Frank Lloyd Wright
AUK College of Art & Sciences/ID IND311 Interior Design History II Asst. Prof. Siniša Prvanov Spring 2019
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Contents:
Introduction 1. Prairie Houses (1900–1914) 2. Usonian Houses (1932-1948) 3. Fallingwater House (1935-1937) 4. Guggenheim Museum (1943–1959) 5. Furniture Design
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INTRODUCTION
Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". His creative period spanned more than 70 years. Wright was the pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture, and he also developed the concept of the Usonian home in Broadacre City, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States. In addition to his houses, Wright designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums, and other structures. He often designed interior elements for these buildings, as well, including
furniture and stained glass.
Figure 1. Frank Lloyd Wright portrait.
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Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and Europe. Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time". His colorful personal life often made headlines, notably for leaving his first wife, Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin for Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the murders at his Taliesin estate in 1914, his tempestuous marriage with second wife Miriam Noel, and his relationship with Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg, who became his third wife in 1928. Transition and experimentation (1893–1900) After leaving Louis Sullivan's firm, Wright established his own practice on the top floor of the Sullivan-designed Schiller Building on Randolph Street in Chicago. Wright chose to locate his office in the building because the tower location reminded him of the office of Adler & Sullivan. Wright's projects during this period followed two basic models. His first independent commission, the Winslow House, combined Sullivanesque ornamentation with the emphasis on simple geometry and horizontal lines. The Francis Apartments (1895, demolished 1971), Heller House (1896), Rollin Furbeck House (1897) and Husser House
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(1899, demolished 1926) were designed in the same mode. For his more conservative clients, Wright designed more traditional dwellings.
Figure 2. Heller House (1896), Rollin Furbeck House (1897) and Husser House (1899).
Figure 3. Husser House exterior details view.
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Figure 4. Husser House floorplan.
By 1901, Wright had completed about 50 projects, including many houses in Oak Park. Wright also designed furniture, leaded glass windows, and light fixtures, among other features.
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1. Prairie Houses (1900–1914)
Between 1900 and 1901, Frank Lloyd Wright completed four houses which have since been identified as the onset of the "Prairie style". Two, the Hickox and Bradley Houses, were the last transitional step between Wright's early designs and the Prairie creations. Meanwhile, the Thomas House and Willits House received recognition as the first mature examples of the new style. At the same time, Wright gave his new ideas for the American house widespread awareness through two publications in the Ladies' Home Journal. The articles were in response to an invitation from the president of Curtis Publishing Company, Edward Bok, as part of a project to improve modern house design. "A Home in a Prairie Town" and "A Small House with Lots of Room in it" appeared respectively in the February and July 1901 issues of the journal. Although neither of the affordable house plans was ever constructed, Wright received increased requests for similar designs in following years. Wright came to Buffalo and designed homes for three of the company's executives, including the Darwin D. Martin House in 1904. Wright's residential designs of this era were known as "prairie houses" because the designs complemented the land around Chicago. Prairie-style houses often have a combination of these features: One or two-stories with one-story projections, an open
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1.1 Arthur Heurtley House
Figure 5. Arthur Heurtley House exterior view.
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The Heurtley House is one of Wright's earliest, fully mature Prairie style houses, and the patterns that he established with the home would eventually appear in many of his greatest works in that genre. Exterior emphasis is on the horizontal, with strong detail in the wooden siding and high bands of windows. The roof is low pitched, and features broad eaves. Terraces and balconies bring outside living easily to the occupants. There are two prow windows, one of which has been called "famous" and is thought to have reflected Heurtley's love of sailing.
Figure 5. Arthur Heurtley House exterior view with characteristic designed windows.
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The home is unique in having its floor plan reversed from contemporary two-story American, with its private spaces on the lower floor and public rooms on the second.
Figure 6. Arthur Heurtley House floor plans.
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Entrance to the house is via a heavy Romanesque arch. The ground floor is given over to a reception hall, a large reception room/playroom, guestrooms and a servant’s hall. Similar in concept to Wright’s Husser and Thomas houses, the principal rooms are elevated to the second story. In contrast to the darker lower level, the upstairs area is defined by airy, open and contiguous light-filled spaces.
Figure 6. Arthur Heurtley House interior view.
At the heart of the home, a substantial arched fireplace occupies a central position in the living room. In form and material, the fireplace echoes the prominent arch on the exterior
Page 11 of 94 of the building. Leaded glass windows that line the west side of the house, flood the main living spaces with light. An open air elevated porch, accessed via French doors in the living room, blurs the division between interior and exterior space.
