Frank Llyod Wright Biography Philosophy Architectural Style Examples Awards

1. FRANK LLYOD WRIGHT
Submitted To :
Ar. Rajani Shrestha
Submitted By :
Amrita Poudel Pallavi Kiran Bhattarai
Sanjay Gurung Shain Ghimire

2. BIOGRAPHY
Born : Richland Center, Wisconsin, on June 8, 1867
Parents: Welsh mother and a preacher musician father
In his early years his mother wanted him to be an architect so she
gave him Froebel Blocks in his childhood
The play blocks gave him a sense of using primary forms to create
complex forms, a skill he would put to great use in his later
designs.
His early childhood was nomadic as his father traveled from one
ministry position to another in Rhode Island, Iowa, and
Massachusetts, before settling in Madison, Wisconsin., in 1878.

3. SCHOOLING
Although he attended school sporadically, his mother pushed him
continually in artistic works such as drawing, craft, painting and
printing.
His parents divorced in 1885 so Wright dropped out of school and
worked as an office boy for the professor of civil engineering at the
University of Wisconsin.
He studied one semester of descriptive geometry as a special student
at the University's evening school.
At 19 he went to Chicago and worked in the architectural office of
Joseph Lyman Silsbee, a friend of his uncle.
There he practiced drawing ornamentation favored by Sullivan as his
ultimate desire was to work under him.

4. Joined Sullivan's office in 1888 as a draftsman on
a five year contract.
In 1889, at age 22, Wright married Catherine Lee
Tobin. Eager to build his own home, he
negotiated a five-year contract with Sullivan in
exchange for the loan of the necessary money.
EARLY WORKS
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT (STUDIO) OAK PARK
He purchased a wooded corner lot in the Chicago
suburb of Oak Park and built his first house,
a modest residence reminiscent of the East Coast
shingle style with its prominent roof gable.
It also reflected Wright’s ingenuity as he
experimented with geometric shapes and
volumes in the studio and playroom. Remembered by the children as a lively household,
filled with beautiful things

5. While Wright worked with Sullivan they were trying to create buildings which
"owed their style to the integrity with which they were individually fashioned
to serve their particular function.”
- great impact on later European architecture where Functionalism would
become the dominating theme.
- influenced by Sullivan's concept of organic architecture he developed this
concept further to integrate the building with the site rather than limiting it to
outside decoration.
- Wright called Sullivan his Lieber Meister (beloved master).
- Sullivan built commercial buildings concentrated mainly on the façade while
Wright worked mainly with houses working in three dimensions right from
the beginning.
- By organic Wright did not limit himself to ornamentation of botanical origin
like Sullivan but conceived it as architecture responding to new materials
and needs. This was further evolved into a notion that houses should open
towards and conform to the lines of the landscape.

6. Sometimes Sullivan used to let Wright work independently on residential buildings. To supplement his
income Wright worked after office hours to design residences for his own private clients. This was not liked
by Sullivan who considered it a breach of contract and fired Wright from his office. Thereafter Wright
established his own private practice out of his home.
He stated,
"A building is only organic when the exterior and the interior exist in unison, and when both are in harmony
with the character and nature of its purpose, its reason for existence, its location and the of its creation.”

7. Concerned by the growing bureaucratic power of the modern state brought on by the Industrial Revolution
and the detachment from nature, he preferred the oriental and primitive cultures which were more in unity
with nature.
He especially admired Japanese architecture for its refined proportions, fine workmanship, the use of
humble materials and its harmony with nature which allowed it to control space and give it a spiritual
character.
The floating roofs, the absence of walls and the free flow of interior-exterior space of the Japanese
structure were to have a lasting impression on him, which he tried to replicate in his "prairie style" houses.
-His most famous work inspired by this style is Falling Water.

8. PROFESSIONAL CAREER
The movement in Europe towards Cubism in art also had a direct influence on
Wright and helped him design Cubist juxtaposition of fluid interpenetrating spaces
around the central fireplace of his residential buildings.
He resorted to the cruciform plan with wings radiating from a central space in
order to bring the house and the landscape into a more intricate relationship.
The interior consisted of sliding and overlapping asymmetrical planes held firmly
together by the heavy central hearth which was the heart of the home, providing
a sense of security and a visual pivot.
Some of Wright’s most important residential works of the
time are the:
Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, New York (1903)
The Avery Coonley House in Riverside, Illinois (1907)
The 4 Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago (1908).
His early independent professional career began with a series of houses where he tried to get away from the
"box design" through abstract massing of interpenetrating volume, space and forms.

