Why Frank Lloyd Wright Is America's Best Architect

thank you Frank Lloyd Wright is the greatest ever American architect [Music] buildings like the Guggenheim Museum the Johnson wax building and falling water are masterpieces that redefine what was possible and became famous the world over but I think the true nature of Frank Lloyd White's genius has become lost buried under Tales of his tempestuous life or made into the stuff of coffee table books I'm Jonathan Adams an architect from Wales and my 30-year career has taken me all over the world throughout it all Frank Lloyd Wright has been a constant Touchstone now I'm going to

travel across America to get to know Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest buildings for myself I want to understand how they were conceived how they work and how they make us feel [Music] most of all I want to explore the underlying philosophy that all these buildings share and Floyd Wright called it organic architecture and today 150 years after his birth I think it puts him back at the heart of modern architectural thinking [Music] in a career that spans seven decades Frank Lloyd Wright built over 500 buildings and the one he's best known for is his final one

the Guggenheim Museum in New York [Music] foreign isn't just something that's beautiful to look at all his life Frank Lloyd Wright strove to create buildings that expressed an idea of how he should live and understand the world [Music] I'd like to have a free architecture I'd like to have architecture that belonged where you see it standing and with the grace to the landscape instead of a disgrace and the letters we received from our class tell us how those buildings we built for them have changed the character of their whole life and our whole existence that

is different now than it was before [Music] Wright's own life was turbulent involving Financial ruin adultery and tragedy through it all he stuck to a personal Creed based on hard work a love of Nature and a fierce independence of thought [Music] sound like thoroughly American ideals but I think to understand what really shaped Wright's ideas and the man himself you have to begin the story far away from America and closer to where I come from [Music] thank you [Music] Frank Lloyd Wright's Welsh roots are no secret he was proud of them and spoke of them

all his life his mother Anna Lloyd Jones was born in 1838 near thundercil in West Wales her family was large and devout and at their Chapel they practiced a radical brand of Christianity known as Unitarianism all his life Frank Lloyd Wright would draw inspiration from this free-thinking spiritual inheritance Unitarian seagulls in anything and in all things we often Talk of the Wonder the awesomeness the magnificence of of Nature and of the world that we're all a part of we've always placed a huge emphasis on the individual's freedoms to choose and to pick and to decide

for themselves where their understanding of God and of human nature lie Unitarianism fit in with the people here the people who were everyday hard-working low-paid people looking for that freedom and for that Spirit of of liberalism it might have been the search for Religious Freedom that took Anna's family away from Wales in 1844 the Lloyd Jones Clan parents children aunts and uncles left home bound for a new Freer life in the New World [Music] the family sailed to New York and then with Pioneer Spirit set off Westward to find a new home [Music] what they

were looking for was something familiar something like the land they knew and understood [Music] finally they came upon their new whales wooded gently sloping land near Spring Green Wisconsin to Frank Lloyd Wright this place would become a lifelong spiritual Touchstone known simply as the valley the valley that they chose to live in became so identified with them and their purpose and their way of living that some people called it the Valley of the god almighty Jones says they didn't really want to become Americans you know they wanted to be Welsh on American soil it was

into this world that in 1867 Frank Lloyd Wright was born it was here too that his values were shaped throughout his childhood Frank would spend his Summers here in the valley they bring on the farm living a rural life and hearing the Welsh language of his aunts and uncles for the rest of his days he would look back on those Summers as a kind of paradise Frank's mother encouraged his early Ambitions to build after studying engineering at a local College he left home to seek an architectural apprenticeship [Music] as luck would have it the nearest

city was one of the most exciting places in the entire world for an aspiring young architect Chicago new styles of building were being created here including the skyscraper before long Wright's youthful energy and talent landed him a job with the city's leading architect and it was in Chicago too that he found his first love Catherine Tobin known as Kitty was just 16 when they met within two years they were married and had a child of their own on the way Frank Lloyd Wright was a young man in a hurry borrowing money from his boss he

bought a plot of land here in the respectable suburb of Oak Park the place where it was said the saloons ended and the Steeples began and it was here that he first built a home for himself [Music] it might be difficult for anyone looking at this today to see it as anything other than a slightly quirky Gable fronted Suburban House it's only when you put it alongside all of the other houses of the same period here or anywhere else in the western world that you realize just how strange it is take this massive symmetry it's

