Frank Lloyd Wright was the most famous architect of the 20th century. He turned traditional forms to designs based on the building's purpose and its location. The use of new construction materials and methods made his buildings models of engineering efficiency as well as of architectural beauty. Wright was so much in advance of his time that he had to fight for acceptance of each new design. Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin, on June 8, 1969. (Fitch, 1959) His father was a preacher and music teacher, his mother was the daughter of a Welshman who had settled in the Wisconsin River valley. She began encouraging Wright at a young age to become interested in the creative enterprise. At age 15 Wright entered college at the University of Wisconsin. He studied engineering because the school had no course in architecture. (Tributes to Frank…..1959) Wright left college to work as an architectural draftsman in Chicago. Soon after that he became Louis Sullivan's personal draftsman. Sullivan was well known for the development of the skyscraper. At that time Wright was beginning to abandon accepted forms and inspired him with his credo “Form follows function.” Soon after starting work for Sullivan, Wright was given most of the firm's house designing to do. Wright loved luxury and his expenses mounted. To help pay for many of his debts, he designed homes for private clients. Sullivan disapproved and Wright started up his own design office. As an independent architect, Wright created the houses for which he is best known. Having low pitched roofs and extending lines, they seem to be a part of the surrounding environment as though it had grown there. In 1916 in Japan, Wright designed the quakeproof Imperial Hotel. (Smith, 1985) He used cantilever construction and floated the structure on an underlying sea of mud. The structure suffered little in the catastrophic earthquake of 1923.In 1949 Wright was awarded the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Architects. The award read: “Frank Lloyd Wright had moved men's minds…he has kindled men's hearts…he was, and is a titantic force.” Two of Wright's greatest works include the Falling Waters house located in Pennsylvania, and the Guggenheim Museum building in New York. (Bendiner, 1958)

Eloquent Advocacy of Architecture
First, Wright’s eloquent advocacy of architecture in harmony with nature has never been more critical to our future survival. The most potent current movement in world architecture is "sustainability" or what has been termed "Green Architecture." Growing awareness of the planet's limited capacity to sustain its voracious, rapidly multiplying inhabitants has made ecological sensitivity a global priority. Wright defined his architecture as "organic," which he saw as a principle of order, structure, and form inherent in the processes of nature, and he demonstrated its intensely practical and psychological benefits over and over in such exemplary works as the dramatic Kaufman house, Falling water; (Hess & Hughes, 1993) his own Wisconsin home place, Taliesin; and the remarkable solar hemicycle Jacobs II House in Madison. His suburban and rural houses, built of natural, renewable materials, facing onto living gardens, and warmed by the sun's rays, have been described as "the best prototypes of true environmental houses." Frank Lloyd Wright is increasingly recognized as the one architect of the previous era who intuitively sensed the essential interdependence of architecture and the natural environment. (Blake, 1958)

Affordable housing for the American middle class
Second, an essential contribution on which Wright's continuing significance rests will likely proves surprising to many. Wright is sometimes unfairly criticized as having been merely an architect for the rich. While it is true that he designed a number of luxurious homes for upper-middle-class families made prosperous by the nation's robust economy, none of these designs were deliberately ostentatious or wasteful. At the same time, only one American architect constantly insisted on the importance of the conception and design of affordable housing for the American middle class. From the very beginning of his career, Wright presented numerous innovative concepts for urban and suburban housing. He consistently employed the latest technologies and imaginative spatial strategies to achieve economical but humane residential environments. Many of his proposals went unrealized; but in the depths of the Great Depression, his lifelong determination to solve this "major architectural problem" resulted in the exceptional creation of a house type he called "Usonian." These modestly scaled and relatively inexpensive houses provided an updated vision of the ideal family home -- efficient, wedded to the landscape, "modern" in the best sense of the word (Wright invented and named the "carport," which he introduced in this house type), and amazingly rich in its architectural qualities. As many as eighty distinctive variations on this theme were built by Wright himself, and their influence was extended by numerous architects and builders who incorporated his remarkable innovations in their own productions. (Pope, 1948)

