Frank Lloyd Wright - Blogging Through the Alphabet

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Coming up with an artist or architect to feature for the letter W in Blogging Through the Alphabet was easy. I'm doing both by featuring my husband's favorite, Frank Lloyd Wright. It was also an obvious choice after our recent visit to the National Building Museum on Frank Lloyd Wright Day. (It's all here: A National Building Museum PhotoJournal)

Frank Lloyd Wright is one of the most familiar names among American architects, yet he didn't graduate high school, and got his start as a part-time draftsman for a civil engineering professor. In 1886 he began attending the University of Wisconsin with a focus on engineering, but soon changed to architecture. In 1887, at 20 years old, he traveled to Chicago to use his architectural talent to help rebuild the city after the Great Chicago Fire.

In 1888, he was hired by Adler & Sullivan as Chief of Design for all their residential work. The next year he built the Frank Lloyd Wright Home in Oak Park, Illinois.



Within a few years he was working as an independent architect, sharing office space with several other architects, including the first woman licensed to practice architecture in the USA. This group of architects was influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement and went on to form the Prairie School. Their designs are characterized by low buildings with gently sloping roofs, crisp lines, and the use of unfinished materials. The interiors of prairie homes featured open floor plans.

One of Wright's best known designs is Fallingwater, located in Pennsylvania. Construction began in 1936 and was completed in 1938. A guest house was added a year later. Only four elements were used in the design of Fallingwater - steel, reinforced concrete, sandstone, and glass. The stone is layered so that the house seems to be part of the hillside. Reinforced concrete was used to build the cantilevered balconies that seem to be floating over the waterfall.

(If you'd like to build a paper model of Fallingwater, you can find the template and instructions at the PaperToys website)

In 1943, Wright was asked to design a building that would house part of Solomon R. Guggenheim's art collection, and the result was another iconic building. We know it as the Guggenheim museum in New York. Its design is a spiral shape, and the interior is similar to the inside of a seashell. Wright planned for visitors to take an elevator to the top, then view all the art in the collection as they walked down the gently descending spiral walkway. However, the museum actually arranges exhibits so that visitors need to walk up the ramp to view!

Following are some of the pictures from our National Building Museum Day that show the drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright's artwork and buildings.












A number of years ago, part of our family vacation took us to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin. This home and school in Wisconsin opened in 1932 with twenty-three apprentices living and working there under Wright's instruction.















PS - Look how young the kids were! And how much hair the hubster had! Good times!





To learn more about the artwork and architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (and lots more!) check out Everyday Easels at SchoolhouseTeachers.com, or the high school elective course  Introduction to Architecture, also at SchoolhouseTeachers.com.

This post is linked at Blogging Through the Alphabet hosted by A Net In Time and Hopkins Homeschool. Join in to see what others are sharing related to this week's letter!

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