highly classical but stylized you can see the faint outlines of the triangle impediment of a greek temple with the two bays at the bottom instead of columns supporting the weight is classical discipline applied to a small cottage the upper part of the house conveys a huge sense of weight and sanctity so you might expect the inside to be Pokey and dark but what you actually find is the opposite the rooms all flow one into another it must have been a huge surprise to people back in the 1880s this is open Plan before the idea of

open plan really existed perhaps this is where it began the free flow of Rights design reflects an idea of family life learned in the Unitarian Valley of his childhood honest equal and communal he even inscribed these values above the hearth clear for all to see in its open spaces and its open spirit Frank Lloyd writes Oak Park home was his first step towards a new kind of architecture over the next few years Wright's career took off his house attracted the attention of curious Neighbors and commissions flowed in who had eventually design over 50 houses for

local clients many like his own still experiments with traditional forms by now Frank and kitty had six children Wright was in his late 30s and more than ready for his big break but when that came it was a bolt from the blue every Sunday Frank Lloyd Wright and his young family would walk a half mile to worship at the local Unitarian Church it wasn't the kind of building that he really approved of it was vaguely Gothic with a pretentious spire and then one night in 1905 it was struck by lightning and it burned to the

ground never slow to see his chance Wright proposed a new building for the site it was unlike anything seen before in America [Music] Wright's plans for the new building cast aside all traditional Styles as he seized the chance to express his own spiritual and Architectural beliefs gone would be ornament arches and the Shoei spire what emerged instead was Unity Temple the world's first truly modern building [Music] few people even today would guess that this is a church the building doesn't even have an obvious way in the very material that Unity Temple is constructed from seems

unsuitable for a place of worship these walls and every detail of the exterior are made from solid unadorned reinforced concrete rights justification was that it was cheap a utilitarian material used for low-grade engineering structures the impoverished Church committee was persuaded to go along writes real reason for using concrete was that it was a new and exciting technology with unlimited potential it put Frank Lloyd Wright just where he wanted to be on his own at the frontier of architecture if the exterior of unity Temple expressed an idea of the Divine it was in austere geometric forms

but the space that those forms created on the inside was among Frank Lloyd Wright's most beautiful and spiritually uplifting rooms no foreign the sanctuary of unity Temple is a perfect square Golden Light streams in through colored glass in the coffered ceiling while ornament and structure combine to unite the whole [Music] this building is unique it is hard to figure out how to even get into the sanctuary when you find it it just opens up and it's a gem of a space I love the intimacy this capacity to worship while in community with one another being

able to see one another it's the most important part of the building for the most of us [Music] right based the distinctive interior layout of unity Temple closely on the Lloyd Jones family Chapel back in Wales but his new building's overall radicalism was still too much for some in its congregation said that they prayed for Ivy and were happy when Ivy came [Music] all the while that Unity Temple was taking shape Frank Lloyd Wright was busy designing houses by now he had his own architectural practice and his designs had become far more daring pointed roofs

had started to flatten out as Windows widened Sellers and attics vanished and houses spread out low to the ground Wright was inspired by the vast Open Spaces that stretched away Beyond Chicago the buildings even became known as Prairie houses [Music] this early vision's Perfection with the Robie house a gorgeous steamship of a building with Windows like prows it sailed to an open Green Landscape a vessel of the Midwest Prairie [Music] the Robie house looked as modern and Powerful as the Great Lakes Steamers that docked in Chicago it was an impressive feat of engineering the huge

projecting roof was right's most daring to date inside two Wright used this building to experiment creating a sense of drama around the simple Act of entering you come into the Roby house through the front door which is actually at the back and you find yourself in this low dark Lobby which pushes you towards this flight of stairs and as you climb the stairs you get glimpses of light at the top which lead you upwards and build a sense of anticipation but then you're forced to turn and you turn again and then there's another few steps

which lead you up and one final turn and then you're released into this fantastic wide room surrounded by windows and Bays with natural light foreign [Music] like to call conventional houses boxes and their rooms boxes within boxes in the unlimited free flow of the Robie house to use his own phrase he destroys the Box [Music] one final thing about the Robie house that's true of almost all of Wright's houses if you commissioned one you didn't just get the building you got the furniture too which Wright designed along with a list of do's and don'ts curtains

