FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT 1867-1959

Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect whose early designs were the catalyst for the emergence of modern architecture around 1900, and whose seventy-two-year career has been the single greatest influence on the architecture of the twentieth century. Wright idealized Nature as the absolute reference and evaluative measure for the works of man. Wright based the interpretation of nature on the writings of the American transcendental thinkers, Walt Whitman, Henry Thoreau, Horatio Greenough and, most importantly, his beloved Ralph Waldo Emerson. The ‘Prairie Houses’ of 1900-15, Wright’s first important domestic design innovation, also involved an equally innovative strategy of relating to the landscape. Wright’s designs engaged both the natural land form and the history of human occupation of the site. He believed agriculture and architecture were related human activities on the earth - the tending and transforming of the landscape.