Figure 7. Arthur Heurtley House living room detail with arched fireplace.
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Figure 8. Wright stained glass design.
Frank lloyd wright leaded art glass window designed for the Arthur Heurtley House represent remarkably the strongly geometric art glass window was free from damage and unlike most of my other frank lloyd wright windows, the original wood sash frame was intact and structurally sound.
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1.2 Darwin D. Martin House
Figure 9. Darwin D. Martin House east view.
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The Darwin D. Martin House Complex, also known as the Darwin Martin House National Historic Landmark, was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built between 1903 and 1905. Located in Buffalo, New York, it is considered to be one of the most important projects from Wright's Prairie School era, and ranks along with The Guggenheim in New York City and Fallingwater in Pennsylvania among his greatest works.
Figure 10. Darwin D. Martin House frontal view.
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The complex exemplifies Wright's Prairie School ideal and is comparable with other notable works from this period in his career, such as the Robie House in Chicago and the Dana-Thomas House in Springfield, Illinois. Wright was especially fond of the Martin House design, referring to it for some 50 years as his "opus", and calling the complex "A well-nigh perfect composition". Wright kept the Martin site plan tacked to the wall near his drawing board for the next half century. The main motives and indications were: “To reduce the number of necessary parts of the house and the separate rooms to a minimum, and make all come together as an enclosed space, so divided that light, air and vista permeated the whole with a sense of unity”. — Frank Lloyd Wright, "On architecture". The facades are almost identical, except for the front entrance, and the Martin House repeats most of the Journal House ground floor. An awkward failure was no direct connection from the kitchen to the dining room. The Journal House had a serving pantry, but Wright was forced to give this up to accommodate the pergola.
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Figure 11. Landscape plan and house situation plan.
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The residential complex comprises six interconnected buildings: the Martin House, the George Barton House—where Martin’s sister and brother-in-law once lived—a carriage house, a conservatory, the pavilion, and a gardener’s cottage, which was added in 1908. Other significant structures include a pergola connecting the Martin House to the conservatory, and a greenhouse.
Figure 11. Model of Darwin D. Martin House complex.
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Figure 12. 1st floor plan.
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Martin House is distinguished from Wright's other prairie style houses by its unusually large size and open plan. On the ground floor an entry hall bisects the house. To the right, behind a large double sided hearth, is a central living room. The room is flanked by a dining room and library which together create a long continuous space.
The other axis, centered on the hearth, continues the living room out to a large covered veranda. To the left of the entry hall, is a reception room similar in size to the living room, the kitchen, and several smaller rooms.
A separate mass provides for a reception room hearth, and one to the level above. The wing completes with a porte-cochère balancing the veranda.
Above the entry hall, stairs wrap a small covered light well opening to the second floor. This floor provides eight bedrooms, four bathrooms, and a sewing room. The entry hall continues on axis to the pergola and conservatory beyond.
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Figure 13. 2nd floor plan.
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Figure 14. Section drawing..
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Figure 15. Collection of most important exterior and interior views.
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The Martin House demonstrates the strong horizontal planes, deep overhangs, cantilevered roof, grounded foundation, and central hearth for which Wright was famed.
Figure 16. View of dining room with Wright designed table and chairs (left) and Restored veranda doors at east end of living room. Natural light filters through Wright's restored Art glass skylight above. The home’s pièce de résistance is the wisteria mosaic fireplace. Though fireplaces feature prominently in Wright’s residential designs, few included a mosaic element. The 360- degree glass work spans all four walls of the double-sided fireplace, which provides a spatial divide between the entry and main living area. Wright’s beloved bronze, gold, and
Page 24 of 94 green palette colors the patterns of winding wisteria vines—a natural element found in the exterior landscape. Of particular significance are the fifteen distinctive patterns of 394 art glass windows that Wright designed for the entire complex, some of which contain over 750 individual pieces of jewel-like iridescent glass, that act as "light screens" to visually connect exterior views with the spaces within. More patterns of art glass were designed for the Martin House than for any other of Wright's Prairie Houses.
Figure 17. Façade stained glass work.
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Figure 18. Reception view.
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Figure 19. Reception view.
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Figure 20. Windows restoration technical drawings.
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Figure 21. Darwin D. Martin House different interior views.
