Fl wright research paper

B Y
K I R T H I G A . E
2 0 1 4 0 2 9
H I S T O R Y O F A R C H I T E C T U R E
R A J A L A K S H M I S C H O O L O F
A R C H I T E C T U R E
(1867-1959)
RESEARCH
PAPER ON
FRANK
LLOYD
WRIGHT

INDEX:
INTRODUCTION
OAK PARK(1889)
WRIGHT PRESPECTIVE DURING OAK PARK YEARS
CHICAGO AND THE PRAIRIE STYLE
LARKIN BUILDING ( 1902 TO 1906 )
UNITY TEMPLE (1905- 1908)
TALIESIN (1911-1925)
IMPERIAL HOTEL (1912-1923)
FALLING WATER (1934-1937)
USONIAN HOUSE (1939)
S C JOHNSON (1936-1939)
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM (1943-1959)

INTRODUCTION:
ARCHITECT: FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
BORN IN : Spring Green,Wisconsin in 1867.
STARTED CAREER IN :
Chicago at the age of 19 in the firm of J.Lyman Sisbee for one year.
later joined in Louis Sullivan Firm .
Sullivan hired him and mentored to adhere to his famous motto “ FORM FOLLOW
FUNCTION” .
DURING HIS SEVENTY –YEARS OF CAREER:
He accomplished and build more than 400 projects.
He created over 1100 designs which includes commercial buildings, apartment towers,museums,
recreational complexes, religious houses, residences, furnitures, lightning fixtures, textiles and
art glass.
Many different period and style during his career.
Finally at the end he came to an theoretical statement “UNITY OF FORM AND FUNCTION”.
He showed his countrymen new ways to build their homes and see the world around them.

OAK PARK:
Wright’s first independently-built project was his own house, which he began in 1889 while he
was working for his mentor, Louis Sullivan. The house was completed within a year, but Wright
continued to expand and rework the house over the next eight years. At first the changes were
necessitated by Wright’s growing family, but by 1893 he had opened his own office and needed
space in which to work.
Wright combined his home and studio one of his many departures from contemporary
architectural practice, which usually took place in a separate, professional office.
Later in life, he often insisted that his clients visit him at Taliesin (East) because he felt his own
home would give them the best idea of what he would build for them.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio is open to the public.
EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR :
The three phases of construction show the evolution of Wright’s sensibilities in this early period.
The first phase of the house included the bold gable roof and wood shingles of the Queen Anne
(or Shingle) style(Fig :1).
Fig :1 Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio
951 chicago avenue, oak park ,IL
In contrast the office spaces, begun six years later, have flat or low roofs and long clerestory
windows.
The drafting room and library also employ octagonal geometry (Fig :2 ), which was traditionally
used for church baptistries and shrines, and was associated with spiritual experiences. This
relation between architecture and spiritual transformation would be an enduring one in Wright’s
career.

Fig :2 plan of Frank Lloyd Wright house
The house outside is of no particular character, being built at different times, but it has attained a
very comfortable and livable appearance. It is so practically buried in trees and foliage that all its
defects are softened and concealed, and the whole place has the effect of a well-balanced picture.
In fact, the arrangement of the windows is purposely such as to cause the rooms to depend
largely on the trees outside.
Wright threw away the porch and conceals his entrance in some obscure way, since he converted
his house into office . To get a privacy, he made hidden entrances.
The another thing in the building is there is no attic space rather than that domer roof .instead of
lean ,brick chimneys bristling up everywhere ,wright created a big fire place (one chimney) at
the central hall (Fig :3) . this will act as a gathering space for the entire family to sit and have
some fun . so the fire place become an important part of the building itself in the house.
Fig :3 section through drafting room looking towards fire place showing balcony hung from roof with chain
WRIGHT PRESPECTIVE DURING OAK PARK YEARS:
Wright’s houses were horizontal, rather than vertical, to fit into the flat Midwestern landscape
and featured sheltering overhangs, low terraces, and private gardens. They would be set back
from the street to insure greater privacy.