and blinds were out as were paintings on the wall and ornaments Wright had astonishing self-belief almost to the point of being overbearing he called interior decorators inferior desecraters and it wasn't unusual to former clients to arrive home to find that right had made an unannounced visit and rearranged all their furniture in the case of the Robie house he even designed a dress for Mrs Roby to wear here [Music] Frank Lloyd Wright now in his early 40s was riding high and creating a real stir but increasingly he was chafing against conventional family life in a polite

suburb he himself started to see that the world was a lot bigger than Oak Park and at a certain point he realized that he was interested in looking much further forward how did he become someone to reckon with well one way to do that is to dress differently and to go go out more and to have girlfriends I suppose I think that was the start of what was Michael Ole Miss anti-social Behavior [Music] rights unconventional conduct crossed the line when he began an affair with the wife of a client Neymar Cheney was a feminist a

free thinker the ideal partner for a radical man albeit a mother of two when their relationship was discovered Wright took decisive action closing down his Studio he abandoned his family and together with maymar fled to Europe [Music] when the couple returned a year later it was to set up home together Wright knew they wouldn't be welcome in Oak Park so he began building a new house on land owned by his mother it was in the one place that for him represented safety community and integrity the valley of his childhood he even gave his new house

a centuries-old Welsh name Taliesin foreign sits on the Bro of a hill as Wright like to point out his Welsh name actually means shining brow is being compared to an Italian Villa or even to a medieval Welsh Farmstead a fortified State built at a time when he needed to feel secure [Music] but Taliesin is very much more besides more than any other building it embodies Wright's ideal of how architecture and nature should coexist I said that Taliesin sits on the hill Frank Lloyd Wright would have taken pleasure in correcting me he preferred to say that

it was of the Hill that it Graces the hill that the hill and the house are improved by each other so that they become a Unity I learned a lot from the way that he marries his buildings with the landscape and the way they they are juxtaposition with each other and the way that spaces flow through them it sort of comes out of the landscape it's constant and it's Green Hills and trees and grass and so that I remember being unbelievably impressed Wright summed up the philosophy that lay behind Taliesin in a simple phrase organic

architecture it's a memorable expression but just what is it that makes a building organic well here he used local materials Stone sand and Timber sourced from nearby and what's more the same materials are used inside and outside so that interior and exterior flow together windows are low and linear so that when you're seated inside you have a continuous view through Treetops as if you're elevated floating among them but it's important to say that for right organic architecture didn't just mean using local materials and blending a building into a landscape what he meant was that the

philosophy of the building what it says about how we should live would when blended with a carriage of the site give rise naturally and organically to its unique form in this case a building that belongs to its Hill and could never be built anywhere else Frank Lloyd Wright and Neymar Chaney lived happily at Taliesin for all that local newspapers dubbed their house a love bungalow Wright was defiant around the building he carved the Welsh symbol that represented his Unitarian family motto truce against the world but the dream of this new world wasn't to last [Music]

Taliesin like almost all large houses of its time was built to be run by servants but writes liberal principles meant that here they lived on the main floor with everybody else not in some Pokey Garrett treat your servants as your friends right had written in 1914 a new servant was taken on at Taliesin Julian Carlton a butler an all-round help one day in September when Frank Lloyd Wright was away the unimaginable happened at taliese while Neymar and her children were sitting down to lunch Julian Carlton ranamok using petrol He Set Fire to the house as

its terrified residents fled he attacked them with a hatchet seven people died here including May marchaney and her two young children Taliesin was all but destroyed the seemingly senseless Slaughter made national headlines Julian Carlton refused to speak about what he'd done he starved himself to death in jail two months later [Music] Chaney was buried in the valley in sight of the ruins of Taliesin [Music] the years after the Calamity were turbulent ones for Frank Lloyd Wright he had gone from the happiest time of his life to the time of deepest despair he threw himself into