9. The William H. Winslow House was Wright’s first
independent commission.
broad sheltering roof and simple elegance, it nonetheless
attracted local attention
Determined to create an indigenous American architecture,
over the next sixteen years he set the standards for what
became known as the Prairie Style
The William H. Winslow House
THE WILLIAM H. WINSLOW HOUSE
It was symmetrical with Sullivan like ornamentation but it had
the seeds of his Prairie house where the house is organized
around a central hearth with strong horizontal lines and large
overhang of the roof.

10. Prairie Style
• the long, low horizontal prairie on which they sat with low-pitched roofs,
• deep overhangs
• no attics or basements
• generally long rows of casement windows that further emphasized the horizontal theme
• very rigid, geometric and symmetrical front façade
• unlike the front's boxlike appearance, the back was fragmented in all directions with rooms jutting out and
stairs puncturing the roof.
• It was symmetrical with Sullivan like ornamentation but it had the seeds of his Prairie house where the
house is organized around a central hearth with strong horizontal lines and large overhang of the roof.

11. The first of his Prairie House masterpieces
The earlier compact plan was replaced by the cruciform plan
which he repeated in many of his later buildings which had :
- wings extended from a central chimney hearth
- had a strong horizontal aspect and broad roof overhang
- His low-slung building had free-flowing interior-exterior
spaces that looked out in all directions into the low-lying
prairie landscape, using light screens instead of walls.
WARD WILLITS HOUSE IN THE CHICAGO SUBURBS IN 1902

12. - The house was joined to the flat prairie site by a visible platform and had
a series of cantilevered roofs hovering parallel to the ground.
- The free flowing interior space, with strongly defined axiality, was held
together by a large central fireplace.
Wright's attempt to break
the box had greatly
improved with the Willis
House but there were
still a lot of walls remaining.

13. The cruciform plan which he repeated in many of his later buildings
E. Arthur Davenport House
Peter Goan House

14. Creatively exhausted and emotionally restless, late in 1909 Wright left
his family for Europe with Mamah Borthwick (Cheney), a client with
whom he had been in love for several years.
To escape the weariness and discontent that now governed both his
professional and domestic life.
During this European hiatus Wright worked on two publications of his
work, published by Ernst Wasmuth
-drawings known as the Wasmuth Portfolio, Ausgeführte Bauten und
Entwürfe von Frank Lloyd Wright
-photographs- Ausgeführte Bauten, both released in 1911.
-international recognition to his work and greatly influenced other
architects
LATER WORKS OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

15. -Returned to the States and, unwelcome in
Chicago social circles, began construction of
Taliesin near Spring Green as their home and
refuge.
TALIESIN
Following family custom, he gave the site a Welsh
name, “Taliesin” (pronounced Tally-ESS-in), which
means “shining brow.”
The name symbolized Wright’s intention to create a
home that was “of the hill,” not on it. Taliesin was
therefore built below the hillcrest, on its brow rather
than its crown. Regarded as one of Wright’s most
significant expressions of Prairie-style organic
architecture, the house uses local materials to echo
the expansiveness of the Wisconsin landscape with a
layout that the architect described as “low, wide, and
snug.” Local farmers helped Wright move stone from
the yellow limestone quarry nearby, which he then
mixed with sand from the river to create Taliesin’s
walls.

16. In August 1914, Wright’s life with Mamah was tragically
closed as she, her two children and four others were
killed in a brutal attack and fire, intentionally started by
an angry Taliesin domestic employee.
Emotionally and spiritually devastated by the tragedy,
Wright was able to find solace only in work and he began
to rebuild Taliesin in Mamah’s memory.