In Wright’s houses, rooms were no longer to be “boxes beside boxes.” Instead, “the whole lower
floor was to be one room” its many different uses suggested by screens rather than closed off
with walls. Everything was to be a unified whole according to his concept.
CHICAGO AND THE PRAIRIE STYLE:
In 1894 wright set up his own studio in chicago.thesplit with sullivan ,however,presented the
opportunity that wright needed to go out on his own. He opened an office and began his quest to
design homes that he beleived would truely belong on the American Prairie.
The WILLIAM H.WINSLOW HOUSE was wright’s first independent house which was fully
designed by him .
The house reflected the long, low horizontal prairie on which they sat with low- pitched roofs, no
attic or basements, and generally long rows of casement windows that further emphasized the
horizontal theme.
Commercial buildings –unified space with light from above ( shylight) surrounded by galleries.
 Some of the wright’s most important residential works are
The DARWIN D. MARTIN HOUSE in Buffalo, New York ( 1903)
The AVERY COONLEY HOUSE in riverside, illinos ( 1907)
The FREDERICK C. ROBIE HOUSE in chicago ( 1908)
 Important public commissions included:
The LARKIN COMPANY ADMINISTRATION BUILDING in buffalo ( 1903, demolished
1950)
The UNITY TEMPLE in oak park ( 1905).
LARKIN BUILDING ( 1902 TO 1906 ) :
Like the Prairie houses, the larkin building reveals Wright’s interest in fully designed work of
art . The architect designed desks, chairs, lights and windows specifically for the building.
The Larkin Building also represents a technological advance. It is one of the first air-conditioned
buildings in America. Cooled and filtered air was provided to protect the building’s important
documents from the coal soot emitted by nearby rail lines and factories.
The larkin building was built for administrative staff of thee larkin Soap Manufacturing
Company, actually for their mail order business and so it was really a secretarial type space and
wright tries to create a modern building that make the people working over there to feel like a

family gathering space .in order to make the people to feel he opened up the interior space like
an atrium space. ( fire place did for the family home ).he combines his idea and created a space
which is a kind of traditional symbol of home acoording to his concept(Fig :4). The central open
space was 76’ (23m) high to capture the sunlight and transfer it to all over the building .
Fig :4 interior of Larkin Building (1902 to 1906)
The invention oh electric elevator in 1889, as well as the refinements of materials such as iron
and steel and concrete ,the lighting, ventilation and construction technique and equipment
changed the office building.
The impact of neo classicism in the plan(Fig :5) and the impact of modern moment in the elevation
(Fig :6) can be seen in this building .
Fig :5 plan ofLarkin Building Fig: 6 Larkin Building during 1906
EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR :
The 200’ (61 m) by 134’ (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. Magnesite was also used for sculptural decoration on the piers
surrounding the light court (Fig: 6) and for panels and beams around the executive offices at the

south end of the main floor. Wright designed much of the furniture, the chairs were made out of
steel and hung from the tables to make cleaning the floors easy. The interior walls were made of
semi-vitreous, hard, cream colored brick.
Fig: 6 Larkin Building scluptural decoration in vertical piers.
UNITY TEMPLE (1905- 1908):
In 1905 while wright was building the Larkin Building, he received the commission to rebuild
Oak Park’s Unitarian church, which was destroyed that year by fire during a storm.Unity Temple
represents an extension of the theme which Wright began at the Larkin Building. A top-lit
interior space surrounded by galleries or balconies and one that he would use repeatedly
throughout his career.
Unity Temple consists of two elements: the larger church building (which Wright titled Unity
Temple) is joined to a parish house and school by a one-story entry vestibule. In 1905 Lake
Street was traveled by street cars and in order to shield the interior from the noise the building
does not open directly onto it. As in the Prairie house, the entryway is placed off to the side.
Over the entrance appear the words “FOR THE WORSHIP OF GOD AND THE SERVICE OF
MEN,” replacing the pictoral narrative traditionally seen in religious paintings, sculptures and
stained glass.
Upon entry, one gradually enters the sanctuary from below, emerging from a dark gallery into a
brilliantly lit space surrounded by balconies. The journey becomes a physical spiritual one from
darkness to enlightenment. And this space is knows an auditorium and it was surmounted by
cloisters which is four feet below the ground level.so when people come into the church they
have been risen up to a plain with a skylight above which brings the enlightment on them.
Rather than other churches wright was the person to think the church in another prespective
view. He placed the entrance in the centre of the building which is recessed inside. Sunday
school hall and mezzanine and upper level terrace on one side and choir ,pulpit, main balcony
seats cloisters and auditorium on another side(Fig: 7).
Wright’s desire to build a house of worship expressing the powerful simplicity of ancient
religion. Unity temple was completed and in 1906 is one of the earliest public buildings
constructed of concrete.

