Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect born in 1867 who is considered one of the greatest architects of all time. He developed an organic style of architecture that aimed to harmonize structures with humanity and nature. Some of his most important works included Prairie style homes with low horizontal forms blending into the landscape, and public buildings like the Larkin Administration Building which pioneered innovations like air conditioning and suspended toilets. His Unity Temple, built in 1906, is considered one of his masterworks and one of the first modern buildings for its consolidation of aesthetic intent and structure through reinforced concrete. Wright designed over 1,000 structures in his career which demonstrated his mastery of form and integration of buildings with their surroundings.

1. FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

2. •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

3. Basic Principles of Wright
Designs
Organic Colors
Simple Geometric Shapes
Integration of Building with Natura
Surroundings
Strong Horizontal Lines
Hidden Entries

4. 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."

5. Earliest Works

6. 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.

7. 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.

10. Thomas Gale House

11. Goodrich House

12. Foster House

13. Nathan Moore house (1895)

14. Smith Bank

15. Hartley House

16. FLW
PRINCIPLES
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
Horizontal line is the line of domesticity

17. Important Works

18. Ward Willits House, Highland Park, IL, 1902

19. Willits house is considered the first of
the great Prairie houses. Built in the
Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois

20. the house presents a symmetrical
facade to the street.

21. The plan is a cruciform with four
wings that extend out from a central
hearth.

22. In addition to artglass windows and
wooden screens
that divide rooms,
Wright also
designed most of
the furniture in the
house.

23. The Robbie House, Chicago, IL, 1908-9

24. •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 creamcolored 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.

26. •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.

29. Plan,
Main Floor
Plan,
Lower Level

30. Interiors

33. The Larkin Company Administration Building,
Buffalo, NY 1904-05

34. •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, builtin 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.

35. Exterior details of the 200-footlong (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.

36. 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

39. Unitarian Universalist Church (Unity Temple),
Oak Park, IL, 1906

40. 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 .

41. 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.

43. •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

44. 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 .

46. Bibliography
•“Wright Sized Home” –
Diane Maddex
• Wikipedia
• WWW.GreatBuildings.com