the rebuilding of Taliesin but much of the decade he spent working abroad when he returned to America it would not be to the Midwest seen of his previous triumphs and his greatest tragedy instead he turned to a New Horizon and an extraordinary new phase in his work [Music] Wright received five commissions to build houses in Los Angeles the biggest and boldest of them was designed for a wealthy La couple the enesis if Taliesin is off the hill the Ennis house really is on the hill this is a fortress it's a mysterious interior place that sits

proud in its landscape is it organic the building that perfectly suits its City the ambition and boldness of LA and the bright Sun that shines here all year round [Music] for Frank Lloyd Wright now 57 years old the Ennis house was a creative rebirth the design was inspired by the ancient forms of Mayan temples but to build it Wright devised a brand new construction method the entire house was made out of patterned concrete blocks 27 000 of them all manufactured on site as the building Rose steel rods were threaded between them for support right like

to say he was weaving here rather than building I think you can see what he meant you have these steel rods running along these joints interleaving the warp and weft and then the concrete blocks that form the Finish he also said that he wanted to elevate an unloved Building Material The Humble concrete block into something much more beautiful and he certainly succeeded entering the Ennis house feels like stepping into an adventure the forbidding exterior really gives you no idea what to expect [Music] inside the house is made from exactly the same concrete blocks as outside

but whereas the exterior is solid and massive these columns create a series of intriguing interlinked spaces this really is it's an incredible space being inside this rock-like structure makes you feel as if you're in a complex of caves it's a really powerful sense of Mystery no idea how far it extends or where you're being taken I think that's what Mr made it such an exhilarating place to live [Music] there's a timelessness and a drama to the Ennis house and it's no surprise that it's proved a favorite with Hollywood filmmakers [Music] has been featured in horror

films and thrillers and most famously in the seminal 1980s science fiction film Blade Runner [Music] Chia originality of Wright's creation means it can fit easily into any world of the imagination it's remarkable given how instantly recognizable this building is the Ennis house was a Triumph for Frank Lloyd Wright but as the 1920s Drew to a close stormclothes were once again Gathering [Music] Wright had found a new love was montenegrin a professional dancer and some 30 years his Junior their relationship became mired in Scandal business suffered and worse was to follow [Music] the Wall Street crash

of 1929 decimated American architecture and for three years Frank Lloyd Wright had not a single Commission [Music] always a spendthrift he was finally flat broke now in his mid-60s Wright was coming to be seen as yesterday's man a talent who had faded away some simply assumed that he was dead [Music] then at Taliesin something remarkable happened plan was hatched that would define Wright's later life it was ingenious but simple the legendary Frank Lloyd Wright would offer apprenticeships the Taliesin Fellowship was born [Music] the fellowship did a lot of things for a ride [Music] provided him

with young men and women who wanted to learn and who were very happy to work in the in the garden in the farm they were building they were cooking cleaning and most of them had the money to support right in a way that he couldn't possibly otherwise have managed Mr Right said this is not a school and I'm not a teacher you're here to help me with my work and if you get something out of that that's good you were really here to help him but you know when you're helping a master unless you're just

totally immune to it your life gets changed it's as though there was like a real magician not a fake and that magician made things happen just by being there [Music] but in the huge drafting room at Taliesin real architectural work was in short supply all right and his apprentices could do was to draw and dream then at last a commission came in the result would relaunch Frank Lloyd Wright's career and take it to new heights in 1933 a wealthy Pittsburgh businessman Edgar Kaufman decided to rebuild his holiday Cottage deep in the Pennsylvania Woodland [Music] as

chance would have it his son was an apprentice at Taliesin Wright and Kaufman met and the deal was done foreign s of Kaufman's new house has the quality of a legend Frank Lloyd Wright visited and surveyed this very challenging site and it had detailed maps of it drawn up but afterwards months passed with no sign of progress [Music] then talies in one day the phone rang Mr Kaufman was in the area could he call by and look at Frank's plans for the new building Wright sat down in his drafting room and in just two hours

sat down an astonishing vision [Music] what he had designed has been called the greatest House of the 20th century falling water [Music] years on from its construction still takes your breath away looking fantastically modern and yet timeless thank you [Music] foreign I've been looking at buildings for a very long time now and I've not seen anything quite as thrilling as this [Music] falling water that's the one quintessential building to me the way it's situated on in its landscape the way it occupies a space which is much bigger than its physical size in our minds it's

a vast city of horizontals and verticals in that one building you create a modern architecture [Music] now the fundamental call that Wright made was also the most daring Edgar Kaufman had expected that his new house would be cited somewhere around here looking back at the waterfall nobody anticipated that Wright beside the building directly on top of the Fall itself and yet that one inspired decision led directly to this extraordinary floating almost dreamlike building that we see today the huge slab of rock from which the water drops was echoed by right in Falling Waters extraordinary projecting

