There is plentiful material floating around on the iconic Frank Lloyd Wright, which has only increased in recent years with a peak in popularity of Mid-century Modern design and architecture. We’re here to provide you with a comprehensive guide to all his marvellous home designs, digging into the history, purpose, and reception, to give you an in depth understanding of them, along with a complete design breakdown.
Frank Lloyd Wright has achieved a status unlike many others in creative fields, his name now synonymous with the field of architecture for many, and known far and wide across circles otherwise uninvolved in that world. By the end of his career, Wright had achieved a level of celebrity usually reserved for actors and rock stars. His was a household name, and he was recognizable by his distinctive hat, cape, and cane. He weighed in publicly on society, politics and religion, and he unabashedly claimed to be the greatest architect in the world. “You see,” he said in an interview, “early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and see no occasion to change now.”
While he is revered to this day, many people don’t know about his mixed reception as a person during his lifetime. Frank Lloyd Wright went through a number of scandals in his lifetime. He was the subject of lawsuits and property seizures, and constantly in debt or getting divorced. He was often criticized for his lack of professional conduct and general rudeness. He was largely characterized as arrogant and self-obsessed. This interesting other side of the history has even been written up in a book called “Plagued by Fire” as well as “Loving Frank”.
Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wis., on June 8, 1867, the son of a preacher and a musician. 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, Wis., in 1878. His parents divorced in 1885, putting him in a difficult financial situation, meaning he had to help support the family: 18-year-old Frank Lloyd Wright worked for the dean of the University of Wisconsin’s department of engineering while also studying at the university. Knowing he wanted to become an architect, he left Madison for Chicago, where he found work with two different firms before being hired by the prestigious partnership of Adler and Sullivan, working directly under Louis Sullivan for six years.
While Frank Lloyd Wright’s work ranges from homes to museums to convention centres, today we’re focusing on his residential buildings, which are perhaps some of his most interesting in terms of vision and the resulting use. His own family’s home in Chicago, Oak Park, was also designed by him. Before Wright became an internationally-recognized name in the world of design, the architect spent many years in Oak Park, Illinois, designing homes for Chicago-area residents. Wright got his start working for the famed Sullivan & Adler firm from 1888 to 1893, and it was under the tutelage of Louis Sullivan specifically that Wright began to explore the elements that would later define the Prairie School movement. For the rest of the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century, Wright continued to live and work in Oak Park and designed dozens of structures here. There are over one thousand one hundred homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, so we won’t detail every one o of theme here. We will, however, go over every location and look at a few main examples in each. So, let’s start with Chicago, where it all began for him.
Chicago (Illinois):
Chicago is an extremely interesting locus of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work: in the city he develops his style from more traditional Queen Anne, Victorian, and even Arts and Crafts aesthetics towards the prairie style he became known for, and the Mid-century Modern movement he was so central to.
1. William G. Fricke House
Built between 1901 and 1902, the Fricke House is notable for being one of Wright’s early “true” Prairie style homes. The home, which features a tall, lean, and strikingly modern appearance, was designed by Wright during a short-lived partnership with the architect Webster Tomlinson. Commissioned in 1901, the Fricke house was designed during Wright’s brief partnership with the architect Webster Tomlinson. The client, William G. Fricke, was a partner in the school-supply firm of Weber, Costello, Fricke. The house exhibits many key elements of Wright’s mature Prairie style, including its stone water table, horizontal banding, overhanging roof eaves, shallow hipped roof, and stucco exterior. Nevertheless, tiered geometric masses, including another angular prow-like projection adjacent to the front door; and a centrally located three-story tower with long, thin windows and mullions, lend the building a vertical appearance. Wright may have been responding to the compact scale of the lot on which the house was built. Wright abandoned the half-timbered surface treatment found in other contemporary designs in favor of a more reductive scheme that resembles the exposed structural armatures found in traditional Japanese architecture.
2. Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio
Perhaps the most famous Wright-designed home in Oak Park is Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal home and studio on Chicago Avenue. Wright built the home in 1889 with a loan he secured through his employer and legendary Chicago School architect Louis Sullivan. The home was the first over which Wright had complete artistic control, and he would use it as an opportunity to experiment with design concepts that contained the seeds of his architectural philosophy. Wright revised the design of the building multiple times, continually refining ideas that would shape his work for decades to come. The exterior of the house, which he would later refer to as “Seaside Colonial,” reflects his early interest in the Shingle style, then popular on the East Coast and favored by his previous employer, Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Sullivan’s stylistic influence can also be seen in the simplification and abstraction of the building and its plan. Today, the Frank Lloyd Wright Trust manages and maintains the property, and provides daily guided tours through the house: so, if you’re interested in experiencing the interior of one of Wright’s beautiful creations, consider heading to Chicago, where you can do an exterior as well as interior tour.