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1.3 Robie House
Figure 22.The Frederick C. Robie House designed by Wright in 1908 at his studio in Oak Park.
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The Frederick C. Robie House is a U.S. National Historic Landmark on the campus of the University of Chicago in the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, Illinois. Built between 1909 and 1910, the building was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is renowned as the greatest example of Prairie School, the first architectural style considered uniquely American. Typical of Wright's Prairie houses, he designed not only the house, but all of the interiors, the windows, lighting, rugs, furniture and textiles. As Wright wrote in 1910, "it is quite impossible to consider the building one thing and its furnishings another.They are all mere structural details of its character and completeness.
Figure 23. Level 1 floor plan
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Figure 24. Level 2 floor plan
Figure 25. Level 3 floor plan
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Figure 26. Building section
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Figure 27. Section and elevation.
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Exterior The projecting cantilevered roof eaves, continuous bands of art-glass windows, and the use of Roman brick emphasize the horizontal, which had rich associations for Wright. The horizontal line reminded him of the American prairie and was a line of repose and shelter, appropriate for a house. The exterior walls are double-wythe construction of a Chicago common brick core with a red-orange iron-spotted Roman brick veneer. To further emphasize the horizontal of the bricks, the horizontal joints were filled with a cream-colored mortar and the small vertical joints were filled with brick-colored mortar. From a distance, this complex and expensive tuckpointing creates an impression of continuous lines of horizontal color and minimizes the appearance of individual bricks. The design of the art glass windows is an abstract pattern of colored and clear glass using Wright's favorite 30 and 60-degree angles. Wright used similar designs in tapestries inside the house and for gates surrounding the outdoor spaces and enclosing the garage courtyard. Robie's generous budget allowed Wright to design a house with a largely steel structure, which accounts for the minimal deflection of the eaves.
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The planter urns, copings, lintels, sills and other exterior trimwork are of Bedford limestone.
Figure 29. Robie House is renowned as the greatest example of the Prairie School style, the first architectural style that was uniquely American. Planter urns are also Wright unique design.
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Figure 30. The house is famous for its horizontality which was achieved by large steel beams in the roof to create the cantilevered roof line. The exterior wall rimwork of Bedford limestone and low profile Roman bricks add to the horizontality.
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Figure 31. The horizontal brick joints were filled with a cream-colored mortar and if you look closely you'll see that the small vertical joints were filled with brick-colored mortar. From a distance, this complex and expensive tuckpointing creates an impression of continuous lines of horizontal color and minimizes the appearance of individual bricks.
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Figure 32. The design of the art glass windows is an abstract pattern of colored and clear glass using Wright's favorite 30 and 60- degree angles.
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Figure 34. The courtyard and garage entry, now the obligatory gift shop.
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Figure 35. Intricate wall designs beneath expansive cantilevered eaves.
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Figure 36. And so to the interior tour. Wright generally liked to conceal the front entry to his houses to create a sense of privacy and protection from the outside world. This is certainly true in the Robie house. We follow our docent up the path to the secluded entry door.
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Interior In plan, the house is designed as two large rectangles that seem to slide by one another. Wright referred to the rectangle on the southwest portion of the site, which contains the principal living spaces of the house, as "the major vessel." On the first floor are the "billiards" room (west end) and children's playroom (east end). The billiards room provided access to a large walk-in safe and a storage area built underneath the front porch projection at the west end of the site.
Figure 37. Once inside, the entry is small and dimly lit with a low ceiling as if to say, don't stay here, come upstairs to the main living room.
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Figure 38. Robie House living room.
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The billiards and playroom open into a small passage and doors near the center of the building to an enclosed garden on the south side of the building. Another door from the playroom opens into the courtyard on the east end of the site. On the second floor are the entry hall at the top of the central stairway, the living room (west end) and the dining room (east end). Built-in inglenook bench cabinetry originally separated the entry hallway from the living room.
Figure 39. Living room Fire place
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The living and dining rooms flow into one another along the south side of the building and open through a series of twelve French doors containing art glass panels to an exterior balcony running the length of the south side of the building that overlooks the enclosed garden. The west end of the living room contains a "prow" with art glass windows and two art glass doors that open onto the west porch beneath the cantilevered roof. Wright intended that the users of the building move freely from the interior space to the exterior space.
Figure 40. Dining room.
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Figure 41. In the early days of electric lighting these custom designed wall sconces, spherical globes within wooden squares into the ceiling trim, must have been revolutionary.
