Frank Lloyd Wright was a prolific architect; although many sources have different numbers for how many works he designed and built, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation estimates an astonishing 1,114 works designed, of which 532 were realized over his seven-decade career.
Frank was born in Wisconsin on June 8, 1867, to a father who was a preacher and musician and a mother who was a schoolteacher. They traveled quite a bit when he was a child, from Rhode Island to Iowa to Massachusetts and back to Wisconsin. Wright’s parents divorced in 1885, which exacerbated their financial circumstances, therefore, Frank took a job and worked for the dean of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Engineering while being a student at that University.
In 1887, Frank left Madison for Chicago to pursue his dream of being an architect; he was hired by the prestigious partnership of Adler and Sullivan and worked directly under Sullivan for six years.
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
Wright built his first home shortly after marrying Catherine Lee Tobin in 1889. This modest house reflected the East Coast shingle style with its prominent roof gable. Wright’s experimentation with geometric shapes and volumes in the studio and playroom reflected his design style.
Frank Lloyd Wright-designed what became down as the Prairie Style. This style had houses on long, low horizontal prairies with low-pitched roofs, deep overhangs, long rows of casement windows, and no attics or basements.
Frank’s most famous residential works include the Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, New York, the Avery Coonly House in Riverside, Illinois, the Frederick C. Robie House in Chicago, and many more.
He went on an extended stay in Europe, publishing a drawing down as Wasmuth Portfolio and a photograph released in 1911. These publications brought international attention to Wright’s work. Frank received two crucial public commissions: the Midway Gardens in Chicago (1913) and the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo (1916). The Imperial Hotel was later demolished in 1968.
Wright received few architectural commissions, so he began writing and lecturing, thus introducing himself to an even larger national audience. In 1932, he released An Autobiography and The Disappearing City. An Autobiography proved to be an inspiration for generations of young architects, while The Disappearing City introduced the idea for a Broadacre City. Wright had a utopian vision for decentralization that moved the city into the country; this idea influenced community development for decades after publication.
The Prairie House: long, low, open-plan structure to emphasize the horizontal line of the prairie and domesticity. The Prairie House was the first truly American architecture. These houses minimized interior walls to create a greater community and openness.
The relationship of inhabitants to the outside became more intimate; landscape and building became one, more harmonious; and instead of a separate thing set up independently of landscape and site, the building with landscape and site became inevitably one.
Usonian: During the Great Depression, Frank worked on affordable housing, which transformed into what is known as Usonian housing. They were simplified approaches to residential construction. Wright designed many Usonian houses throughout his career, and they reflected the diverse client budgets and wishes.
Frank Lloyd Wright believed architecture to be transformative and dedicated his life to creating an aesthetic that would enhance society’s well-being. He believed a truly organic building only developed from within and was in harmony with the time, place, and inhabitants.
There is no architecture without a philosophy. There is no art of any kind without its own philosophy.
Believing that architecture could be genuinely transformative, Wright devoted his life to creating a total aesthetic that would enhance society’s well-being. “Above all integrity,” he would say: “buildings like people must first be sincere, must be true.” Architecture was not just about buildings but about nourishing the lives of those within them. Wright designed buildings, furniture, rugs, fabrics, lighting, art glass, dinnerware, graphic arts, and more. He believed architecture to be the “great mother of art”. He drew inspiration from the Japanese idea of a culture where every object, human, and action was integrated to make an entire civilization a work of art.
Wright’s designs were based on beauty and aesthetics, as he believed everyone had the right to live a beautiful life, so he sought to create affordable architecture.
To change up this series a bit, I decided to have AI create a design based on one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s designs. My first prompt was: design a building inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania.
The first image is a picture of Fallingwater, and the bottom is AI-generated. Very little was changed from the original, and it seems more like plagiarizing than taking inspiration from the original design, which is disappointing.
My second prompt for AI is: design a building inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan.
This AI-generated design is extremely different from the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. It seems the only similarity is that both buildings are designed to be hotels. The Imperial Hotel was designed to merge Western and Eastern cultures, which the AI has failed to do so.
Truly fascinating re: Frank Lloyd Wright, and AI. Here at least its imagery is disappointing.