17. TALIESIN
By 1914 he had so many personal and financial problems
that his career took a sharp downturn. For the next 25
years Wright went through a very troublesome period,
building very little. The only large commission was the
Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1916-20)

18. STYLE & DESIGN
Wright’s style and design changed as he responded to the needs of American Society
Wright’s work from 1899 to 1910 belongs to Prairie Style With the “Prairie house”— a long, low, open plan
structure that eschewed the typical high, straight-sided box in order to emphasize the horizontal line of the
prairie and domesticity
Wright established the first truly American architecture.
In a Prairie house, “the essential nature of the box could be eliminated,” Wright explained.
Interior walls were minimized to emphasize openness and community. “The relationship of inhabitants to the
outside became more intimate; landscape and building became one, more harmonious; and instead of a
separate thing set up independently of landscape and site, the building with landscape and site became
inevitably one.”
PRAIRIE STYLE

21. Responding to the financial crisis of 1929 and ensuing Great
Depression that gripped the United States and the rest of the
world, Wright began working on affordable housing, which
developed into the Usonian House.
Wright’s Usonians were a simplified approach to residential
construction that reflected both economic realities and
changing social trends.
In the Usonian houses, Wright was offering a simplified, but
beautiful environment for living that Americans could both
afford and enjoy.
USONIAN
Wright would continue to design Usonian
houses for the rest of career, with
variations reflecting the diverse client
budgets.

22. • The term "Organic Architecture" was coined by
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959)
• Promotes harmony between human habitation and
the natural world.
• It utilize strong rational geometry to create a
building that can be single entity.
• Main objective is to cause no harm to the nature
through design.
• Wright made the style popular through his portfolio
of work spanning a successful 70-year career.
• The style has since grown much larger in scope and
expanded internationally to include many
nonresidential buildings as well.
Example: Fallingwater
ORGANIC ARCHITECTURE

23. Design for Democracy
Wright always aspired to provide his client with environments that were not only functional but also
“eloquent and humane.” Perhaps uniquely among the great architects, Wright pursued an architecture for
everyman rather than every man for one architecture through the careful use of standardization to achieve
accessible tailoring options to for his clients.
Integrity and Connection
Believing that architecture could be genuinely transformative, Wright devoted his life to creating a total
aesthetic that would enhance society’s well being. “Above all integrity,” he would say: “buildings like people
must first be sincere, must be true.” Architecture was not just about buildings, but about nourishing the lives
of those within them. “There is no architecture without a philosophy. There is no art of any kind without its
own philosophy.” – Frank Lloyd Wright, 1959
Nature’s Principles and Structures For Wright, a truly organic building developed from within outwards and
was thus in harmony with its time, place, and inhabitants. “In organic architecture then, it is quite impossible
to consider the building as one thing, its furnishings another and its setting and 14 environment still another,”
he concluded. “The spirit in which these buildings are conceived sees all these together at work as one thing.”
To that end, Wright designed furniture, rugs, fabrics, art glass, lighting, dinnerware, and graphic arts.
ARCHITECTURAL PHILOSOPHIES

24. Material and Machine Wright embraced new technologies and tactics, constantly pushing the boundaries of
his field. His fascination for the new and his desire to be a pioneer help explain Wright’s tendency to test his
materials —sometimes even to the brink of failure—in an effort to achieve effects he could claim as uniquely
his own.
Architecture as the Great Mother Art Wright devoted his life to promoting architecture as “the great mother
art, behind which all others are definitely, distinctly and inevitably related.” Seeking a consistent expression of
underlying unity, he drew inspiration from the Japanese idea of a culture in which every object, every human,
and every action were integrated so as to make an entire civilization a work of art. Above all else, Wright’s
vision served beauty. He believed that every man, woman and child had the right to live a beautiful life in
beautiful circumstances and he sought to create an affordable architecture that served that aspiration.

25. Wright, In age 57, met Wife No. 3. Olga
Hinzenberg, whom Wright nicknamed Olgivanna,
In 1928, they wed In 1932 they founded the
Taliesin Fellowship
apprenticeship program to provide a total
learning environment, integrating not only
architecture and construction, but also
farming, gardening, and cooking, and the study
of nature, music, art, and dance.
he started the Taliesin Fellowship in 1932 which
began taking resident apprentices at Taliesin East
(Spring Green, Wisconsin) and Taliesin West
(Scottsdale, Arizona).
The school has often been criticized for
producing only Wright disciples
due to the overwhelming creative force of the
architect.

26. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union

27. Prolific Work with Revolutionary Designs
FRANK LLYOD WRIGHT

28. TALIESIN WEST
• This was Wright’s home and design studio, so it held a special place in his heart.
• It also perfectly captures the heart of the Organic Architecture movement.
• Because of its Arizona location, Taliesin West design ensures it becomes one with its desert surroundings.
• The clean lines of the home’s different levels can even be seen as shifting sandbars.
• The home’s use of glass also closely ties it to nature, as the inside and outside of the structure completely
blend together.

29. ROBIE HOUSE
CHICAGO, 1910

30. The building was designed as a single family home.
It is considered perhaps the finest example of “Prairie style”, the first architectural
style considered uniquely

31. Prairie style is considered by:
• Dominating horizontal axis
• Banded windows
• Spacious and open plan

33. Robie desired a modern floorplans , needed a garage and
a playroom for children.
Required his home to be fire proof, yet retained an open
Floor plan free of closed,
Box like rooms that prevent the uniformity of decoration
and design.

35. Repetition elongates
space also The harmony
of the space
He also designed interior furniture's.

36. Low chimney, balconies and
terraces in several directions

37. • The exterior is dominated by a low hipped roof.
• Simple building materials mainly brick, wood and stucco.
• Wood strips to emphasize structural elements.

38. FALLING WATER
Mill Run, Pennsylvania ,1937 Modern Architecture

39. • It is the house built over the waterfall.
• Stretches over 30ft waterfall, captured everyone's attention
• The house’s terraces echo the pattern of the rock ledges below

40. Design Concept
• In close relationship to the glen, the trees, the foliage
and wild flowers.
• The glory of the natural surrounding is brought in as the
part of the daily life.
• Spaces are designed to bring nature into the four walls
• Breaking water could constantly be heard throughout
the entire house.

41. • Horizontal and vertical lines are distinctive features of the building.

42. Wright described it as the principle of repose where forest, stream, rock and all
Element of structure are combined quietly.
Clustered organization
Around central core
Cantilevers extend living
areas and integrate with the
surrounding landscape
Attempts to integrate building with nature

43. Horizontal elements
poured concrete Vertical elements
constructed in native
stone gives a
sculpture quality
though at the same
still highlighting the
horizontal.
Planes differentiated
and accentuated by
changes in colour,
texture and material

44. • Wright’s admiration for Japanese architecture was in his inspiration for this house, along with
most of his work.

45. • Their attention is directed toward the outside by low ceilings, no lordly hall sets the tone but,
instead, the luminous textures of the woodland, rhythmically unframed.

46. • Columns and beams to form porches, and the plates, the horizontal elements that stretch as
terraces on the waterfall, were made with concrete.
• Some walls and other vertical elements that define the spaces of the house, like the floor, were
lined with native stone from the site.

47. • The powerful sound of the falls, the vitality of the young forest, the dramatic rock ledges and
boulders.
• An architecture which conformed to nature would conform to what was basic in people.

56. The color of the building is taken from rhododendron leaves.
• The construction is a series of cantilevered balconies and terraces,
using limestone for all verticals and concrete for the horizontals.

57. Building material used
Steel Glass

58. GUGGENHEIUM MUSIUM
NEW YORK, 1959

59. • Frank Lloyd Wright honored with museum
in background Established 1937 Location
Upper East Side, Manhattan , New York,
Type Art museum Director Richard
Armstrong Public transit access 86th Street
(IRT Lexington Avenue Line
• Architectural style: Modern Movement
• It is the permanent home of a renowned
and continuously expanding collection
of Impressionist , Post-Impressionist,
early Modern and contemporary art and
also features special exhibitions throughout
the year.
• The museum was established by
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in
1939 as the Museum of Non- Objective
Painting.

60. • The project was involved in complex discussions between the architect and the client in the city,
the art world and public opinion, because of the contrast of its forms within the grid of the city of
New York.
• In 1992 the building was complimented with a rectangular tower, higher than the original spiral.
• This modification to Wright's original design created a strong controversy.

