in his prairie houses. In
traditional American houses of the late 1800s, walls divided the interior into box-like
rooms.
In his houses, however, Wright reduced the number of walls so that one room
flowed into another. This flexible use of interior space and the horizontal outlines of the
houses greatly influenced European architects. Wright’s best-known prairie house is
Robie House (1909-10) in Chicago. Wright also designed large projects, such as the
Larkin Building (1904-1906) in Buffalo, New York, and Unity Temple (1906-1908) in
Oak Park, Illinois. His bold and imaginative use of concrete in these buildings helped
popularise the material in modern architecture.