Frank Lloyd Wright was many things in his day: an architect, writer, teacher, rumored shirker of debts, reputed flirt and even reported philanderer. Stories of his larger-than-life ego and sometimes brusque personality were likely due in part to the title bestowed upon him rather early on in his career: that of “America’s best architect.”
Prolific throughout his life, creating more than one thousand designs and completing more than 500 standing structures, Wright became known for his self-coined term of “organic architecture,” painstakingly incorporating aesthetic influences from the natural environment surrounding each architectural space he conceived.
Most well-known for the home he designed through a private contract with a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Edgar J. Kauffman, Sr., Wright’s “Fallingwater” stands in Mill Run, Pennsylvania astride a waterfall; the image (top) is perhaps one of the most iconic in American architectural history.
Wright also designed the Guggenheim Museum in New York, although he vehemently declined to agree that its location alongside Central Park in the middle of Manhattan was the best geographic placement for the spiral feat.
After living a life rife with nearly a century’s worth of epic dramas and lasting accomplishments, Wright died in 1959 at the age of 91, leaving behind a legacy of progressive thinking illustrated by his unmistakable projects scattered throughout the world.
Photo credits: Wikimedia Commons
