An Analysis of How Feminism Played a Role in Frank Lloyd Wright's Architecture

Much of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life was informed by interaction with women and feminist ideologies. Through these influences Wright developed a feminized thought-process which would later transmit itself into his architecture.  In all truth, Wright may both figuratively and literally owe his career to his feministic upbringing. 

Wright’s feminine influences started at a young age, since his father, who would hardly be considered a “family-man,” left Wright to  be raised mainly by his mother and, during summer excursions in the later years of his childhood, by his aunts who ran the  Hillside Home School in Hillside, Wisconsin.  During his juvenescence, Wright’s mother, who supposedly wanted him to be an  architect since birth, bought him toys that enlightened him in the realm of geometry and mathematics, while his aunts showed  him the wonders of nature.  Both ideologies are prevalent throughout Wright’s architectural career.  Moreover, Wright’s first architectural position with architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee was landed by his family at Hillside after he dropped  out of the University of Wisconsin.  Many of Wright’s earlier designs were similar in form and style to those of which he worked on  with Silsbee, and later the Adler & Sullivan office: sectioned floor plans and ornamented facades; though the commissions showed  he had raw talent, they were too conforming to conventional style for that potential to shine brightly at that point in his career. However, Wright made it prevalent through his increase in daring, yet elegant designs that he wasn’t just another architect with traditional, mainstream ideas.  Once Frank Lloyd Wright was able to achieve an independent architectural status and maintain a higher social standing (with the help of his first wife, Catherine Lee Tobin) and maintain a secure, profitable living, he was more open and confident with his architectural plans.

With Wright becoming more confident in his abilities, he ingrained meaning into his commissions and building schematics.  For example, instead of formally segregated rooms as mentioned previously, Wright constructed “open-concept” style floor plans with the fireplace taking center-stage.  Since the fireplace was considered “the-heart-of-the-home”, it being the centerpiece hints that family members should interact and collaborate with one another; this suggests the concept that a family that is more interactive within itself will be more open with its members on various topics, and therefore have a better understanding of each other.  The concept could be seen as an attempt to compensate for a lack of strong family structure in his early years, or one can look at it as a hint of feminism with the idea that all family members gathering in one place would allow everyone to express their perspectives in some form.  Moreover, everyone would have to walk through the center of the home in order to proceed with their own individual tasks, allowing for not only more possibilities of interaction but an understanding of where other family members are – a handy tool for a mother looking after children.  Another example that was radical during the time period was an unadorned, unembellished home.  Wright used the love of nature he acquired from his aunts to simplify his building facades and allow the structure and its inhabitants to gain a more cohesive life with nature.  The last example of Wright’s underlying meanings in his architecture, but certainly not the least, is the idea the family should have privacy to its own inner workings being translated through barrier-walls located on the perimeters of the properties – onlookers from the streets can’t look in, but the inner circle members can still see out.  The last concept can be seen as a foreshadow of Wright’s future.

In 1909, Wright had a love affair with female commissioner, Mamah Borthwick Cheney.  Cheney, a woman rights activist, shared many of the same political positions as Wright, especially that of “free love”.  Wright and Cheney both agreed that people should be free to love the person of their choosing, and that people in an unhealthy marriage should not be strangled by a loveless marriage.  Due to such similar reformist view-points and their already kindled romance, Wright and Cheney ran off to Europe.  When Wright returned to Oak Park in 1910, he began building Taliesin, a home in Spring Green, Wisconsin where he and Cheney later resided.  Cheney and Wright participated in feminism movements and as well as translated the feminism essays of Ellen Key, until 1914 in which Cheney and six guests were murdered by an arsonistic servant.  Though Wright was devastated by the untimely demise of his soul-mate, he rebuilt Taliesin.  

Twombly, Robert C.  Frank Lloyd Wright, His Life and His Architecture. New York: Wiley-Interscience,  1979. Print.