61. CONCEPT
• The building itself became a work of art.
• From the street, the building looks like a white ribbon
rolled into a cylindrical shape, slightly wider at the top than
at the bottom.
• Internally, the galleries form a spiral.
• Thus, the visitor sees the work as you walk up the
illuminated spiral ramp.
• Its design was inspired by a "Ziggurat" Babylonian temple
pyramid, inverted.

62. SPACES
• The Museum Guggenheim exhibits a great difference
to the buildings in the vicinity because of its spiral
shape, marked by the merging of triangles, ovals,
arcs, circles and squares, which correspond to the
concept of organic architecture used by Frank Lloyd
Wright in his designs.
• The tour begins at the entrance and slowly leads
visitors to a path where the artworks are exposed
along a spiral ramp lit by a large skylight at its zenith
divided in the shape of a citrus fruit.

63. • An interior view of the museum on a busy day.
• Guggenheim interior The cylindrical museum building, wider at the top than the bottom.

64. • Guggenheim Museum exterior after the 3-year renovation Its unique ramp gallery extends from
just under the skylight in the ceiling in a long, continuous spiral along the outer edges of the
building until it reaches the ground level.
• The Guggenheim is situated with a view of the famous Central Park, offering a great combination
of views to walkers in the city.

65. • A more detailed observation shows the interaction of geometric shapes subtly positioned,
dominated by triangles, ovals (including the columns), arcs, circles and squares.

66. • The paths around the great central emptiness
promote the reflection upon and the enjoyment
of the art.
• The meaning of the art is communicated via
the trip through this New York Museum.
• The provision of semi-open exhibition halls
gives visitors an overview of the entire building
from any point up the central aisle. Also, it calls
attention to the mosaic on the ground floor.

67. • Focal point up the central aisle. Also, it calls attention to the mosaic on the ground floor.

68. MATERIALS
• The materials used in its construction were basically precast concrete blocks.
• The white paint used on the internal walls makes the works of art stand out.
• The skylight is supported by steel joints.

69. UNITY TEMPLE
For the Unity Temple, Wright
chose the square shape as the
generator of space because it
was centralized, focal and
stable shape, inherently
suggesting wholeness and
unity. Interestingly, the Hindu
sages chose the square plan for
their temples for the same
express reasons. The elevation
had hints of Classical elements;
the tripartite design consisting
of the clear demarcation of the
base, body and roof.

70. • Unity Temple is a Unitarian
Universalist church in Oak Park, Illinois.
• Built between 1905 and 1908.
• It 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 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and even the post-
modernists, such as Frank Gehry.
• In 2019, Unity Temple was added to the UNESCO
World Heritage List.

71. BACKGROUND
• In 1905, a lightning strike started a fire which destroyed the
wood-framed Oak Park Unity Church.
• Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the many architects who vied for
the commission, and was ultimately selected to design a new
structure for the Universalist congregation of Oak Park, Illinois.
• Wright was not only living in Oak Park but also came from a
family of Unitarians, a faith that had many beliefs in common
with Universalism.
• The congregation needed a space of worship, as well as a
community room. There were several immediate problems that
the architect had to work with in order to satisfy the client.
• The budget was $45,000, a modest amount even in the early
20th century.
• Building materials had to be inexpensive and as Wright said,
“concrete is cheap.”
• The building site stood on a busy street. And,the architect was
expected to design not only the structure but
also furniture and stained glass for the building.

72. DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION
• 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.
• In architecture, a loggia is a covered exterior gallery or
corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the
ground level of a building.
• The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a
series of columns or arches. They can be on principal fronts
and/or sides of a building and are not meant for entrance but
as an outdoor sitting room.
• Villa Godi by Palladio. The portico is the focal point in the
center with loggias used at each side of the structure as a
corridor.
• 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.

73. • The plan of Wright's design looks back to the bipartite
design of his own studio built several blocks away in 1898:
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).
• Also for the Temple's architecture, Wright borrowed several
attributes from his previous creation, the Larkin
Administration Building.
• Key features derived were use of stained glass windows as
well as geometric figure. But, unlike the Larkin Building, the
Temple's plan produced a perfect square, as opposed to the
double-square rectangle of the Larkin.
To reduce noise from the street, Wright eliminated street level windows in the temple. Instead, natural light
comes from stained glass windows in the roof and clerestories along the upper walls.
Because the members of the parish would not be able to look outside, Unity Temple's stained glass was designed
with green, yellow, and brown tones in order to evoke the colors of nature.
The main floor of the temple rises a few steps above the main level of the building (which has seating space), and
the room also has two balconies for the seating of the congregation.