3. Arthur B. Heurtley House
The Arthur B. Heurtley House is not just one of Wright’s most important works in Oak Park, but it’s generally recognized as one of the greatest designs in Wright’s career. Constructed in 1902, the house is an early example of Wright’s flair for Prairie elements, although the house isn’t exactly modest with its arched entryway and large massing. The Heurtley House is considered an essential evolution of Wright’s Prairie School brand. Resting on a concrete base, the strikingly modern 1902 design has neither a basement nor an attic. The brick exterior’s vertical mortar was dyed to match the brick, while the horizontal mortar was left its natural color in order to emphasize the building’s horizontal design. A nearly uninterrupted ribbon of art glass windows runs beneath the large overhang of the house’s hipped roof. The interior is equally radical, reversing the typical floor plan by placing the living and dining areas on the second floor of the house.
4. George W. Smith House
This home reflects a transitional period for Wright, as it blends both Queen Anne and Prairie elements together. The house was originally commissioned by Charles E. Roberts, but was eventually purchased by and named after George W. Smith, a Marshall Field & Company salesman. The house was designed by Wright in 1895 but completed in 1898. The home was designed as one of a series of low-cost homes for engineer and inventor Charles E. Roberts, however, like several others for Roberts, the Smith house was not built at the time of its design. The Smith House’s most striking feature is the angled break in the roofline. The shingles stand in contrast to the style Frank Lloyd Wright was using by the time the house was built in 1898. By that period he began to employ horizontal boards with batten siding, which emphasized the linear, horizontal effects of his later work.
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New York:
1. The Crimson Beech
This low-lying bungalow is in the Lighthouse Hill neighborhood of the New York City borough of Staten Island. Its original owners, Catherine and William Cass, had it manufactured by Marshall Erdman in kit form in Madison, Wisconsin and shipped to Staten Island where it was erected in 1959. It is the only residence designed by Wright in New York City and one of eleven Marshall Erdman Prefab Houses that were built. according to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission (which gave the Crimson Beech protected status in 1990), “Wright’s last major attempt in his long career to address the problem of well-designed, moderate-cost houses.” Ultimately, the pair would collaborate on 11 of these modest houses. Even though a decorator, Matthew Sergio of Macy’s, was brought on for the project, there was little for him to do. Wright had already put his stamp on the interiors, selecting everything from the ceiling color to the light fixtures, and would brook no argument about changes. By all accounts, the house remained largely unchanged while the Cass family was in residence; the family added a pool in the 1970s, but even that was overseen by Delson, the Wright associate who supervised the original construction of the home.
2. Ben Rebhuhn House
Perhaps the most striking detail of the Ben Rebhuhn house are the massive hexagonal terra cotta tiles that fill the living room. Infamously, the home boasts to not have a single right angle throughout its entire structure. The front of the home features a tall narrow outcrop that is panelled entirely with windows, and covered with an overhanging cutout roof: mimicking the shape of a ship, yet in geometric and harder angles. The wood panelling in the interior ceilings is also something to note, creating a triangulation at the centre of the room, through diagonal panels that converge in the middle.
It’s a small, seven-room house built in 1937-1938 for Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Rebhuhn, a magazine publisher and dress designer, respectively. It was designed with a hole in the ceiling around an already-existing oak tree, but the tree died from excessive heat in the house shortly after, and the hole was filled in. The story goes that Ben Rebhuhn read an article in Coronet magazine about Wright, wrote the architect and asked him to design a house for him, and Wright assented. It was pretty easy in those days.
