In the new Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, Michael Wyet­zn­er talks a couple of truthful few construct­ings we’ve fea­tured over time right here on Open Cul­ture: the Impe­r­i­al Hotel, the Ennis House, Tal­iesin, Falling­wa­ter. These are all, in fact, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who nonetheless stands because the embod­i­ment of Amer­i­can archi­tec­ture greater than 65 years after his loss of life. That’s a good­ly lengthy stretch by mod­ern stan­dards, however nev­er­the­much less a brief­er one than Wright’s profession, which ran over 70 years. Dur­ing his lengthy life, Wyet­zn­er explains, Wright wit­nessed the intro­duc­tion of indoor plumb­ing, elec­tric­i­ty, the tele­telephone, the auto­mo­bile, the air­aircraft, the radio, tele­vi­sion, and house trav­el — and even giv­en that, his archi­tec­ture exhibits a dra­mat­ic evo­lu­tion.

Start­ning with Wright’s appren­tice­ship in Chica­go beneath Louis Sul­li­van, “the daddy of mod­ernism,” Wyet­zn­er con­tin­ues on to his devel­op­ment of the hor­i­zon­tal indoor-out­door “Prairie Model” home; his Japan­ese com­mis­sions and sub­se­quent much-pho­tographed Los Ange­les hous­es; the emer­gence of his phi­los­o­phy of “organ­ic archi­tec­ture” meant to uni­fy the construct­ing with its web site and nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment; his dis­cov­ery of the desert; and his Depres­sion-era con­cep­tion of the “Uson­ian home,” which adapt­ed his refined spa­tial sen­si­bil­i­ty for Amer­i­can-style mass professional­duc­tion. This could be greater than sufficient for even essentially the most dis­tin­guished archi­tec­t’s profession. But it does­n’t even get round to such tasks because the Uni­ty Tem­ple, John­son Wax Head­quar­ters, the R. W. Lind­holm Ser­vice Sta­tion, the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, or his first and final dog­house.

No mat­ter which peri­od of Wright’s profession you examination­ine, you could find evi­dence for his perception within the inspi­ra­tion of place, in organ­ic aes­thet­ics, in struc­tur­al expres­sive­ness, and even in indi­rect ethical instruc­tion. But it’s additionally pos­si­ble to imag­ine that, in some sense, a sequence of dif­fer­ent Frank Lloyd Wrights exist­ed, repeat­ed­ly destroyed and recre­at­ed by professional­fes­sion­al set­again, per­son­al dis­as­ter, for­eign sojourn, immer­sion in a brand new land­scape, and even acquain­tance with a brand new tech­nol­o­gy. Positive­ly nobody might stay professional­duc­tive to the top of his 92 years with­out a lit­tle re-inven­tion. Dur­ing that point, he designed greater than 1,000 tasks, solely about half of which have been ever constructed. Younger archi­tects who idol­ize Frank Lloyd Wright would do effectively to remem­ber that he, too, knew full effectively the sting of nev­er mak­ing it to con­struc­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Frank Lloyd Wright Became Frank Lloyd Wright: A Video Intro­duc­tion

Frank Lloyd Wright Cre­ates a List of the 10 Traits Every Aspir­ing Artist Needs

That Far Cor­ner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Ange­les – A Free Online Doc­u­men­tary

Frank Lloyd Wright: America’s Great­est Archi­tect? – A Free Stream­ing Doc­u­men­tary

What Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unusu­al Win­dows Tell Us About His Archi­tec­tur­al Genius

What It’s Like to Work in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Icon­ic Office Build­ing

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.