74. The church of St Nicholas, Stralsund in Germany – the
clerestory is the level between the two green roofs,
reinforced here by flying buttresses
• 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.
• In recounting his experiences with Unity Temple, he stated that this design was the first time he ever
realized that the real heart of a building is its space, not its walls. Indeed, architectural historians have
commented on Wright's genius in creating and manipulating space in his designs.
• In his book The Master Builders, Peter Blake entitled the section on Wright "The Mastery of Space.“
• In addition to being very accomplished with making the most out of the space he had, Wright also found
the concept of "Unity" was very prominent mainly because of how he managed to fuse together space,
experience and the material world.
• This was key to Unity Temple which has both a common meeting area and the congregation of church-
goers.
• The building was completed in 1908 and officially dedicated on September 26, 1909.

75. Exterior of the Unity Temple
Interior of Unity Temple
The pulpit of the Notre-Dame de Revel in Revel, Haute-
Garonne, France

76. SIGNIFICANCE
• The building has been a United States National Historic
Landmark since 1971 and was chosen in a 1991 poll in
the magazine, Architectural Record as one of the 100 most
significant buildings in the United States of the previous
100 years.
• Additionally, Unity Temple was chosen by the American
Institute of Architects as one of 17 buildings by Frank Lloyd
Wright that should be retained as his architectural
contribution to American culture.
• In 2008, the U.S. National Park Service submitted Unity
Temple, along with nine other Frank Lloyd Wright
properties, to a tentative list for World Heritage Status. The
10 sites have been submitted as one, total, site. ENTRY FOYER-UNITY TEMPLE

77. Price Tower, Bartlesville Oklahoma

78. INTRODUCTION
• The Price Tower is a nineteen-story, 221-foot-
high tower at 510 South Dewey Avenue
in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
• It was built in 1956.
• It is the only realized skyscraper by Wright,
and is one of only two vertically oriented
Wright structures extant (the other is the S.C.
Johnson Wax Research
Tower in Racine, Wisconsin).
• The Price Tower was commissioned by Harold
C. Price of the H. C. Price Company, a local oil
pipeline and chemical firm.
• It opened to the public in February 1956.

79. KEY FEATURES
• Wright nicknamed the Price Tower, which was built on
the Oklahoma prairie, "the tree that escaped the
crowded forest," referring not only to the building's
construction, but also to the origins of its design.
• The Price Tower is supported by a central "trunk" of
four elevator shafts which are anchored in place by a
deep central foundation, as a tree is by its taproot.
• The nineteen floors of the building are cantilevered
from this central core, like the branches of a tree.
• The outer walls hang from the floors and are clad in
patinated copper "leaves."
• The building is asymmetrical, and like a tree, "looks
different from every angle.“
• Wright had championed these design ideas, which
other architects had put to use before the construction
of the Price Tower, as early as the 1920s in his design
for an apartment complex of four cantilevered towers
for St. Marks-in-the-Bowerie in downtown New York
City.

80. • Wright had championed these design ideas, which
other architects had put to use before the construction
of the Price Tower, as early as the 1920s in his design
for an apartment complex of four cantilevered towers
for St. Marks-in-the-Bowerie in downtown New York
City.
• Following the effects of the Great Depression, the
project was shelved and adapted by Wright for the
Price Company in 1952. Wright, therefore, plucked his
"tree" out of the "crowded forest"
of Manhattan skyscrapers and placed it on the
Oklahoma prairie where it continues to stand
uncrowded by neighboring tall buildings.
• The floorplan of the Price Tower centers upon an inlaid
cast bronze plaque, bearing the logo of the Price
Company and marking the origin of a parallelogram
grid upon which all exterior walls, interior partitions
and doors, and built-in furniture are placed.
• The resulting design is a quadrant plan—one quadrant
dedicated for double-height apartments, and three for
offices.

