Wright's Urban Buildings example essay topic

Frank Lloyd Wright Frank Lloyd Wright, in my mind, is the greatest architect I've ever seen. He had a big fetish with building his houses encompassed with nature and that really interested me. Frank Lloyd Wright is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in modern Western architecture. His radically innovative designs, utilizing a building based on nature. Said by Wright as organic architecture. He was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, June 8, 1867 and died on April 9, 1959.

It was a standard of his passion and commitment to his field of work that he continued working right up to the time of his death. After studying civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin, he moved to Chicago in 1887, where he went to work as an apprentice for Louis Sullivan. He began there to design and independently build private houses for some of Sullivan's clients. This was known as 'moonlighting'; . These houses soon revealed an independent talent that was distinct from that of Sullivan. Wright's houses had low, sweeping roof lines hanging over uninterrupted walls of windows.

His plans were centered on massive brick or stone fireplaces at the heart of the house. His rooms became wide open to one another and the overall configuration of his plans became more and more alike, reaching out toward some real or imagined expansive horizon. In contrast to the openness of those houses and as if in conflict with their immediate city environment, Wright's urban buildings tend to be walled in with light entering primarily from above, through skylights. These features contrasted with those of his mentor's, Sullivan, work.

Wright's distaste for urban environments and his embrace of the natural environment are observed in the contrasting features of some of his finest buildings in the early 1900's: the Unity Church in Oak Park, Illinois; compared with Buffalo's Martin House and Chicago's Robie House. The houses are characterized by large, glazed walls, terraces, and low-slung roof overhangs. Well, in 1893, the issue of Wright's moonlighting escapades finally arose and Sullivan was forced to fire Wright. Sullivan felt very betrayed by this. Wright was forced to work on his own which pleased him either way.

This gave him more freedom. During the next 20 years, he became one of the best known architects in the United States. Wright's fame in Europe was promoted due to the publication in 1910 and 1911 by Berlin's Was muth of two editions of Wright's work as well as an exhibition that traveled throughout Europe. With his reputation assured on both sides of the Atlantic, Wright began to reinforce the philosophical underpinnings of his innovative building style.

In keeping with his rural learnings, Wright proclaimed that the structural principles found in natural forms should guide modern American architecture. 'Architecture is the nature and substance of whatever is... '; (quote Frank Lloyd Wright). He praised the virtues of an organic architecture that would use reinforced concrete in the configurations found in sea shells and snails and would build skyscrapers and the way trees were built. It would start with a central trunk, deeply rooted in the ground and floors outstretched from that trunk, like branches. Spaces within such buildings would be animated by natural light allowed to penetrate the interiors and to travel across textured surfaces as the angle of sunlight and moonlight changed. My favorite building was Falling Water, in Rearing, Pennsylvania.

It was built in 1936 and still stands this day as a tourist site, no one lives there. It fully exemplifies Wrights idea of blending the house with the nature around it. The house was built on top of a river flowing off of rocks like a waterfall. From the view of the house on the next page, it looks like the building is popping right out of the water.

Through research, it says that from every room you can hear the water falls. Frank Lloyd Wright has left a rich heritage of completed buildings of almost uniform beauty but he lacked one thing. He lacked followers like many of the other famous architects like Walter Gropius or Mies van der Rohe. Wright can be considered an essentially independent architect whose influence was immense but who had few pupils.