Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oíza   If education begins when man surrenders himself to the memory of his Paradise lost; if in Northrop Frye’s words, “ever since the times of Milton, building the dream of the lost Paradise continues to be the definition of education, ” the House that Fr

Martin Filler   We take from the art of the past what we need. The variable posthumous reputations of even the greatest artists and the unpredictable revivals of interest in even the most obscure ones tend to reveal more about those who make revisionist assessments

William Curtis   There is always a first point of contact with an architect. My own discovery of Wright took place on a rainy November evening in Marylebone Public Library some thirty years ago when I found a small paperback on his work. The text did not interest me

Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer   Frank Lloyd Wright believed that the United States of America should have a culture of its own, one without European influences that would reflect the nation's democratic ideals. In order to make that belief a reality, he created an architecture that

Kenneth Frampton   Among the architects of his generation Wright was renowned not only for his exceptional talent as an architect but also for the prescience of his thought. Despite his penchant for the Wagnerian gesture he never lost his feeling for the reality of pro

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   A few weeks after leaving Louis Sullivan's office, Frank Lloyd Wright was already working on his first commission. He was only 26. The Winslow House - like all works that constitute a leap forward - was controversial in its novelty. The standard thi

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   The Larkin Building is a mythical piece of modern architecture. Part of the myth is due to the radical innovations in both its formal composition and its functional and technical solutions. Yet the myth consolidated only when the building was razed i

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   Within the interpretation of his own genius as demiurge of his time, Wright created his own formula to deal with religión, a mixture of Laotse with a philosophical and practical Protestant Christianism, an intelectual and aesthetic option rather than

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   The robie House is the culmination of an entire era in the career and life of Frank Lloyd Wright. His built work of the two decades flanking 1900 sufficed to earn him a place in history as a great architect; fortunately, he still had energy and ideas

In 1900, Edward Bok, the editor of Ladies’ Home Journal, decided to publish a series of “Model Suburban Houses Which Can Be Built at Moderate Cost”, plans and specifications for which could be had by mail-order for five dollars. Wright used the oppor

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   During his dramatic flight to Europe in 1909, Frank Lloyd Wright had been impressed by the leisurely outdoor culture of the German and Austrian Biergärten. His friend Ed Waller, Jr., who shared this sentiment, suggested that Wright design just such a

Frank Lloyd Wright   Japan   Since His first visit to Japan in 1905, Frank Lloyd Wright was an avid collector of Japanese art. The commission for the Imperial Hotel allowed him to express his deep admiration for Nipponese culture. The challenge was twofold: on one hand was the

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   Aline barnsdall, an oil heiress consumed by a love for the dramatic arts, acquired a tract of land on ‘Olive Hill’on which to make true her desire to be a patroness of the arts. Originally the project included a theater for live drama, another for m

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   Wright's californian years culminated with a series of four houses in which concrete block took on a preponderant role as a design element. The first of these was the Millard House, popularly known as ‘La Miniatura*(as is, in Spanish), and later came

In the wake of the prairie houses, Wright designed the so-called ‘American system-built houses ’, which constituted a method of building with prefabricated wooden components, whereas the ‘monolith homes ’ utilized concrete pieces that were later to e

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   Edgar j. kaufmann was the owner of a prosperous department store chain in the Pittsburgh area. His son, working as one of Wright's apprentices at the Taliesin Fellowship, convinced him to fund the construction of the Broadacre City model for a nation

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   Wright in the thirties came up with a new method of building houses integrated into his urban conception of Broadacre City. He called them ‘Usonian houses’ and designed them specially for the new middle class that could still not afford large expendi

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   The s.c. Johnson company became in 1917 the first American firm to share profits with its workers. Thanks to Glo-Coat, a self-polishing floor wax product, it successfully surpassed the Depression of the early thirties, and Herbert F Johnson, Jr., gra

Frank Lloyd Wright   United States   The Guggenheim Museum is the paradigm of original creation by an artist confronting the conventions of his times. Obtaining a building permit proved difficult, but when he finally got it, Wright expressed his satisfaction: “I ’ve been designing this

Wright’s urban vision was concretized in the mid-thirties in his controversial project for Broadacre, a model city that stressed individual land ownership and the one-family house. In 1935 he built a large maquettefor a nationwide touring exhibition,