Twentieth-century American Architecture
Third, the buildings and the houses, of Frank Lloyd Wright are among the most vivid records of twentieth-century American life. Wright sought to create architecture fully expressive of the American spirit, free of imported conventions and values. His rejection of European classicism (and later, the so-called "International Style") enabled him, nearly alone among American architects of his generation, to explore in a frank and clearheaded way the emerging patterns of family life in this still-young country. Near the end of his life he would write, "To say the house planted by myself in the good earth of the Chicago prairie as early as 1900, or earlier, was the first [true] expression of our democracy in architecture would start a controversy with [those] who believe that architecture has no political [and therefore no social] significance." No stranger to controversy, Wright intended nothing less than a total declaration of architectural independence for America, in its own way as radical as the 1776 Declaration penned by his hero, Thomas Jefferson.

His proudly named "Prairie Houses" were eloquent testimony to the spirit of optimism and confidence so evident at the beginning of what became known as "The American Century." Spacious, sheltering, uncluttered, and furnished with Wright-designed built-ins, these houses were perfectly conceived to enhance and ennoble modern life. Three decades later, Wright's Usonian houses, discussed above, redefined the patterns of American family life in terms of the crisis of the Depression. The idea of architecture expressive of the essential character of a people and of a nation is one of the persistent themes of architecture's long history. It has engaged the most passionate and ambitious of architects. For Wright it seemed not just a worthwhile objective, but one on which an authentic American culture depended. As Jean Sibelius stated, "Art is the signature of civilizations."

These three central ideals guided Frank Lloyd Wright's unrivaled creative work, enabling him to produce an enduring legacy. They seem to me as relevant today as they were in Wright's lifetime, and yet they remain unrealized. Their fulfillment is surely among the great challenges of the new century.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim
Five months after Hiroshima, Frank Lloyd Wright was explaining his concept for the yet-to-be-built Guggenheim Museum to some reporters. The building was to be a spiral, coiled “like a spring," the ramp one continuous ribbon from top to bottom. He said that when the first atomic bomb lands on New York, it will not be destroyed. It may be blown a few miles up into the air, but when it comes down it will bounce. (Taylor, 1992)

America’s greatest (and most hyperbolic) architect turned out, in a way, to be right. The Guggenheim, which finally opened in 1959, is indestructible as an idea, if not as concrete and glass. With its creamy, cantilevered curves, and its soaring interior space and vertigo-inducing overhangs, the spiraling Guggenheim embodied the futuristic spirit of the atomic age. Hovering like an elegant UFO among the upright dowager apartment houses of Fifth Avenue, it is Wright's most famous creation and probably the most unforgettable building in America. (Taylor, 1992)
So when the museum's top brass decided in 1985 to add on to this icon, architecture preservationists and the building's neighbors went nuts. They fought the addition, designed by Charles Gwathmey and Robert Siegel, stalling construction for years, and prompting some taming of the design. The museum that critics first decried as looking like a washing machine or an inverted cupcake was now so beloved that changing it inspired yet another metaphor. People said the boxy, 10-story annex, wedged behind the Wright rotunda, and would make the whole thing look like a giant toilet. (Taylor, 1992)

Next week, two years after it closed for construction, the Guggenheim will reopen, just in time to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Wright's birth. The museum is tossing a series of black-tie parties to celebrate its new incarnation, but all the champagne in New York won't douse the controversy over tampering with a masterpiece. It's a perpetual, thorny question: should a building be so sacred for its artistry that no matter how it is it must never be altered?

In truth, the Wright building always had deficiencies as a museum. Even before it opened, a group of abstract expressionists, including Willem de Kooming and Robert Motherwell, protested that it would be a lousy place to see their art. They were right. Anyone who wants to get some distance on a big, splashy painting hung in one of the mean, low-ceilinged alcoves must back right into the railing along the spiraling ramp. Critic Ada Louise Huxtable, reviewing the Guggenheim in 1959, called it "less a museum than it is a monument to Mr. Wright." (Blake, 1959) The airy new Gwathmey-Siegel galleries in the annex add 10,290 square feet of space that will be hospitable to all kinds of art. And new office space in the annex means the Guggenheim could move staff out of the old building's small rotunda and restore it as a wonderful new space.

