Introduction

Frank Lloyd Wright was a 19th century architect, whose architecture was informed by his feminist thinking. After years of working under Silsbee and Adler & Sullivan, Wright developed his unique prairie style architecture, which stemmed from the idea that buildings are in harmony with nature surrounding them. He was also an avid collector of Japanese art, which became an inspiration for many of his designs along with Mayan art. Wright also developed the concept of Usonia, a city planning consisting of a series of single-story L-shaped homes. Concurrently, he designed cityscapes, such as the Broadacre City and the Living City, large scale urban communities across the country.

I am a senior at Ripon College, majoring in Art History and Classical Studies. I am an architectural enthusiast, currently taking a course on Frank Lloyd Wright.,Spending my childhood with only my mother in a small apartment in a big city, I never understood the concept of living in large family homes. As an only child pressured to be accomplished, I have always been attracted to luxurious mansions, which I associate most with success. Since my late father was a civil engineer, I have taken a lot of interest in architecture and studied his notes whenever possible. As I grew up, the buildings I sketched during my free time are mostly meant for small upper class families, who prefer big and lavish space. I have always been fascinated by mansions, yet the idea of having a large number of people in these houses never occurs to me. In my case, because I grew up with a single parent in a small apartment, I might have developed this admiration for luxurious villas.

Similarly, not having had a large well-to-do family, Frank Lloyd Wright lived extravagantly, joining clubs and civic organizations, dining at the best restaurants, and becoming an art connoisseur. In class, we talked about how this way of living benefited him in creating a positive image as a flourishing architect. However, I believe that the earlier buildings of Wright are anything but embodiment of how Wright wanted his lifestyle to be like. These buildings seem to be designed based on the idea of simplicity and nature despite his ostentatious lifestyle. As a Unitarian, with an open-ended approach to experimental architecture, Wright changed his style over the time. In comparison to his later buildings, such as the Robie House in Chicago, his early architecture, such as the Winslow House, appears strong and rather conventional. However, it is apparent that he was experimenting with the Prairie Style when he built his residence in Oak Park, Illinois. What I noticed from my early life and that of Wright is that our own imaginations of our dream residences exemplify our awareness and attempt to change the reality that has affected us as young children. Whilst I wanted to live in a beautiful mansion, Wright wanted to create his own style inspired by nature – an escape from his monotonous childhood.

The relationship Wright formed with Louis Sullivan seems to have given him the grounding in creating his own unique architectural style. The Charnley House, with its earthy colors and fortress-like appeal, is an example of how Wright’s architecture stemmed from this collaboration. To Wright, Sullivan was a father figure, who actually acknowledged his talents and helped him grow as an architect. The concept of nurture applies to most people including me when it comes to producing works inspired from things that surround us. Like Wright, I had a father figure, of whom I get tired easily because of his interference in my decisions. However, his guidance led me to become a more organized, well-planned person I am today. Undoubtedly, Wright broke away from Sullivan, and yet his early buildings seemed to have been inspired by his familiarity with Silsbee and Sullivan’s architecture. He learned, but he did not stay under the shadow of these architects and started his own trend of design independently. I would consider Wright an opportunist, who benefitted from his professional relationships with his contemporaries, and developed his own Prairie Style architecture.


From the façade alone, Wright’s home in Oak Park can be considered a developing design prior to his Prairie Style, paying attention to the earthy colors and low ceilings. I believe that from this design, he created various other Prairie Style residences, including the Robie House, which I am most familiar with. The transformation from his early style like the George Blossom House to the architecture of the Robie House is tremendous. Despite considerably similar elements such as balance and geometric patterns on the windows, the former looks anything but what people today would associate Wright with. The building is tall, sturdy, and large, with a Palladian façade and traditional neo classical columns. On the other hand, the lines of the Robie House are more horizontal, and the height of the building appears half its length, making the structure more coherent with its environment.

Wright’s architecture transformed throughout his life, but everything started from his childhood inspirations. Like everybody else’s and mine, his early life had both positive and negative effects on his attitude towards his later life, especially towards his architecture and his relationships with others. His buildings can then be considered products of his genius, his experience in his profession, and his adaptation to his surroundings, making him arguably the greatest architect of all time.

The manifestation of wide, open spaces based on the idea of feminism, which Frank Lloyd Wright’s inspirations were drawn upon, is still relevant in today’s buildings. However, the context of these open spaces has changed from ideology to aesthetics and most of the times, functionality.

Wright’s architecture is free-flowing with very few inhibitions in between various spaces in the house. The modern day equivalent today would be the penthouse apartments, in which different areas in the house are not inhibited by any barriers. The difference, however, is that penthouse apartments have relatively open spaces and yet, are flexible enough to arrange the interior to suit the owners’ tastes. This idea of an open space is applied in many other styles of modern day family homes, in which children can move around freely while parents can watch over them. Although similar in appearance, Wright’s feminist idea of equality through spaces is now seen differently in owners’ perspective. The kitchen, for instance, is now in the same space as the living room not because women and men should be living in the same area, but because it is aesthetically more pleasing.

Wright’s architecture seems somewhat reserved and protected, accentuating the idea of a family’s warmth and security. From Philip Johnson on, contemporary architecture favors the idea of transparency for various reasons such as emitting more light for greener architecture. Most of these houses either are situated in large, secluded courtyards or are public buildings. With curtain walls and pellucidity in buildings such as Richard Rogers’s Centre Pompidou, modern architecture focuses more on the environment and technology to provide privacy to the owners.

The concept of fixer-upper is a way in which the architect has no control over the desire of the home owner. Living spaces are transformed to cater to the needs of the owner. Despite the centralized, open space plan, Wright’s vision did not have a lot of relevance to women in the 21st century, when women are working outside and the idea of a feminist space is unnecessary since the concept of equality, rather than the space, becomes more important. Thus, it will not be surprising for a family to hire an interior designer to change Wright’s original inflexible living space. Today’s society has become a lot more equal than it was before in Wright’s time, but the idea of sharing a space in the house is very much taken for granted. As the living expenses get higher, a lot of people – whether married or single – decide to share their living space with another person of similar financial situation.

The idea of centralized feminist living space within a family seems to have changed along with the popularity of apartments. The demand of living spaces grow as the population increases, resulting in the construction of apartment spaces. Roommates are not necessarily exclusively male or female. The concept behind feminist utopian apartments and modern day perception of apartments are similar in a way that everyone can reside equally in the same shared space, yet different in a way that the idea is not just about egalitarianism. It is also about affordability, functionality, and communion.

If Wright were living today, his architecture would have a completely different approach to the idea of people cohabiting in the same place, taking considerations of people requiring more individual privacy within the same household. He would also have to consider the changing landscapes over time, designing structures that correspond to the growing population and urbanization. Wright’s ideas of family oriented and feminist home plans might be effective in the late 19th and early 20th century, when gender and social equality was not as prominent as it is today, and it takes architectural spaces like Wright’s to point out the social issues. With the rapid growth of cities and modernization, his horizontal, low ceiling prairie style with inflexibility on the architect’s part would not be easily accepted if only it were introduced today.