Fig: 7 plan of unity temple
The entire structure is solid and has a articulated majestic columns to suppost the structure (Fig: 8)
wright uses different sizes of cubes and cuboids to form the entire structure of the building.
Wright may felt that worship is a place where people likes to calm and silent. In order to move
with the function of the people he made the building to be solid structures with less decorative
articulation. The articulation of the building was done with geometric shapes and he designed
furniture in order to create a sense with the building . Wright himself described the Unity Temple
as his "contribution to modern architecture."
Fig: 8 exterior of the building –unity temple
TALIESIN (1911-1925):
After a years lived in Europe, Wright returned to his native Wisconsin in 1911. Near the town of
Spring Green, on land owned by his mother’s family, he built Taliesin, a home and studio.
Taliesin’s floor plan was asymmetry than that of the earlier Prairie houses.but wright used the
same concept of Low-pitched roofs with broad eaves, overhung stone walls and an outdoor
courts.
New to this project was the use of native limestone in rough masonry walls making it to feel like
the house had grown from the hill on which it sat, this shows that wright has done an organic
work of architecture(Fig: 9).

The outside walls and chimneys were built out of rough limestone quarried a few miles away in
his native place. Inner walls were covered with plaster made from sand from the banks of the
Wisconsin River. The roof's were meant to be the color of tree trunks at dusk to show organic
architecture (Fig: 10).
Fig: 9 Section ofTaliesin Fig: 10 materials used in the building contrast with the nature
Frank Lloyd Wright wanted to make his own house an epitome of everything he stood for
emotionally, spiritually, technically.since he had a family property in Spring Green, Wisconsin
on the hill he built this great, long, beautiful ground house which he called Taliesin.
Since it was his native place ,wright decided to use the native materials that locally available
where he started to practise the organic architecture.and he started to argue that “FORM AND
FUNCTION ARE ONE” rather then the philosophy gre from the idea of wright’s mentor Louis
Sullivan who beleived that “ FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION”.
F.L.Wright started to beleive that every building should grow naturally from its environment and
he started to give more importance to the organic style that the architectural style.
IMPERIAL HOTEL (1912-1923) :
Wright had long been was an collector of Japanese prints, so when
the opportunity came to build a project in Tokyo, the Imperial Hotel he give importance for the
project. Commissioned in 1916, the hotel was to represent the emergence of Japan as a modern
nation and symbolize Japan’s relation to the West. To that end, Wright designed the building as a
hybrid of Japanese and Western architecture.
Work began on the hotel in 1916, and Wright spent much of the next six years in Japan. While in
Japan, he examined traditional Japanese architecture, including pagodas, whose structural
principles would influence later projects like the laboratory tower for S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
Wright designed this building in “ MAYA REVIVAL STYLE” of architecture.the roof had a
pyramid like structure and has a japanese decorations. Materials used in the building were
concrete, carved oya stone.
The building become famous since it stood up without destroyed by earthquake.

GREAT TOKYO EARTHQUAKE ( 1923):
Tokyo faces the earthquake of about 7.9. Many buildings got destroyed . this stands withstand
the earthquake with minimal damage . accrding to tokyo survey, this building comes under
second less damage building ( light damage) category.
The main failing in the building was foundation. Wright made the building to float on the
alluvial soil making, it shallow with broad footing. He made it to allow the building to float
along with the earthquake to avoid the damage in the building. But this techinque mde the
building to sink into the mud , hence it has to be demolished after some decades.
Design features to withstand earthquake in this building:
 Pool provided a source of water for fire fighting during earthquakefire.
 Cantilevel floor and balconies gives support.
 Seismic seperatin joints located about every 20 m .
 Tappered walls.
Features wright added in this building:
wright designed a unique furnitures for the hotel (Fig: 11). He created a connecting bridge between
the buildings to show the connectivity (Fig: 12) . No space is seperated , all are interconnected with
one another. To show its massiveness, he created a dancing hall (Fig: 13) with a peacock traditional
design of japanese on the roof walls and the hotel has a unique theatre (Fig: 14) with decorated
walls.
Fig: 11 chair designed by Wright for the hotel Fig : 12 connecting bridge that connecte the building
Fig: 13 peacock hall with massive decoration Fig: 14 theatre in imperial hotel

