Feminism

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

Much of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life was
dominated by female interaction and ideologies. Through these various
influences Wright developed a more feminized thought-process in 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 through-out Wright’s architectural
career.

Moreover, Wright’s first architectural job
position with architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee was accredited to 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 still elegant designs that he wasn’t just another
architect with traditional, main-stream ideas.  Such an idea is
evident in the sense that, once Frank Lloyd Wright was able to achieve a
certain social status (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 Keys, 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.  

Though Wright was slowly making a comeback after his love scandal, World War II hit and caused the architect's second commission slump, which lasted until the commission for Fallingwater in 1934.  Fallingwater, Wright's saving grace and start of his second career-based comeback, is currently perhaps his most famous architectural structure, at least as far as residences go.  Here, Wright brings in his best architectural concepts, from simplistic geometric designs and daring structures to natural local building materials and creating a sense of equilibrium between industry and nature, all concepts of which can be traced back to his earlier feminine influences.  Such examples of feminism in Wright's architecture can be found in most, if not all of his later commissions.

Works Cited:

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