3. Massaro House
The Massaro house features a large flat roof, now a helicopter landing zone, but also very aesthetically in line with his oeuvre of prairie style homes. The naturally occurring “whale rock”, a key part of Wright’s sketches, cuts into the dramatic entry hall that’s bathed in natural light. The massive rock measures 12 feet in height and 60 feet in length. The 26 triangular skylights—covering a total area of 1,500 square feet—in the home are domed: the only feature jutting out from the otherwise entirely flat rooftop. Despite Massaro’s painstaking efforts to stay true to the original designs, Wright purists have taken issue with the property and lobbied criticisms that range from asserting all posthumous Wright projects are inauthentic to attacking deviations from the architect’s style, such as the use of domed skylights rather than the flat skylights Wright designed. African Mahogany is a main feature of the interiors, while an estimated 150 tons of concrete were poured to make the floors, walls, and some of the walls. Massaro hired Connecticut craftsmen to create the Wrightian furnishings, doors, and windows. It seems he went to massive effort to make the home to Wright’s standards, and it shows!
Wisconsin:
1. Bernard Schwartz House
In all deep brown earth hues, the Bernard Schwartz house looks like its built from lego blocks stacked on top of each other, except it’s executed in rich and beautiful materials with fine handiwork. Kaufmann was already considering the idea of building a version of the Jacob’s House inside his department store in Pittsburgh when Life Magazine, in collaboration with The Architectural Forum, invited Wright to participate in an article called “Eight Houses for Modern Living”. Life commissioned designs of a “Dream House” for four typical American families with incomes ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 a year; a traditional and modern architect assigned to each family.
Frank Lloyd Wright modified the Life Magazine plans changing the materials from stucco and stone to red tidewater cypress board and batten and red brick. He went on to refine the design by pushing up the ceiling in the living area making room for a stunning second floor balcony overlooking the sixty-five foot long, aptly named, recreation room. Wright went on to design tables, chairs, hassocks, beds, fruit bowls, lamps and a couch with built-in bookshelves. Bernard and Fern loved their new house and raised their son Steven there. In 1971 the Schwartz Family sold their beloved home to the second owner who lived in the house for thirty-three years. Today the house is owned by brothers Gary and Michael Ditmer and is being lovingly restored, cared for and being made available to the public. Still Bend offers public tours, educational programs and is also available for overnight rental so that people may experience the magic of living in a Frank Lloyd Wright designed masterpiece, if only for a few days. This is a unique opportunity, as while many homes offer day tours, its rare to be able to rent them out as a vacation home!
2. Usonia 1
Unsure of how to hook such an architect for their modest home, the Jacobses put it to him as a challenge: could he build them a nice house for $5,000 (around $85,000 in today’s dollars)? According to Jacobs, Wright responded that he had waited for decades for someone to ask him just that question. Wright had long wanted to make a more democratic form of housing. He had experimented with inexpensive building methods and visionary urban (and suburban) design ideas. Now he had a chance to put some of these experiments and ideas into practice in a single project. The Jacobs family would own the first house in a movement Wright called Usonia. This was a word he used to refer to an idealized vision of the United States at its democratic zenith. Usonia, Wright imagined, would be a nation of modest but comfortable, well-made and beautiful homes for the working- and middle-classes.Inside, the space is small but floor plan is open. There are no walls between the kitchen, living and dining rooms. Again, this was both a design strategy and cost-saving measure, of which there are many examples within the home. The lights on the ceiling, for instance, are just bare sockets with wires running through a steel channel — this is widely considered the first example of track lighting. Flat roofs, built-in furniture, and heated floors were also unusual if not unique features.
By the end of the 1930s, Wright had designed Usonian homes around the country, in states including Alabama, California, Illinois, Michigan and Virginia. But this was just the beginning of his vision. He wanted to create a central factory that made prefabricated Usonian parts, modifiable for each client, depending on their needs for space and site conditions — a factory for mass-customization.
Arizona:
1. Taliesin West
Wright’s beloved winter home and desert laboratory was established in 1937 and diligently handcrafted over many years into a world unto itself. Deeply connected to the desert from which it was forged, Taliesin West possesses an almost prehistoric grandeur. It was built and maintained almost entirely by Wright and his apprentices, making it among the most personal of the architect’s creations. Having purchased several hundred acres of land in the then rural foothills of northeast Scottsdale, Wright began to conceive of a desert utopia comprised of low-slung buildings designed to reflect the sweeping expansiveness of the desert. Always in favor of local materials, Wright would construct Taliesin West largely of “desert masonry”: local rock set in wooden forms and bound by a mixture of cement and desert sand. Having purchased several hundred acres of land in the then rural foothills of northeast Scottsdale, Wright began to conceive of a desert utopia comprised of low-slung buildings designed to reflect the sweeping expansiveness of the desert. Always in favor of local materials, Wright would construct Taliesin West largely of “desert masonry”: local rock set in wooden forms and bound by a mixture of cement and desert sand.