FALLING WATER (1934-1937) :
One of the world’s most famous houses is Falling water. Wright designed the house for
Pittsburgh department store owner Edgar J. Kaufmann, whose son, Edgar Jr., was a Taliesin
fellow.
Falling water floor and roofs are dramatically cantilevered over the waterfall. Executed in
reinforced concrete, the house’s floating planes echo the stream’s flow (Fig: 15). The composition
is visually by vertical elements such as stairs and chimneys faced in rough stone and from a
nearby quarry.every detail shows Wright’s vision of exploded box.
Wright’s design makes the interior space of the house continuous with the outdoors, fusing the
house with its site. He proposed originally to cover the building in gold leaf which would mimic
the color of dying plants and thereby connect the house to the change of seasons and the passage
of time. but eventually the concrete surfaces were painted a beige color.
Fig: 15. Falling water vision with the waterfall
Wright went to visit the site with Eddy Kaufmann in December 1934. And he got back to
Taliesin and he wrote a letter to Kaufmann saying, “I’M DESIGNING A BUILDING TO THE
MUSIC OF THE STREAM.” And the story that the building is telling is about how sound can in
effect become part of the visual experience of architecture.
He uses the native material and make the building organic in nature. He designed the furniture
which moves along with the verticality of the building .The colour of the interior also moves
with the nature colour which is organic (Fig: 16) . wide open spaces to have a wonderful view of
the nature .
Fig: 16 interior of the building

USONIAN HOUSE (1939):
Wright had long been interested in designing affordable homes on a massive scale for the
American middle class. In 1901 he published designs for elegant, inexpensive suburban homes in
several issues of the Ladies’ Home Journal. Wright was also interested in urban planning. He
began thinking seriously about that issue in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Wright discussed his
views in publications, lectures and notably the Disappearing City. He gave visual form to his
ideas for a model environment in Broadacre City. The notion of the Usonian houses was hatched
about the same time.
Wright called his modest house “Usonian,” after the United States. It was a single story (Fig: 17)
built on a monolithic concrete slab and joined to a carport and not a garage. Wright believed that
it could be replicated all across the country.
To shelter Usonia’s citizens, Wright designed a series of appropriate housing schemes—the
Usonian houses.. Its single-story plan is divided into two wings—the more public living room on
one side and the more private bedrooms on the other—which meet at a “service core“
comprising kitchen, bath and hearth. As in the Prairie Houses, the hearth is the metaphorical
center of family life. The two wings of the house extend to embrace the generous garden.
Fig: 17. Usonian house .
S C JOHNSON (1936-1939) :
In 1936, a new client approached Wright. He was Herbert Johnson, president of the progressive
Johnson Wax Company of Racine, Wisconsin, and he was looking for someone to build him a
new administration building.
Wright’s social vision of the sanctity of labor and his penchant for technological vision of
material innovation intersected, again, in the building complex he designed for S.C. Johnson &
Son, Inc., beginning in 1936. The first phase of the project was the Administration Building,
completed in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1939.
Eleven years later Wright built the company’s Research Laboratory Tower. Both projects
illustrate Wright’s integration of the technological and experiential dimensions of architecture.
The Administration Building is entered through a sequence of low, dim spaces from which one
emerges into a grandly-scaled room lit from above.