Terraces the effect is to harmonize the building with its setting something conspicuously man-made yet in sympathy with nature inside too every detail of falling water responds to the Natural World in which it is set the floor is polished Stone and evokes the rippled surface of the river below just before it goes over the falls the long lines of Windows lift you into the Treetops while the vibrant chairs and rugs are like birds or flowers bright splashes of color in the Deep canopy [Music] there's a wonderful feeling of security here of being in a shelter in

the wild there's even room at falling water for a staircase that leads nowhere just down to the water where you can stand and contemplate [Music] after Baron years falling water was Frank Lloyd Wright's most spectacular success Vindication of his lifelong architectural philosophy no other building of Rights more clearly expresses his personal idea of organic design the waterfall on its own was undoubtedly beautiful but it's enhanced by this vision of a building that seems to have grown out of the rocks and trees while still pushing technology to its limits very few buildings anywhere from any time

in history Express an uplifting idea of Humanity's place in the world like this one does [Music] foreign [Music] water was being built work was progressing rapidly on a second breakthrough project [Music] it's hardly a bit more different a flat industrial lot on the outskirts of a dull Wisconsin town the commission didn't sound inspiring either an office building for a cleaning products company but once again Wright worked his magic [Music] [Applause] when you look at it today the Johnson Max building is straight out of interscience fiction even on a gray day like this fulfills me with

a sense of joyous possibilities thank you it's when you step inside though that the genius of the building fully reveals itself wow I don't know our inspiring room the great workroom of the SC Johnson Building has been called the greatest room in All American architecture and you can see why Wright's answer to the dreary surroundings was simple enough no windows instead he created an artificial interior world that is itself as inspiring and uplifting as a wild landscape [Music] delicate light enters through patterns of Pyrex tubes while huge otherworldly columns leap up to the skies [Music]

the beauty of Wright's design was clear for all to see but back in the 1930s the technical challenge of turning Vision into reality was making some people distinctly nervous these extraordinary columns like nothing the local building Control Officers had ever seen and so before construction could begin they insisted on testing one under a full load right as confident a showman as he was an engineer was happy to oblige and to invite the Press along six tons of sandbags were loaded onto the column the officials were satisfied but Frank Lloyd Wright had a point to prove

ten turns went on then 20 and finally 60 terms right Strode up to the column kicked it hit it with his Cane it was only when the wooden props holding the column upright were removed that it finally crashed down there was so much weight on it that a sewer 20 feet underground fractured foreign columns allowed him to create a vast cathedral-like room it embodied his lifelong Unitarian belief in the sanctity of Nature and the sanctity of work [Music] it's called the great work room for a for a good reason it's a great place to work

when you're working here it's like working in a Glade of trees [Music] laughs with the sun streaming down through the glass tubing in the ceiling and creating these wonderful vistas of a sense of outdoorness it's an incredible place to work the twin triumphs of the Johnson wax building and falling water a in a new period of creativity and success for right it's been said that American lives have no second act well here was one perhaps bigger and Bolder than the first by now Frank Lloyd Wright was 70 years old and life was good his home

was still Taliesin now standing proud once more in the Wisconsin Valley of his childhood he was happily married to olgavana but there was one thing about life at Taliesin that she could no longer bear the long frozen Winters when temperatures plummeted to -20 and snow settled for months on end and so in 1937 a convoy set off from Taliesin in the depths of December [Music] the cars were packed with Provisions the tools of the trade and the entire Taliesin Fellowship from now on winter would be spent at a new home in the Sun [Music] the

parched Arizona desert was the most extreme environment that Frank Lloyd Wright had ever built in [Music] it would test his philosophy of organic architecture to the Limit and result in the kind of building never seen before [Music] thank you talies in West is such a unique and beautiful place it was designed and constructed over seven years and it was Loosely based on a diagram that connects the various angles of the building to geological features and to prominent hilltops on the horizon it's like a piece of free-form architectural jazz [Music] Taliesin West was constructed entirely by