2. David Wright House
Built for his son David and daughter-in-law Gladys, this Phoenix residence is one of Wright’s most innovative and unusual works of architecture. Titled “How to Live in the Southwest” in the plans by Frank Lloyd Wright, the David & Gladys Wright House is one of three spiral designs realized by Wright. Raised on columns to provide a view of the property’s citrus orchard, the house at the base of Camelback Mountain looked outward towards the surrounding desert and inwards onto a central courtyard with a plunge pool and shaded garden. Custom-designed concrete-block details on the exterior and a fully conceived interior space create a residence that is considered Wright’s last residential masterpiece. David and Gladys Wright lived in the house until their deaths (David in 1997 at the age of 102, and Gladys in 2008 at the age of 104), after which the residence fell into disrepair. Saved from demolition, its current owners are restoring the property. In early 2022, the house was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Learning about historic design movements, you realize how a lot of shifts in the economic conditions of the country change what is possible, and what people want, very often making the then-current aesthetics obsolete. Sometimes, entire homes that were models of their time, like Arts and Crafts for example, are demolished because the owners decide its not to their current taste. It’s great to see homes from significant artists like Wright being preserved, it would be a shame to loose them!
3. Norman Lykes House
Just before his death in 1959, Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Norman Lykes House. Apprentice John Rattenbury was appointed the architect for the home following Wright’s passing, and the project was built in 1967. The Phoenix home is built into the side of the mountain, offering breathtaking views of the city. Wright designed the home specifically for the rocky, uneven site. Sometimes referred to as the “Circular Sun House” and one of only 14 circular residences by Wright, the home is a perfect example of Wright’s curvy, late-career style (also see: the Guggenheim). From above, the desert mountain structure and its crescent-shaped pool look like a set of intricate clock gears (Wright credited the curving ridge lines of the surrounding hills as his inspiration). The curves continue inside, with sloping walls clad in golden-hued Philippine mahogany, circular and semicircular windows, custom built-ins, and original Wright–designed furniture. The kitchen counters are wrapped in stainless steel and the slate floors were sourced from India. Often, circular homes can have a claustrophobic feeling, despite good intensions, but Wright manages to create an open floor plan that makes it feel open and serene.
California:
1.Hollyhock House
Perched on a 36-acre hilltop in East Hollywood, Wright’s first and most widely known West Coast design defies stylistic categorization. Looking at it, it seems like a combination of an ancient mayan temple and a brutalist school. It is low and sprawling, with geometric details, and a generally symmetric facade. The interior contains low ceilings at parts lined with fabric, hammered into wood with brass pegs. Like many of his homes, there are intricate built-in wooden storage units, as well as ceiling panels and columns separating rooms. Beautiful wood fills the interiors, complimenting the lush velvety green textiles and ornate gold leaf murals.
Variously described as Mayan, Aztec, Asian, Egyptian, and as a “California Romanza” by the architect himself, the Hollyhock House was a transitional structure for Wright. The building bridges the Prairie style of the preceding decades and his textile block structures of the 1920s. Wright’s client, Aline Barnsdall, was the heir of one of the largest independent oil producers in the United States. A fiercely independent feminist who was immersed in the world of experimental theater, Aline flouted convention, first approaching Wright at the height of his personal scandals. Though Barnsdall initially envisioned an elaborate complex of residences, theaters, and shops to serve an avant-garde theater community, financial and artistic differences meant that the Hollyhock House and two secondary residences were the only buildings constructed.
2. Millard House
Millard House, also known as La Miniatura, is a textile block house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1923 in Pasadena, California. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976. When you look at it, you will realize why it has the name La Miniatura: it isn’t exactly a tiny home, but in comparison to his other works, it is certainly downscaled. The cube like shape also lends it a compact quality, while maintaining proportions that feel airy and spacious.