That undeniably successful about the new Guggenheim is, in fact, the interior restoration of the Wright building. It is dazzling. Wright died, at 91, six months before the Guggenheim opened; from the start, the museum's director, James Johnson Sweeney, subverted some of the architect's intentions. The top turn of Wright's spectacular spiral was walled off to make room for conservation lab and art storage. And the skylights were covered up to protect the paintings from the sun even though Wright had wanted art to be seen in "naturally changing light." Now the public can take the ramp to the very top of the rotunda. The skylights, with protective glass, are uncovered, flooding the space with daylight that plays up Wright's fabulous sculptural curves. And people can wander into the small rotunda, a magical space of more curves and light, with Wright's central stairwell shaped like the prow of a ship. From there a visitor can see into the big rotunda and the new galleries in the annex. (Andersen, 1992)

Sensitive details: The gracious new galleries mesh with the old unobtrusively: you enter the annex from various points off the ramp, all located discreetly behind the elevator shaft. It's a Wright-like idea to go through a compressed passage, and then come into an explosion of light and expansive space. The new galleries are full of sensitive details and some wonderful moments: the cast-concrete cornice of the small rotunda, for instance, curves into one gallery by piercing through an exterior glass wall. (Taylor, 1992)

Wright believed that architecture should be linked to nature, and the new rooftop terraces--one atop the small rotunda, the other circling the big copper-clad dome-put you up near the leafy treetops of Central Park across Fifth Avenue. Not so hot is the close-up view you get of the new Guggenheim's most awkward flaw: the way the sensuous curve of the big rotunda crashes into the facade of the new annex. Gwathmey-Siegel's addition is meant to be a clean, modernist backdrop to Wright's dramatically organic icon. But it's not all that quiet. In its crisp details, with a plaid pattern inscribed on limestone (the old Guggenheim is covered in Gunite, the plastery stuff swimming pools are made of), the annex distinguishes itself from the Wright building-which is good. It also stands in strong counterpoint to it-which isn't. The preppy meets the bohemian, the rational meets the sensual, and the marriage isn't quite made in Heaven. In defense of the annex, the museum staff and Gwathmey point to Wright. In 1949, Wright made drawings that show an addition of similar design and dimensions. Wright wanted to mask an apartment building that bordered the site. But Wright's plan called for a tower only 25 feet wide (the new annex is 35 feet wide), so it wouldn't have intersected with the big rotunda. (Filler, 1988)
Clearly, the Guggenheim intends to be a serious patron of modern architecture. Besides commissioning Gwathmey-Siegel, the museum asked Japanese architect Arata Isozaki to create a Guggenheim branch in an 1881 building in the Soho district of New York. Isozaki's design is a masterpiece of simplicity that lets the loft like spaces and rhythm of the original cast-iron columns speak for themselves. The Soho branch will open next week, too. The museum will continue to take heat for adding on to a Frank Lloyd Wright monument. Is that fair? Not really. As great as the Guggenheim is, it's a building in a city, surrounded by high-rises. The annex fits into the neighborhood and is on the least obtrusive spot on the site. Regrettable as it is that the swoop of the rotunda hits the new backdrop, the Wright interior isn't compromised. The museum is richly enhanced-both in its restoration and in the new ways it can serve the art and the museumgoer. Call it a fine comeback. Or better yet, a bounce-back. (Andersen, 1992)