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Figure 42. The house contains 174 art glass window and door panels in 29 different designs. Although Wright occasionally designed art glass using stylized forms from nature, the designs of the Robie House art glass are simply abstract geometric forms.
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Figure 44. Looking back towards the central fireplace and beyond to the dinning room. The steel structure eliminates the need for internal structural columns and walls, accenting the open plan Wright favoured.
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Figure 45. Wright designed this sofa for the house with extended armrests, echoing the cantilevers of the exterior roof of the building, which effectively create side tables on each side of the sofa.
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Figure 46. Looking from the dining room back into the living room through the open space beside the entry stair and central fire place.
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Figure 47. Soffit lighting running the length of the north and south sides of the living and dining rooms are covered with intricate geometric Wright-designed wooden grilles.
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Figure 48. The original dining table with its built-in lighting is only hinted at by the arrangement of the remaining dining chairs.
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Figure 49. The level 2 kitchen.
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Figure 51. Level 3 bathroom.
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Figure 52. The level 3 dressing room off the main bedroom.
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Wright also designed the furniture, carpets, and textiles for most Prairie houses. However, Wright-designed furniture in the Robie House was only constructed for the entrance hall, the living and dining rooms, guest bedroom, and one bed for the third-floor bedrooms. Some of these pieces are attributed to Wright's interior design collaborator George Mann Niedecken. The Robie House was one of the last houses Wright designed in his Oak Park, Illinois home and studio and also one of the last of his Prairie School houses. According to the Historical American Buildings Survey, the city of Chicago's Commission on Chicago Architectural Landmarks stated: "The bold interplay of horizontal planes about the chimney mass, and the structurally expressive piers and windows, established a new form of domestic design." Because the house's components are so well designed and coordinated, it is considered to be a quintessential example of Wright's Prairie School architecture and the "measuring stick" against which all other Prairie School buildings are compared.
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3. Fallingwater House (1935-1937)
Figure 53. Fallingwater House east view.
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At age 67, Frank Lloyd Wright was given the opportunity to design and construct three buildings. With his three works of the late 1930s Fallingwater; the Johnson Wax Building in Racine, Wisconsin; and the Herbert Jacobs house in Madison, Wisconsin. Wright regained his prominence in the architectural community. Fallingwater is a house designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, 69 km southeast of Pittsburgh. The house was built partly over a waterfall on Bear Run in the Mill Run section of Stewart Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, located in the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains. The house was designed as a weekend home for the family of Liliane Kaufmann and her husband, Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr., owner of Kaufmann's Department Store. After its completion, Time called Fallingwater Wright's "most beautiful job," and it is listed among Smithsonian's "Life List of 28 places to visit before you die. American Institute of Architects named Fallingwater the "best all-time work of American architecture"
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Fallingwater stands as one of Wright's greatest masterpieces both for its dynamism and for its integration with its striking natural surroundings. Fallingwater has been described as an architectural tour de force of Wright's organic architecture. Wright's passion for Japanese architecture was strongly reflected in the design of Fallingwater, particularly in the importance of interpenetrating exterior and interior spaces and the strong emphasis placed on harmony between man and nature.
Figure 54. Fallingwater House façade details.
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Figure 55. Fallingwater House west façade.
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Figure 56. Fallingwater model-aerial view.
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The organically designed private residence was intended to be a nature retreat for its owners. The house is well-known for its connection to the site. It is built on top of an active waterfall that flows beneath the house.
Figure 57. Fallingwater north view.
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The bright examples of the implementation of the "space-time" concept in architecture were the ideas of Frank Lloyd Wright, who in the first decades of the twentieth century used vertical and horizontal planes that "floated" in the air in his houses. In Wright's architectural creations from prairie houses to the Fallingwater the connection between nature and architecture was represented as a visually perceptible fusion of the internal and the external.
Figure 57. Fallingwater House north elevation.
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The idea of the primacy of the architectural space is manifested by him through the principle of the integral internal and external and through the formula "from the inside to the outside":
1. Predominance of the internal architectural space over the exterior: it’s the internal space of the house that really matters, but not its roof, walls or its exterior. 2. The unity of the internal space: the internal space must be single (not divided into closed isolated rooms, but subdivided into separate parts connected in a single whole). 3. The relationship between internal and external architectural space: the internal space is a part of the single natural space, so it should not be closed, but it must be connected with the outer space.
Figure 58. Fallingwater House East section and exploded view.