Concrete blocks are the main building material, given a soft and organic feeling as they are carved with simple yet detailed repeating patterns. Before the days of Scandinavian in-built storage solutions, ornately carved wooden units inhabit the bedrooms, complimented by soft-furnishings in ethnic prints and pendant lights encased in structures of woven reeds. Wright was commissioned to build Millard House by Alice Millard, a rare-book dealer for whom Wright had built a home in Highland Park, Illinois in 1906. Seeking to integrate the Millard House with the land, Wright designed the home to cling to the lot’s steep ravine, nestled it among the trees, and fabricated the home’s concrete blocks using sand, gravel and minerals found on the property. By using roughly textured, earth-toned blocks, he sought to blend the house with the color and form of the trees and hillside. While the design was in most ways a departure from Wright’s prior work, it was consistent with his lifelong love of natural materials and his belief that buildings should complement their surroundings. He later said that Millard House “belonged to the ground on which it stood.”
3. Storer House
One of four Mayan Revival-style textile block houses that Wright built in Southern California between 1922-1934, the Storer House is notable for its richly textured concrete walls and is the only of its kind to employ multiple patterns on its blocks (four in all). Seeking an inexpensive and simple method of construction that would enable ordinary people to build their own homes, Wright developed a modular construction system in which concrete blocks were tied together by steel rods. He believed that this “Textile Block System” achieved an utterly modern and democratic expression of his organic architecture ideal. Built on a steep hillside in the Hollywood Hills, the Storer House was compared to a Pompeiian villa at the time of its construction. Lush landscaping further enhanced its exoticism, providing an illusion of a ruin barely visible within its jungle environment. The residence later fell into Pompeiian-like disrepair, until Hollywood movie producer, Joel Silver—current owner of Wright’s Auldbrass Plantation in South Carolina—purchased the house and undertook an extensive restoration project in 1984. The Storer House, thanks to help from Wright’s grandson Eric Lloyd Wright and the Los Angeles Conservancy, is now widely considered the best-preserved Wright building in Los Angeles.
Connecticut
1. Tirranna (Rayward-Shepherd House)
Located in New Canaan, Connecticut on a 15-acre piece of wooded land that looks over the Noroton River, 432 Frogtown Road was first built for Joyce and John Rayward and has only been in the hands of two other owners. It features incredibly beautiful glass ceilings on a greenhouse, a closed courtyard, and a star-gazing room. The property is extensive, featuring a pool, tennis court, and large shed/barn. Most recently, businessman and philanthropist Ted Stanley lived in the home with his wife Veda for more than 20 years until he passed away in January of last year. Also known as the “Rayward-Shepherd House” or “Tirranna,” Wright designed this spectacular home during the last years of his life while he was completing the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The greenhouse features windows that are finished with a scalloped metal treatment. Similar to his Fallingwater masterpiece, Tirranna was built near a body of water and a waterfall. In fact, the word itself comes from an Aboriginal term meaning, “running waters.” The interior features large open windows that fill the entire outward facing wall, with Wright’s signature wood panelling and large terra cotta tiles.
2. Frank Sander House
This house features a mostly red brick facade, which is accentuated by a jutting out frame of wood with glass windows. It features Frank Lloyd Wright’s signature car port, and low lying roofs. The entire back end of the house appears like it is on stilts, the wooden rectangle held up by brick structure underneath. It’s position on a hill allows it to take on this shape: extremely short at the front, and expanding upwards and down at the back. Frank Sander House, at 121 Woodchuck Road in Stamford, was built in 1952. This is one of the lesser written about homes in the architect’s oeuvre. The home since then went through a period of decline. But in 1996 was lovingly restored by Anne Del Gaudio.
Kansas
1. Sondern-Adler House
This Usonian home gets its two names from two separate owners, who both contracted Frank Lloyd Wright for their homes. In 1939, Wright designed a 900 square foot home for Clarence Sondern in the Roanoke neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri. Three squares connected the two wings of the L-shaped home with a workspace, laundry/heater room, and bathroom. There were two bedrooms, both with glass doors and openings to the terrace. Nine years later, Arnold Adler, the second owner of the home, once again called upon Wright to design the addition to the home that would add on more than 2,000 square feet, which included another bedroom, additional bathrooms, additional living spaces and a carport. Photos from the back of the house show a gorgeous brick work garden with a pond filled with plants, as the warmth of the indoor lighting pours out through tall windows that span the entire wall. Inside, there are offset levels in the main living area, separated by brick stairs that lead down to a cozy Persian carpeted den.
