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United States
Wright was born on 1867, in Richland Center, Wisconsin, USA. Before his birth, his mother was determined that the child she was carrying would become the greatest architect of all time.
An educator herself, she discovered the Frobel system of education, called the “kindergarten gifts”, by way of which a child was taught to draw using basic geometric shaps and forms.
His father was a preacher and musician, and taught his son to listen to music “as an edifice of sound.” At the age of twenty he ran away from home, and travelled to Chicago in pursuit of architecture. There he discovered the work of Adler and Sullivan, applied for a job, and worked directly under Louis Sullivan for nearly seven years. In 1893 he established his own practice.
His work in and around Chicago from 1893 to 1909 heralded a new thought in architecture. The “Larkin Building” and “Unity Temple” saw innovations in design and engineering made possible by the technology and materials of the twentieth century. By means of reinforced concrete, glass, steel, sheet metal, the cantilever (support moved in from the edge) he developed an architecture in which the reality of the building was the space within. This evasive element - almost mystical by nature - of liberated interior space, is the pervading quality in everything he built.
In 1932 Wright and his wife Olgivanna founded the Taliesin Fellowship, an architectural school at their home. Soon came the famous commissions for Fallingwater and the Johnson Wax Administration Building.
His work increased as did the power of his creative genius. There seemed to be no end to the variety of forms, ideas, shapes, spaces, concepts and innovations that poured forth from him. He left behind him a group of people dedicated to the conception of organic architecture. Drawing upon those people of the Taliesin Fellowship he established, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation continues to preserve and safeguard his work, archives, and principles of this big Master.