Frank Lloyd Wright | Biography, Architecture, Houses, Buildings, Style, Fallingwater, Taliesin, Wife, & Facts

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What was Frank Lloyd Wright’s early life like?

As an infant, Frank Lloyd Wright moved to Iowa in 1869 with his family before living in Rhode Island and Massachusetts and eventually moving back to his mother’s home state of Wisconsin. He attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1885–86, but as there were no architecture courses, he took engineering courses.

What is Frank Lloyd Wright best known for?

Frank Lloyd Wright was a great originator and a highly productive architect. He designed some 800 buildings, of which 380 were actually built. UNESCO designated eight of them—including Fallingwater, the Guggenheim Museum, and Unity Temple—as World Heritage sites in 2019. He is known as chief practitioner of the Prairie school of architecture.

How did Frank Lloyd Wright become famous?

Frank Lloyd Wright became famous as the creator and expounder of “organic architecture”—his phrase indicating buildings that harmonize with their inhabitants and their environment. The boldness and fertility of his invention and his command of space are probably his greatest achievements. Throughout his career, Wright emphasized ornamental detail, earthy colours, and rich textural effects.

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Frank Lloyd Wright, original name Frank Wright, (born June 8, 1867, Richland Center, Wisconsin, U.S.—died April 9, 1959, Phoenix, Arizona), architect and writer, an abundantly creative master of American architecture. His “Prairie style” became the basis of 20th-century residential design in the United States.

Early life

Wright’s mother, Anna Lloyd-Jones, was a schoolteacher, aged 24, when she married a widower, William C. Wright, an itinerant 41-year-old musician and preacher. (There is uncertainty over whether Frank was given the middle name Lincoln at birth. However, he later adopted Lloyd as his middle name.) The Wrights moved with their infant son to Iowa in 1869 and then lived successively in Rhode Island and Weymouth, Massachusetts, before eventually moving back to Wright’s mother’s home state of Wisconsin. The young Wright attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison for a few terms in 1885–86 as a special student, but as there was no instruction in architecture, he took engineering courses. In order to supplement the family income, Wright worked for the dean of engineering, but he did not like his situation nor the commonplace architecture around him. He dreamed of Chicago, where great buildings of unprecedented structural ingenuity were rising.