Frank Lloyd Wright - American architect of the 20th century.

Frank Lloyd Wright - American architect of the 20th century.

Frank Lloyd Wright was the most influential American architect of the 20th century. He designed private homes, office buildings, hotels, churches, museums, and more. As a pioneer of the “organic” architecture movement, Wright designed buildings that integrated into the natural environments that surrounded them. Perhaps the most famous example of Wright’s daring design was Fallingwater, which Wright designed to literally hover over a waterfall.

Design by Lloyd Wright

Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright. Photography of the exterior.

His work, eventful life and outsized personality have inspired architectural acolytes, documentaries, films, novels and everything from furniture to finger puppets.

Born in 1867 in Wisconsin, his career spanned seven decades, during which he produced 1,114 architectural designs, 532 of which were built. Seven Wright-designed houses remain in Indiana.

As America came out of the Great Depression in the 1930s, Wright saw the urgent need for affordable, well-designed houses for middle-class families. He created designs he labeled Usonian – a play on United States of North America – that he touted as the realization of a democratic, organic, uniquely American brand of architecture. Rooted in his Prairie design principles, Usonian houses possess a similar horizontality, with flatter rooflines, built-in furniture, less expensive windows (no art glass, for example) and carports instead of garages.

- Taken from article written by PAIGE WASSEL Contributing Writer.