2. Allen House
Commissioned in 1916 and completed in 1918, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Allen House is named after its first owners, newspaper publisher Henry Allen and his wife, Elsie. It was the last of the architect’s famous prairie houses, which emphasized horizontal lines, earth tones and a continuous blending of interiors with exteriors.Architectural writers who have visited the house believe its living room is “one of the great rooms of the 20th century”. The home features more than 30 pieces of Wright-designed furniture, all of its original art glass and several new-for-their-time innovations, such as wall-hung water closets and an attached garage. Some of the features appear to have more affinities with the Arts and Crafts movement than Mid-Century Modern, while the house is definitely a blend of the two movements.
Pennsylvania
1.Falling Water
Fallingwater was a masterpiece of Wright’s theories on organic architecture, which sought to integrate humans, architecture, and nature together so that each one would be improved by the relationship. This is obvious in the way the structure integrates into the waterfall, making it look like part of the landscape. Its owners, Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann, were a prominent Pittsburgh couple, reputed for their distinctive sense of style and taste.They met Wright in 1934, when their son, Edgar Jr. spent six months in the Taliesin Fellowship. Knowing that Wright shared their love of nature, they commissioned him to build a summer home for the family’s weekend retreat in Bear Run, PA. Wright anchored a series of reinforced concrete “trays” to the natural rock. Cantilevered terraces of local sandstone blend harmoniously with the rock formations, appearing to float above the stream below. The first floor entry, living room and dining room merge to create one continuous space, while a hatch door in the living room opens to a suspended stairway that descends to the stream below. Glass walls further open the rooms to the surrounding landscape.
In 1963 the Kaufmanns donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, together with 1,543 acres of surrounding land. It opened its door as a museum in 1964 and has since hosted more than five million visitors. So, if you’re ever in Pennsylvania, or decide to do a Frank Lloyd Wright tour of the United States, Fallingwater is a wonderful place to tour inside and out. It is perhaps one of Wright’s most famous homes, circulating in photos on instagram and Pinterest alike.
2. Kentuck Knob
The attention to detail at Kentuck Knob is astounding. The combination of wood, brick and stone work creates a beautiful textural interface. Where architecture and sculpture are seamlessly integrated into the beautiful landscape. Located in the Laurel Highlands of western Pennsylvania, Kentuck Knob is an excellent illustration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian architecture. Oriented to catch the best light throughout the day. Kentuck Knob’s materials—native sandstone, Tidewater Red Cypress and a copper hipped roof—further merge the structure with its surroundings. The mountain summit offers a sweeping view of the Youghiogheny River gorge as well as surrounding hills and farmland. The crescent-shaped house curls around a west-facing courtyard, blending into the contours of the land. The anchor of the design is a hexagonal stone core that rises from the hipped roof at the intersection of the living and bedroom wings. The walls of the flat-roofed carport and studio burrow into the knob and define the courtyard’s eastern side. A stone planter terminates the low retaining wall on the west side of the courtyard, and it features a copper light fixture accented with a triangular-shaped shade.
While Frank Lloyd Wright has become synonymous with buildings like the Guggenheim, his work in designing homes for people to live in is far reaching and diverse, and worth looking at. They range from luxury homes to designs for economic and modest living, but have mostly all become worth millions today. I guess that’s what happens when a house designed by a household name goes on the market! It’s extremely interesting to watch his progression as a designer from earlier design movements and practices, towards more modern materials and designs. His innovations were a huge part of the development of Midcentury Modern architecture and design in North America and around the world. Throughout his long and prolific career, Frank Lloyd Wright brought American architecture to the forefront. His visionary creations were strongly influenced by the natural world, and he emphasized craftsmanship while embracing technology’s ability to make design accessible to all. His attention to detail came through in all his work, sometimes making him difficult to work with, but always resulting in an incredible, innovative, and stunning work of art. Everything from the bricks lining the pond in the backyard to the chairs in the living room were designed by him. Until his death in 1959, Wright continued to work on hundreds of projects, including the Usonian homes, which proliferate across the country.
Sadly, in 2020, the Frank Lloyd Wright architecture school, which had been teaching for 90 years, closed its doors. Based at the celebrated architect’s former residences in Wisconsin and Arizona, it separated from the Wright Trust in 2017, and after disagreement with the Trust couldn’t come to an agreement about the premises. The teachings he has provided with the world, through the buildings he leaves behind, however, will remain on.
