Culminations of Architectural Practice
Wright’s architecture at this time emphasized mostly on challenging engineering innovations. For most of his architectural feats, Wright received an assistance in structural engineering from William Wesley Peters, who was one of the members of the Taliesin Fellowship (Taliesin Preservation, Inc.). Some of these buildings include the Falling Water in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, Johnson Wax Building and Research Tower in Racine, Wisconsin, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, New York.
Wright's late architectural practice began when he received a commission from Liliane and E.J. Kaufmann to build Fallingwater, a private family residence in Pennsylvania. Despite engineering challenges, Wright made a bold decision to construct a house on the waterfall. This is because he believed that a building should be in sync with nature. In doing so, Wright used natural rocks on site as part of the building's foundation. The water from the stream flows through the house. The fame and success of his new and daring design was bolstered by the Kaufmann family, who played a major role in his strong return as he created one of the most famous private residences in the world.
With the rise of the international style, the emergence of Bauhaus in Germany, and architects such as Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, Wright had to struggle to maintain his status as an architect. Since such was the case, receiving commissions to build public buildings was also a way for Wright to reestablish his career. The Johnson Wax Building and Research Tower were a few of his public building designed during his late architectural practice. The Research Tower was a later addition to the headquarters, which was built in 1939, and administrative building of the SC Johnson company. This work was inspired from a Japanese Buddhist pagoda with a centralized tower and cantilevered floors. Both the headquarters and the research tower show Wright’s latest architectural feats that surprised the public with his bold engineering tactics. Approaching the mid-1900s, hiring Wright was a bold decision for the Guggenheim foundation in terms of the popularity in architectural mainstream during the time. However, Wright managed to surprise the public when the museum was opened in 1959. In the place of stairs, Wright used spiral ramps to climb up the interior rotunda, and the architecture continuously flows freely into space.
It was also in the 1930s when Frank Lloyd Wright introduced the idea of a more unified and compact urban planning called the Usonia. Usonia is Wright’s vision of America’s landscape free from foreign architectural influence. Wright’s idea includes city planning and individual building designs. Usonian homes are a series of buildings that are designed to suit the needs of the owner, and their plans are often L-shaped or some variations with centralized circular plans. They are usually small with built-in furniture designed by Wright himself and seem to grow out of his earlier Prairie style houses. A few examples would include Ed Serlin House and Roland Reiseley House in Pleasantville, New York, and recently, a Usonian building was erected at the Florida Southern College in Lake Front, Florida. Though Usonian houses might not be as famous as his other works, Wright’s ideology of aligning nature with the buildings he designed remained the same.
Today, Frank Lloyd Wright is better known for building the Fallingwater and the Guggenheim than the Holly Hock House or the Robie House. He was not only a great architect and an innovative designer, who created new and modern structures that could otherwise be assumed impossible to be executed. In other words, his late architectural practice is thus marked by many of his buildings that are admired for a combination of beautiful design and engineering feats.
Works Cited:
"Frank Lloyd Wright - Sharp Family Tourism and Education Center." Florida Southern College, 2015. Web.
"Frequently Asked Questions," Taliesin Preservation Inc. Web.
"The Frank Lloyd Wright Building." Guggenheim, Guggenheim Foundation, 2015. Web.
Toker, Frank. Fallingwater Rising: Frank Lloyd Wright, E.J. Kaufmann, and America's Most Extraordinary House. New York: A.A Knopf, 2003.
