Forever Celebrating Frank Lloyd Wright

Wright’s building made it socially and culturally acceptable for an architect to design a highly expressive, intensely personal museum. In this sense almost every museum of our time is a child of the Guggenheim. ~ Paul Goldberger

Today is Frank Lloyd Wright’s birthday (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959), architect of the loved Guggenheim Museum in New York. According to architect Philip Johnson, this is Wright’s ‘greatest building, New York’s greatest building.’

There is an old saying about the Guggenheim; you come to see Kandinsky or Picasso, but you stay to see Frank Lloyd Wright. ~ Ultan Guilfoyle

Unfortunately, Wright didn’t get to see the museum open as he passed away 6 months prior.

I wrote about the Guggenheim, and the controversy surrounding it, in a previous blog post, here: The Guggenheim Museum: in ‘All’ its glory

On the West Coast, one of his residential achievements, made famous in particular by the movie Bladerunner, is the Ennis House. Set in the hills of Los Feliz with wonderful views over a low lying Los Angeles, Wright designed the home for Charles and Mabel Ennis in 1923. It was built a year later.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed over 1000 structures, and completed half of them.

I’ll leave you with a quote by the architect himself that, for me, sums up the success and beauty of these two works especially:

Form follows function – that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.

Through the Ennis House gates you can see Los Angeles

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