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Figure 59. 1st floor plan.
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Figure 60 2nd floor plan.
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Figure 61. 3rd floor plan.
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Interior Design
3. Upper terace
2. Bedrooms
1. Living room
Figure 62. East section
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Figure 63. Living room view.
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The fireplace hearth in the living room integrates boulders found on the site and upon which the house was built ledge rock which protrudes up to a foot through the living room floor was left in place to demonstrably link the outside with the inside. Wright had initially intended that the ledge be cut flush with the floor, but this had been one of the Kaufmann family's favorite sunning spots, so Mr. Kaufmann suggested that it be left as it was. The stone floors are waxed, while the hearth is left plain, giving the impression of dry rocks protruding from a stream.
Figure 64. Fireplace and Living room east corner
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Integration with the setting extends even to small details. For example, where glass meets stone walls no metal frame is used; rather, the glass and its horizontal dividers were run into a caulked recess in the stonework so that the stone walls appear uninterrupted by glazing. From the cantilevered living room, a stairway leads directly down to the stream below, and in a connecting space which connects the main house with the guest and servant level, a natural spring drips water inside, which is then channeled back out. Bedrooms are small, some with low ceilings to encourage people outward toward the open social areas, decks, and outdoors.
Figure 65. Fallingwater 3rd floor bedrooms.
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Figure 66. Fallingwater 3rd floor bedrooms.
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Bear Run and the sound of its water permeate the house, especially during the spring when the snow is melting, and locally quarried stone walls and cantilevered terraces resembling the nearby rock formations are meant to be in harmony. The design incorporates broad expanses of windows and balconies which reach out into their surroundings. In conformance with Wright's views, the main entry door is away from the falls.
Figure 67. Fallingwater cantilevered terraces and detail of windows wood-work.
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On the hillside above the main house stands a four-bay carport, servants' quarters, and a guest house. These attached outbuildings were built two years later using the same quality of materials and attention to detail as the main house. The guest quarters feature a spring-fed swimming pool which overflows and drains to the river below.
Figure 68. Fallingwater gest house and swimming pool. After Fallingwater was deeded to the public, three carport bays were enclosed at the direction of Kaufmann Jr. to be used by museum visitors to view a presentation at the end of their guided tours on the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (to which the home was entrusted). Kaufmann Jr. designed its interior himself, to specifications found in other Fallingwater interiors by Wright.
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4. Guggenheim Museum (1943–1959)
Figure 70. Guggenheim Museum East view.
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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum located at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously expanding collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions throughout the year. The museum was established by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1939 as the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, under the guidance of its first director, the artist Hilla von Rebay. It adopted its current name after the death of its founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, in 1952.
Figure 71. Different exterior and interior views of Guggenheim Museum.
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From 1943 to early 1944, Wright produced four different sketches for the initial design. While one of the plans (scheme C) had a hexagonal shape and level floors for the galleries, all the others had circular schemes and used a ramp continuing around the building. He had experimented with the ramp design on the house he completed for his son in 1952, the David & Gladys Wright House in Arizona. Wright's original concept was called an inverted "ziggurat", because it resembled the steep steps on the ziggurats built in ancient Mesopotamia. His design dispensed with the conventional approach to museum layout, in which visitors are led through a series of interconnected rooms and forced to retrace their steps when exiting. Wright's plan was for the museum guests to ride to the top of the building by elevator, to descend at a leisurely pace along the gentle slope of the continuous ramp, and to view the atrium of the building as the last work of art. The open rotunda afforded viewers the unique possibility of seeing several bays of work on different levels simultaneously and even to interact with guests on other levels.
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Fig.72. Site Plan – Hoban, Stephen. Solomon R. Guggenheim museum an architectural appreciation. New York: Guggenheim museum publications, 2012.
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Fig.73 Floor Plan – Weston, Richard. Key buildings of the 20th century: plans, sections and elevations. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010
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Fig.74 Section – Weston, Richard. Key buildings of the 20th century: plans, sections and elevations. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.
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The spiral design recalled a nautilus shell, with continuous spaces flowing freely one into another. Even as it embraced nature, Wright's design also expresses his take on modernist architecture's rigid geometry. Wright ascribed a symbolic meaning to the building's shapes.
He explained, "these geometric forms suggest certain human ideas, moods, sentiments – as for instance: the circle, infinity; the triangle, structural unity; the spiral, organic progress; the square, integrity." Forms echo one another throughout: oval-shaped columns, for example, reiterate the geometry of the fountain. Circularity is the leitmotif, from the rotunda to the inlaid design of the terrazzo floors.
