After sixty years it's still futuristic! Frank Lloyd Wright, some call him the greatest architect who ever lived. He built beautiful buildings almost everywhere. From the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan, to the the Guggenheim Art Museum in New York, he has left his mark far and wide. But in Arizona was his winter home and many other interesting architectural feats.
It all began in Richmond Center, Wisconsin, where he was born Frank Lincoln Wright on June 8, 1867. Mr. Wright later changed his middle name to Lloyd to honor his mother's family. He was predestined by his mother to be a man who designed beautiful buildings. At an early age his mother, Anna Wright, bought him a set of Froebel blocks and encouraged him to build things. Froebel blocks are small wooden building blocks. She also taught him according to the very experimental, Froebel Kindergarten System. His mother decided her son would be an architect.
By the time Wright was of college age, he was also sure of what he was going to be. Since no architectural classes were offered at the University of Wisconsin, Frank learned civil engineering and got a little hands on experienced in his chosen field by working on a school construction project. .
Mr. Wright left the school in 1887 and took a train to Chicago. There, he became a designer for the well known firm, Adler and Sulivan. There they built the twelve story Chicago Auditorium, the Wainwright building, and many more great buildings. At first Frank Lloyd enjoyed working with Sulivan. Sulivan believed the following: "Form must follow function, but there must be a harmony among the elements." Wright admired his tradition-breaking theories. At the 1893 Chicago Worlds Fair, a whole new world opened up for the architect. Adler and Sulivan's Transportation Building was the only one not built in the classic style. Frank and Sulivan both believed in what would be later called "organic architecture," in which natural forms were in agreement with nature; a building must be envisioned as a whole.
