Frank Lloyd Wright – The early years of life
Frank Lloyd Wright, the legendary personality was born on 8th June, 1867 in Richland Center, Wisconsin in United States of America. He was originally named as Frank Lincoln Wright by his parents Anna Lloyd-Jones and William Cary Wright which was changed after they got divorced. At the age of 12, Wright’s family was located in Madison, Wisconsin where he was admitted to Madison High School. He started dreaming about becoming an architect when he used to spend his summer vacations at his Uncle’s farm house in Spring Green, Wisconsin whose name was James Lloyd Jones. His dream turned into the passion and he left his Madison School without completing his studies. The reason was to work for the Dean of the University of Wisconsin’s Engineering Department - Mr. Allan Conover. He also utilized the time spent at the University along with his work by studying two semester of civil engineering.
In 1887, he moved to Chicago where he worked for architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Frank Lloyd designed his first building here named as ‘The Lloyd-Jones family chapel’ which was also called as ‘Unity Chapel’. After one year, he accepted to work under the firm of Adler and Sullivan. He revised the theory of Sullivan’s maxim from “Form Follows Function” to “Form and Function Are One”. Frank Lloyd had given all the credits to Sullivan for his whole career.
The beginning of the rise
In his personal life, Wright fell in love with Catherine Tobin whom he met while working with Sullivan. This couple developed their house of dream at Oak Park, Illinois. They brought up their five children here. It was the year 1893, when Lloyd begun his own firm in Chicago after ending the business relationship with Sullivan. This firm he ran for five years before shifting the whole practice to his home in Oak Park.
Wright’s early designs disclose an unparalleled talent in the young and promising architect. He had his own style of creating the wonders. His houses were of a horizontal plane without basements or attics. They were built with natural materials and were never painted. Frank used to have low-pitched rooflines with deep overhangs. The uninterrupted walls of windows merge the horizontal homes into their own environments. One of his styles was placing a large stone fireplace in the main rooms with other rooms open to one another. He also became the chief practitioners of Prairie School.
The turn in the life
After spending eighteen years in Oak Park, Wright left his home and moved to Germany in 1909. When he returned in 1911, he constructed Taliesin at Spring Green, Wisconsin. He lived there with a woman named Mamah Borthwick Cheney. In 1914, the tragedy struck into his life when his harebrained servant killed Cheney and six others along with her. The servant then set the house in fire. In spite of this big blow to his mind, Lloyd proved himself with his decision of rebuilding the Taliesin.
Back to the glory
Over the 20 years after the Taliesin tragedy, Frank Lloyd’s influence continued to grow in fame in the Europe and United States as well. His innovative ideas and designs were getting appreciations from even abroad. His fame was crossing the limit and he was commissioned to design the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan in the year of 1915. It was this period, when Lloyd realized the beauty of the architecture is apart from the urban culture and hence started to refine and develop new sociological philosophies in buildings. His style became quite different and he was now firm to utilize natural materials, skylights and walls of the windows to embrace natural environments.
He started giving the shape of natural creatures in his designs and was very well appreciated with the same. The greatest examples of this are the Guggenheim Museum in NY city in the year of 1943 and the Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo NY. Both of these constructions resemble to the structure of a snail or a shell. To help students who truly love architectural science, in 1932, Frank opened Taliesin up as kind of institute where students could pay to work with him and learn from him.
At the age of 92, on 9th of April, 1959 Frank Lloyd Wright passed away at his own home in Phoenix, Arizona. He was an international figure by that time and was recognized for his talent worldwide. He had created nearly about 1140 designs out of which only 532 were completed. He directed the world towards the new era of architecture throughout the life he lived.
