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Frank Lloyd Wright spent more than 70 years creating designs that revolutionized the art and architecture of this century. Many innovations in today's buildings are products of his imagination.
In all he designed 1141 works - including houses, offices, churches, schools, libraries, bridges, museums and many other building types. Of that total, 532 resulted in completed works, 409 of which still stand.
However, Wright's creative mind was not confined to architecture. He also designed furniture, fabrics, art glass, lamps, dinnerware, silver, linens and graphic arts. In addition, he was a prolific writer, an educator and a philosopher.
He authored twenty books and countless articles, lectured throughout the United States and in Europe, and developed a remarkable plan for decentralizing urban America (Broadacre City) that continues to be debated by scholars and writers to this day -- some 60 years after its conception.
Wright is considered by most authorities to be the 20th century's greatest architect. Indeed, the American Institute of Architects in a recent national survey, recognized Frank Lloyd Wright to be "the greatest American architect of all time." Architectural Record magazine (the official magazine of the American Institute of Architects) declared that Wright's buildings stand out among the most significant architectural works during the last 100 years in the world.
To get a perspective on Wright's long and productive life, it is useful to remember that he was born in 1867, just two years after the end of the Civil War and died in 1959, two years after the launching of the first satellite Sputnik. Wright's Spring Green home, Taliesin, built in 1911, was initially lighted by gas lamps.
Some of his more famous works are pictured above (left to right): Fallingwater, S C Johnson, and the Guggenheim.
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