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- Frank Lloyd Wright
-
-
- (OCTOBER 7, 1929)
-
- Frank Lloyd Wright is rated a very original, great and
- influential architect indeed, although personally impulsive and
- improvident. Last week certain of his Chicago friends decided
- that they could at least overcome his improvidence. They made
- him become an institution with a charter. Frank Lloyd Wright,
- Inc. has issued $50,000 worth of preferred stock. He himself is
- no stockholder.
-
- Architect Wright was born in 1869 on a Wisconsin farm where
- he spent his precocious childhood tending sheep. With no formal
- education he informally studied engineering at the University
- of Wisconsin. Although he received no degree he became unusually
- proficient in that profession. Twenty years ago his reputation
- in architecture was worldwide.
-
- The basic philosophies of his buildings are: 1) They,
- especially homes, should be constructed as integral parts of
- their landscapes and of the materials of the neighborhood. His
- thrice-built home at Spring Green seemed a rocky outcropping of
- the hill itself. 2) Buildings (factories, theaters, hotels)
- should interpret the spirit as well as suit the use of their
- occupancies. This has created blocky, mechanistic, "modernistic"
- structures. His most representative factory building is that of
- the Larkin Co. at Buffalo; his best hotel the Imperial at Tokyo,
- famed for octagonal copper bathtubs and "skyscraper"
- furniture. People for whom he builds homes yield to his artistic
- bullying. His commissions--and therefrom the profits on which
- Frank Lloyd Wright, Inc. can count--enable him to maintain
- offices at Chicago, Los Angeles, Tokyo.
-
-