Several architecture professors have speculated that the double spiral staircase designed by Giuseppe Momo in 1932 at the Vatican Museums was an inspiration for Wright's ramp and atrium. Jaroslav Josef Polívka assisted Wright with the structural design and managed to design the gallery ramp without perimeter columns.
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Figure75. Inspiration: Doubles spiral and helicoidal flight staircase at the entrance to theVatican Museums designed by Giuseppe Momo 1932.
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Figure 76. Guggenheim Museum construction in early 1958.
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Figure 76. Guggenheim Museum axonometric ‘flow’ drawing.
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Guggenheim Museum is designed to house Guggenheim’s collection of non-objective art, the client wants the building to be unlike any other museum in the world in order to match the radical new art form, therefore the architect aims to create the best possible atmosphere to show fine the art. He proposed “one great space on a continuous floor”, in which his design is simply one continuous floor with the levels of ramps overlooking the open atrium. Walking inside, a visitor’s first intake is a huge atrium, rising in height to a glass dome. The ramp also creates a procession in which visitor can experience the art displayed along the walls as they climb upwards. Although the space within the building is undeniably majestic, the building was known as not successful in terms of it’s spatial freedom and function.
Figure 77. Guggenheim Museum atrium view and underground (basement) features as Peter B. Lewis Theater.
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Criticisms and opening of the building Even before it opened, the design polarized architecture critics. Some believed that the building would overshadow the museum's artworks. "On the contrary", wrote the architect, the design makes "the building and the painting an uninterrupted, beautiful symphony such as never existed in the World of Art before." Other critics, and many artists, felt that it is awkward to properly hang paintings in the shallow, windowless, concave exhibition niches that surround the central spiral. Prior to the opening of the museum twenty-one artists signed a letter protesting the display of their work in such a space.
Figure 78. Guggenheim Museum atrium view and exhibition [promenade] low ceiling 295 cm with limiting painting size.
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5. Furniture Design Bold, innovative and architectural, the furnishings and decorative arts of Wright’s Chicago years were conceived as integral elements of his Prairie interiors, designed in harmony with each specific commission. Incorporating furniture, lighting, and decorative arts into the structure of his buildings enabled Wright to achieve a harmonious and unified interior. Wright’s early oak furnishings, characterized by straight lines and rectilinear forms, are designed with the traditional Arts and Crafts preference for solidity and simplicity. In the early 1890s, as Wright worked to define his vision for a new American architecture, he began designing furniture for his own home in Oak Park. Built-in window seats and two sturdy oak armchairs, modeled on designs by English artist-designer William Morris, were executed for the living room between 1890-95. The dining table and eight high back chairs created for the 1895 dining room of the home are revolutionary for the time. Defined by an overriding verticality and simplicity the suite of furniture marks a clear step toward a new aesthetic in Wright’s designs. The furniture forms an intimate secondary space in the room, the table shielded by the high backs of the dining chairs.
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Figure 79. Dining furniture designed for Robi House.
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Figure 80. Frank Lloyd Wright Robie Tabouret and Oak armchair
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Figure 81. Frank Lloyd Wright Oak desk.
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Figure 82. Frank Lloyd Wright ‘Origami Chair’.
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Figure 83. Table Light Origin: Japan Table light in cherry wood.
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REFERENCES:
Aguar, Charles and Berdeana Aguar. Wrightscapes: Frank Lloyd Wright's Landscape Designs. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
Blake, Peter. Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture and Space. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1964.
Fell, Derek. The Gardens of Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Frances Lincoln, 2009.
Heinz, Thomas A. Frank Lloyd Wright Field Guide. Chichester, West Sussex: Academy Editions, 1999.
Hildebrand, Grant. The Wright Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank Lloyd Wright's Houses. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.
Larkin, David and Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Masterworks. New York: Rizzoli, 1993.
Levine, Neil. The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
Lind, Carla. Frank Lloyd Wright's Glass Designs. San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995. McCarter, Robert. Frank Lloyd Wright. London: Phaidon Press, 1997. ISBN 0-7148-3148-4
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks. Frank Lloyd Wright, 1867–1959: Building for Democracy. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2004.
Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks and Peter Gössel (eds.). Frank Lloyd Wright: The Complete Works. Los Angeles: Taschen, 2009.
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