5 things you may not know about renowned American architect Frank Lloyd Wright

Inside the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, a Frank Lloyd Wright work listed on the Unesco World Heritage list. Photos: Handout

“The mission of an architect is to help people understand how to make life more beautiful, the world a better one for living in, and to give reason, rhyme, and meaning to life.” – Frank Lloyd Wright, 1957

In a career spanning seven decades, Frank Lloyd Wright designed 1,114 architectural works, out of which 532 were realised.

Wright’s innovative and visionary work also earned him the title of “Greatest American architect of all time” by the American Institute of Architects.

Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, on June 8,1867. His father was a preacher and musician named William Carey Wright, while his mother, Anna Lloyd Jones, was a Welsh teacher.

Wright’s innovative and visionary work earned him the title of “Greatest American architect of all time” by the American Institute of Architects.

According to a bio of him in the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation website, Wright always claimed his career choice was predetermined by his mother, Anna, who wanted her son to grow up to build beautiful buildings. To encourage that, she hung engravings of old English cathedrals in his nursery.

When Wright was 18, he worked for the dean of the department of engineering at the University of Wisconsin, studying there at the same time.

However, deep down, he knew he wanted to be an architect. In 1887, he went to Chicago and eventually got hired by the prestigious firm Adler and Sullivan, where he worked directly under Louis Sullivan for six years. He started his own practice in 1893, after a fallout with Sullivan over outside design work Wright had taken on.

In the late 1930s, his work Fallingwater drew much attention for its ingenuity. The country house for successful businessman Edgar Kaufmann Sr cantilevered over an idyllic waterfall in Pennsylvania.

Here are five facts about him and his designs:

1. Eight of his works come under Unesco’s World Heritage List, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; Unity Temple, Illinois; Hollyhock House, California; Taliesin, Wisconsin and Taliesin West, Arizona.

Taliesin West, Phoenix, Arizona, one of the houses designed by Wright listed on the Unesco World Heritage list.

2. He redefined American architecture, which had largely been characterised by European models, creating what became known as the Prairie style. Overall heights of American homes were lowered, and basements (wherever possible) and attics removed. There were no more box-like Victorian rooms, with Wright doing away with unnecessary interior partitions. Instead, free-flowing interior spaces and walls of art glass, which Wright called “light screens”, were incorporated.

3. In the 1940s and 50s, Wright’s work centred upon the middle class residence he called Usonian, a simplified but beautiful living environment that Americans could both afford and enjoy.

Inside the Taliesin house, another Wright's work listed on the Unesco World Heritage list.

4. Wright took on his most challenging commission – the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City – in 1943 when he was in his late 70s. The museum first opened to the public in October 1959, six months after Wright died at the age of 91.

5. In 1991, the Architectural Record published a list of the 100 most important buildings of the previous century. Twelve of Wright’s buildings appeared in it, including Fallingwater, the Robie House, the Johnson Wax Administration Building, the Guggenheim, Taliesin and Taliesin West, the Jacobs House, and the demolished Larkin Building and Imperial Hotel.