81. DESIGN
• The materials for the Price Tower are equally
innovative for a mid-twentieth-century skyscraper:
cast concrete walls, pigmented concrete floors,
aluminum-trimmed windows and doors, and
patinated embossed and distressed copper panels.
• The general geometric element is the equilateral
triangle, and all lighting fixtures and ventilation
grilles are based upon that form while the angled
walls and built-in furniture are based on fractions or
multiples of the triangular module.
• Inside the Price Tower there are decoration
paintings on the walls which consist of solid gold.
People with claustrophobia may find it
uncomfortable, due to the very tight spaces towards
the upper floors and the very small elevators.

82. INTERIORS:

84. • Price Tower was to be a multi-use building with business offices, shops,
and apartments.
• The H. C. Price Company was the primary tenant, and the remaining
office floors and double-height apartments intended as income-raising
ventures. Tenants included lawyers, accountants, physicians, dentists,
insurance agents, and the architect Bruce Goff, who kept an office in
the tower as well as rented one of the apartments. A women's high-end
dress shop, beauty salon, and the regional offices of the Public Service
Company of Oklahoma occupied a two-story wing of the tower, with a
drive-through passageway separating the high and low structures. The
Price Company occupied the upper floors, and included a commissary
on the sixteenth floor as well as a penthouse office suite for Harold
Price, Sr., and later his son, Harold, Jr.
• The H.C. Price Company sold Price Tower to Phillips Petroleum in 1981
following a move to Dallas, where their company is presently located.
HISTORY

85. • Phillips Petroleum's lawyers deemed the exterior exit staircase
a safety risk, and only used the building for storage.[5] They
retained ownership until 2000 when the building was donated
to Price Tower Arts Center, and it has returned to its multi-use
origins. Price Tower Arts Center, a museum of art, architecture,
and design; Inn at Price Tower; Copper Restaurant + Bar, and
the Wright Place museum store are the current major tenants
with smaller firms leasing space. Inn at Price Tower is a member
of Historic Hotels of America, the official program of
the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
• In 2002 Pritzker Prize winning architect, Zaha Hadid, was
commissioned to design a museum expansion for Price Tower
Arts Center—a project that was included in the 2006
retrospective exhibition of Hadid's work at the Guggenheim
Museum, New York City.
• On March 29, 2007, the Price Tower was designated a National
Historic Landmark by the United States Department of the
Interior, then one of only twenty-two such properties in the
state of Oklahoma.
• In 2008, the U.S. National Park Service submitted the Price
Tower, along with nine other Frank Lloyd Wright properties, to a
tentative list for World Heritage Status.

86. INTERIOR IMAGES

88. Wright’s early oak furnishings, characterized by straight lines and rectilinear forms, are designed with the
traditional Arts and Crafts preference for solidity and simplicity. In the early 1890s, as Wright worked to define
his vision for a new American architecture, he began designing furniture for his own home in Oak Park.
Built-in window seats and two sturdy oak armchairs, modelled on designs by English artist-designer William
Morris, were executed for the living room between 1890-95. The dining table and eight high back chairs
created for the 1895 dining room of the home are revolutionary for the time.
WRIGHT’S FURNITURE

89. AWARDS
AIA Gold Medal (1949)
Twenty-five year award
Royal Gold Medal (1941)
Frank Lloyd Wright designed 1141 homes and buildings, of those 532 were completed by his death.
Meaning in architecture :
Falling water : Represent water, as it is placed above the falling water .
Robbie house : Represent Land . Constructed by wood, brick .
Guggenheim museum : Represent social and culture . Since it is a museum , it has art works that represent
culture .
Unity temple : Represent Religion . Since it is a church .
He received Gold Medal awards from The Royal Institute of
British Architects (RIBA) in 1941
He received honorary degrees from several universities

90. Wright never made his tower in the sky. Nor did he see the Guggenheim completed.
He died three months before it opened, shortly before his 92nd birthday.
Even then, he didn’t rest: After Olgivanna’s death, his body was removed from its resting place in
Wisconsin and cremated, his ashes and hers scattered together in Arizona, where the couple had
erected Taliesin West. It was their idea of heaven.
“I believe in God,” Wright liked to say, “only I spell it Nature.”

91. THANK YOU !