Sunlight filters into the space through bundled planes of glass pyrex tubes, which allude to the
company’s investment in chemical research. Where conventional buildings would have had a
heavy cornice, Wright bridged the gap between wall and roof with a continuous band of glass.
As in the Larkin Building, he wanted to create an exhilarating environment for the workers. Wright and
his apprentices worked around the clock for ten days to finish the drawings. The effect of the filtered
daylight is one of wondrous luminosity, which transforms the ordinary workspace into a kind of
sanctuary.
Wright would bring two innovations to the Johnson Wax building. Special Pyrex glass tubing had to be
manufactured for the skylights. And hollow reinforced columns of astonishing slenderness were to bear
the weight of the great ceiling (Fig: 18)
The lustrous ceiling is supported on concrete columns whose tops swell into broad caps resembling lily
pads, prompting Wright to compare the space to a forest glade. Structural engineers were skeptical of the
design’s integrity, however,and in a now-legendary episode Wright loaded a test column with sand bags
to demonstrate its ability to support the roof (Fig: 19).
The natural metaphor is expanded in the Research Laboratory Tower. Here,
concrete floors recalling tree branches are cantilevered from a central shaft or
trunk which encloses the elevator and stairs, as well as mechanical services.
Outside, the Tower’s verticality acts as a dynamic foil to the Administration
Building’s horizontal expansiveness (Fig: 20).
Fig: 18. Research Laboratory Tower Fig:19 lustrous ceiling Fig: 20 verticality and horizontalexpansive of
the building S C Johnson
The Johnson Wax Building in the 1930s is the natural compliment to
the Larkin Building of the early century.
One can go in at the side into a low, dark place and come up into a high,
transcendent space. That’s the Wrightian journey that you take in all his
great buildings.

The main feature of construction was the simple repetition of slender hollow monolithic
dendriform shafts or stems—the stems standing tip-toe in small brass shoes bedded at the floor
level.
The great structure throughout is light and plastic—an open glass-filled rift is up there where the
cornice might have been. Reinforcing used was mostly cold-drawn steel mesh—welded.
The entire steel-reinforced structure stands there earthquake-proof, fireproof, soundproof, and
vermin-proof
Fig: 21 interior view of the building with massive high ceiling and well ventilated space with natural lightning .
columns resembles art deco.
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM (1943-1959) :
The Guggenheim (Fig: 22) design mimics an upside-down ziggurat (Fig: 24) consisting of a large,
top-lit interior court ringed by a continuous spiral ramp. The dense mass of the ramp and exterior
walls separates the interior world of the museum from the city’s streets, creating a contemplative
environment for viewing art.
Visitors take an elevator to the top of the museum and slowly descend its spiral gallery (Fig: 23).
Wright was roundly criticized for the awkward exhibition spaces of the Guggenheim, whose
curved walls and sloped floor defy conventional display techniques. The structure takes the
cantilevered concrete floor of Wright’s earlier projects (for example, Fallingwater and the S.C.
Johnson & Son, Inc. Research Laboratory Tower) and twists it around a central court.
Indirect light enters the building through narrow windows which, on the exterior, separate the
ramp’s levels. Negotiations with building department officials, shortages of materials and
changes in the museum’s administration all delayed the beginning of construction until 1956. It
was completed in 1959, six months after Wright’s death.

For the first time in the history of architecture a true logarithmic spiral has been worked out as a
complete plastic building: a building in which there is but one continuous floor surface: not on a
separate floor slab above another floor slab, but one single, grand, slow wide ramp, widening as
it rises for about seven stories—a purely plastic development of organic structure. If pulled from
the ground and tossed away the whole building would bounce intact....
For the first time, purely imaginative paintings, regardless of the representation of any natural
object, will have appropriate, congenial environment suited to their character and purpose as
harmonious works of art for the eye as music is for the ear.
Since the building follow the american modernism it has gone away from the original beauty of
the place. It stands out uniquely in the entire street (Fig: 25).
Fig: 22 view ofGuggenheim Museum Fig: 23 sectional view of interior
Fig: 24 ziggurat form as a concept Fig :25 view ofthe museum fromstreet
References:
 http://www.pbs.org/flw/buildings/
 http://wrightonthepark.org/about-us/about-frank-lloyd-wright/#
 http://www.oprf.com/flw/bio/
 http://www.biography.com/people/frank-lloyd-wright-9537511#early-life
 http://www.architechgallery.com/arch_images/architech_images/flw/flw_wasmuth.jpg

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