Organic Architecture
Introduction
Frank Lloyd Wright (pronounced Richland Center "Richland Center (Wisconsin)", June 8, 1867 - Phoenix, April 9, 1959) was a prolific and prominent avant-garde architect, interior designer, writer, and American educator, who designed more than a thousand works, of which 532 were completed. Wright proposed the design of architectures that were in harmony with humanity and the environment that surrounded them, a philosophy known as organic architecture. He was the initiator of the Prairie School movement, developing the Usonian concept of housing. In 2019, eight of Wright's works were declared World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.
Architectural style
Wright created a new concept regarding the interior spaces of buildings, which he applied in his prairie houses, but also in his other works. Wright rejects the previously existing criterion of interior spaces as cubes within a cube or closed rooms isolated from the others, and designs spaces in which each room or room opens to the others, achieving great visual transparency, a profusion of light and a feeling of spaciousness and openness. To differentiate some areas from others, use low ceilings to open up to narrow spaces in the halls and divisions made of light material or to ceilings of different heights, avoiding unnecessary solid enclosures. With all this, Wright established for the first time the difference between "defined spaces" and "closed spaces."
Wright also studied Japanese and Mayan architecture with great attention and applied a style reminiscent of both Japanese (preferably) and Mayan to many of his homes, and the latter case is known as Mayan Revival. Wright also included styles based on Origami and Art Deco in his furniture.
The elements and shapes that are most repeated in Wright's works are the metal window frames in Cherokee red and refined cement slabs in the same color, the use of glass without visible joints in the corners and fine woods such as cedar or mahogany. Always present in his works is a red tile at the entrance, a horizontal design of an entrance hall with a low ceiling and a narrow staircase that, after passing through, opens to large illuminated spaces.
Wright developed the concept of the Prairie School, an American Indian architectural style based on the prairies that did not share design elements and aesthetic vocabulary with earlier styles of classical European architecture. He then developed the Usonian style, in which he integrates the landscape into the home, a philosophy called organic architecture.