Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright said he could either have "an honest arrogance or a hypocritical humility"; he chose to have the honest arrogance. As a child, his mothermade sure he was given every advantage. He remembersplaying with small wooden stackable building blocks. He was tired of reviving old style and trying to make them new. He wanted to create a whole new style in architecture and design. Wright designed with the interior as the starting point and the exterior followed in a consistent and pleasing way. He popularized the open floor plan and gave a new refreshing feeling to buildings.

To the right is a photo of one of Wrights greatest homes, Falling Water. Fallingwater is perhaps the best-known private home for someone not of royal blood in the history of the world. Reinforced-concrete cantilever slabs project from the rock bed to carry the house over the stream. Below is the Guggenheim Museum. The plea went out to all architects from Hilla Rebay, "I need a fighter, a lover of space, an agitator, a tester and a wise man. . . . I want a temple of spirit, a monument!" ?Hilla Rebay to Frank Lloyd Wright, 1943

"Fallingwater is a great blessing - one of the great blessings to be experienced here on earth. I think nothing yet ever equaled the coordination, sympathic expression of the great principle of repose where forest and stream and rock and all the elements of structure are combined so quietly that really you listen not to any noise whatsoever although the music of the stream is there. But you listen to Fallingwater the way you listen to the quiet of the country ...." Frank Lloyd Wright