Frank Lloyd Wright Essays (3030 words) - Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright The way you live is being directly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright's innovations in residential architecture. Mr. Wright's ?organic architecture? was a radical departure form the traditional architecture of his day, which was dominated by European styles that dated back hundreds of years or even millennia. He contributed the Prairie and Usonian houses to the familiar of American residential design, and elements of his designs can be found in a large proportion of homes today. While most of his designs were single-family, his collections include houses of worship, skyscrapers, resorts, museums, government offices, gas stations, bridges, and other masterpieces showing the diversity of Frank Lloyd Wright's talent. Not only did Wright possess genius skills in the spatial cognition, his approach to architecture through geometric manipulation demonstrates one aspect of his creativeness. Frank Lloyd Wright's views on architectural space, ornamentation, and relationship to site, and concerning the place of architecture in art, life, and philosophy have inspired generations of architects and artists all over the world. Frank Lloyd Wright's career was notable in several areas. As a practicing architect, he designed several hundred buildings, of which around 500 were built. Within his roles of architectural theoretician and academic, he wrote several books on architecture, and founded and ran a successful school in the field, training many architects. Mr. Wright's design went beyond the building to the finest details of the interior design spaces, including furniture, art glass, and other aspects of interior designs. Frank Lloyd Wright's views on architectural space, ornamentation, and relationship to building sites, and concerning the place of architecture in art, life and philosophy have inspired generations of architects and artists all over the world. Frank Lloyd Wright was an innovator who drastically influenced architecture of the twentieth century around the world. Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect with a democratic vision. By integrating the city into the countryside, Wright was envisioning a decentralized city that stressed agrarian, or rural pastoral, living and familial connectivity. Many of Wright's ideals and visions are rooted in his life experiences. Specifically, his childhood experiences in the countryside made Wright highly critical of the city, which ignited his vision of the city rooted in the Jeffersonian values. He believed the role of an architect to be that of a builder, not only of buildings but of the social structure, because he felt that if society were given conditions in which building had intelligence and raison d'etre the whole structure of human society itself would have the substance of strength and beauty. It was stated in Brooks book Writings on Wright that Wright was ?Interested in politics and affairs of the state, he believed that architecture as the plan-in-structure of all things was the all-inclusive basis f or every civilization and culture. He repeatedly related architecture to democracy, considering democracy the highest form of aristocracy man has ever known, a society based on the sovereignty of the individual? (24-5). Wright's early work reflects his democratic ideals, especially Oak Park, as an importance was placed on family. His ideas about democracy grew into the vision of Broadacre City, which emphasized the important influence that technology would have on his envisioned democracy. It was through this vision that Wright sought to build for citizens of the United States. His vision of the city was placed in the countryside, where people could live free from centralization. Here nature and city would blend into one entity. Within this entity, the structural forms will be built to merge into and become one with the natural landscape. Frank Lloyd Wright's childhood experiences would later have a significant impact on his architectural and city designs. After spending a part of his childhood moving from place to place, the Wright family settled at his maternal family's farm in Wisconsin. Although the family customs and life had an effect on Wright's democratic philosophy, the greatest impact on his work came from the Froebel blocks his mother had purchased for this future architect. Before her son was born, his mother had decided that her son was going to be a great architect. Using Froebel geometric blocks to entertain and educate her son, she appears to have struck on a genius her son possessed. His early childhood