members of the fellowship building suppliers were hard to come by in the desert so right improvised turning to the boulders that Lit at the site I love this material Wright called it desert Masonry and I bet that anyone who studied here during those years could take me straight to their section of the wall and that they would recognize their own Boulders almost as if they were personal friends the massive walls of Taliesin West seemed to grow out of the desert floor itself but on top of them right placed canvas it was so delicate it had

to be replaced each year as if Pioneers were making camp [Music] inside and outside were never more happily merged it was a kind of natural air conditioning a building that worked with its environment and not against it it was actually green architecture before that phrase even existed open Airy world of Taliesin West created a relaxed communal way of living and working today it's home to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture a place where students still work and live together the Allure of Frank Lloyd Wright lives on [Music] when you see the level of freedom

and experimentation they had that it was not concerned with with a particular style or keeping things as they are but actually into challenging and questioning what architecture means and I think that's what we really can take away from from the experience of being in in his legacy right before [Music] [Music] the years passed and Frank Lloyd Wright approached the age of 90. he was now the grand old man of American architecture lorded by his peers at home and abroad interviewed on television a household name I understand that last week in all seriousness you said if

I had another 15 years to work I could rebuild this entire country I could change the nation I did say that and it's true he continued to work tirelessly designing a Unitarian Church [Music] a skyscraper a synagogue and as ever houses [Music] but in the self-proclaimed capital of American architecture he had failed to make any mark with his final Masterpiece Frank Lloyd Wright would change all that [Music] thank you foreign there is a wonderful picture of him six months before he died on top of the burger High Museum and he's looking on top of the

world I think that's a very apt metal for him I think Frank was having a lot of fun saying here it is take her to leave it you know I'm the boss here this is what I'm giving you the evolution of the Guggenheim is fascinating and it's a great illustration of how right worked so much in his late career was there in embryo in his early days but his philosophy and his imagination never change course here he turned to an old unbuilt design that featured a ramp for cars to drive up first he turned it

upside down so that the building was wider at the top then he turned it inside out putting the ramp on the interior the result became one of the most famous buildings in the world foreign [Music] Art Museum was Frank Lloyd Wright's poking the eye for New York City and the people he called the glass box boys the modernist Architects and critics who had no time for his work into their landscape of soaring vertical lines glass and right angles he smuggled a low curvaceous newcomer stole the show [Music] inside the Guggenheim was The Logical culmination of

Wright's lifelong desire to open up interiors and create a free flow of space it's a building with just one room and one path to follow Some people prefer to start at the top others like me would rather begin at the bottom but once you're on your way Frank Lloyd Wright is leading you every step you take in traditional museums you're sometimes not sure where you're going whether you've missed a room or if there might be better art hiding just around the corner here everything is open you can see where you're going how far you have

to go and the artworks that await you you're drawn naturally up The Path and after looking closely at the painting in front of you can turn away and relax to an open Vista the movement of people and glimpses of artworks on the walls you're not just looking at art you're getting a lesson in the act of looking at art [Music] back in the 1950s however many people thought that rights designed for a circular Art Museum was little short of Madness [Music] the sloping walls they said would mean that paintings lean backwards the windows would allow

in too much or too little light and as for Wright's choice of color that was better not mentioned in the end that unrightian thing a compromise was reached the color was off-white the paintings were fixed on brackets off the wall and daylight was mixed with fluorescent light [Music] I'd say I like the building more because I don't really try and fight it any longer what we like to say to one another is we're a circle in a world of squares it was a bloody expensive building but you see the unbelievable joy and astonishment particularly first-time

visitors and that doesn't come through so often in today's world [Music] [Music] Frank Lloyd Wright died in April 1959. six months before the Guggenheim Museum opened [Music] his life had encompassed a huge swathe of History born in the wake of the American Civil War the son of a pioneer he died a television personality in the space age [Music] he had changed architecture not just in America but around the world Frank Lloyd Wright was laid to rest in the one place that meant most to him the valley of his childhood among his ancestors [Music] thank you