Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was one of the world's most prominent and influential architects. He developed a series of highly individual styles over his extraordinarily long architectural career (spanning the years 1887–1959) and influenced the entire course of American architecture and building. To this day, he remains America's most famous architect. Wright was also well known in his lifetime for his colorful personal life that frequently made headlines, most notably for the failure of his first two marriages and the 1914 fire and murders at his Taliesin studio.
Biography
Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the agricultural town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, on June 8, 1867, of Welsh descent just two years after the end of the American Civil War. His father, William Russell Cary Wright, was a Baptist preacher, but as an adult Wright developed strong Unitarian and transcendental principles. (Eventually, in 1905, he would design the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois.) As a child he spent a great deal of time playing with the kindergarten educational blocks by Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (known as Froebel Gifts) given to him by his mother, Anna Lloyd Jones. These consisted of various geometrically shaped blocks that could be assembled in various combinations to form three-dimensional compositions. Wright in his autobiography talks about the influence of these exercises on his approach to design. Many of his buildings are notable for the geometrical clarity they exhibit. Read More...
Darwin D. Martin House
Between 1900 and 1917, his residential designs were "Prairie Houses" (extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces, using unfinished materials), so-called because the design is considered to complement the land around Chicago. These houses are credited with being the first examples of the "open plan."
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