Magnificence of the Aztec Empire and New York Guggenheim
New York’s Guggenheim Museum previewed what will be called "The Aztec Empire," an ambitious exhibition exploring the extraordinary pre-Columbian civilization through 450 artifacts from public and private collections. Set to open in October, the overview of Aztec art and culture is one of most comprehensive organized to date and the first in more than 20 years to be shown in the United States. The display will be divided into 10 themes. Organized in collaboration with Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute and the National Council for Culture, "El Imperio Azteca" is one of the most ambitious bilateral cooperation projects ever. The idea was not only to view a contemporary and modern art museum within a broader historical and cultural context, but to extend relations between the United States and Mexico into other areas. Intercultural exchange will increase as bilateral relations tighten, and Mexico is a strategic priority that would develop through more comprehensive projects. The exhibit opens with a section portraying the daily lives of the Aztec Indians that is to include stone and clay sculptures of warriors and fertility gods. Artistic representations of animals that lived in Mesoamerica between the 13th and 16th centuries, like the coyote, eagle, jaguar, macaque and snake, will also be shown. This is the first time an exhibit on the subject incorporates pieces from the 15th and 16th centuries. (The Aztec Empire……..)

Among these pieces is a stone statue of a female figure called "La Faraona," a lay mask from Puebla state, and - the highlight of the show – artifacts uncovered 10 years ago in the Great Temple that have never been outside Mexico. The exhibition will place the Aztecs' achievements within a broader chronological and cultural context than other shows, which have mainly focused n the civilization's pinnacle. The Aztecs' influential predecessors, like the Olmec, Toltec and Teotihuacan civilizations, will be explored through their representations of deities, the osmos and the natural world. Elaborate jewelry, ornaments, vessels and works crafted in gold, silver and turquoise paint a realistic portrait of an ascendant society. The exhibition ends with the destruction of the Aztec Empire by the Spanish onquest, a period represented by objects from the beginning of the Spaniards' campaign to instruct the Indians in Christianity. Mexican architect Enrique Norten designed the exhibition, which is to have an undulant wall that will wind up through the museum's spiral staircase and aims to "offset the Pre-Hispanic pieces with the building's architecture." (Cantos Latinos Local…….)

Comparison of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim with Frank Gehry's Guggenheim
Comparisons to the Frank Gehry's Guggenheim, Frank Lloyd Wright's icon of modernism in New York City, are unavoidable, for both Guggenheims have much in common. They are predominantly sculptural, organic and therefore unconventional. They stand out from their environs like a fish out of water. Both buildings have large dramatic atriums at their core, with radiating side galleries, sloping ramps, and walkways punctuated by scenic overlooks. Most important, both architects emphasized form over function, competing with and often overshadowing the smaller-sized works of art they are meant to present. (Taylor, 1992)
The differences between the two Guggenheims are interesting. Wright's design, constructed in 1959, takes a classic form from nature (the spiral) and expounds on it. Although the building contains motion, it is a linear winding from point A to point B, along the spiral path. Wright's building is easily fixed in memory. It draws on a model of nature as ordered and lawful, with human beings having a relatively inconsequential role in the grand scheme of nature. One of Wright's influences was Asian art and culture. Although his buildings were ostensibly for people, one is reminded of a Chinese landscape painting with its tiny figures cohabiting in an ornate, sublime natural world. (Andersen, 1992)

In contrast to Wright's ordered austerity, Frank Gehry's Guggenheim is a jazzy riff on human ingenuity. Emotionally complex, reaching outward and yet revealing a passionate interior, his Guggenheim is a complex creature. Its completion would have been impossible without the aid of the computer and advanced technology. It is an interesting mix of hot 1950s expressionism with cool 1990s technology. In this way it stretches into space-time like an Einsteinian principle; its spaces re-shape time in a controlled Big Bang explosion of creativity. While the Guggenheim New York slowly unfurls to the viewer, the Guggenheim Bilbao explodes into a universe of extraordinary possibilities. (Taylor, 1992)

One might ask what the Guggenheim Bilbao does resemble, since it doesn't resemble the rest of Spain. Aside from the obvious connections to the rest of Gehry's work, there is a troubling connection with the tourist industry--an association with airports and theme parks. Are museums becoming art theme parks? The phenomenon of the museum as tourist attraction goes back sometime in history. However, the contemporary boom in modern art museums, as evidenced by large attendance and museum construction around the world, smacks of crass commercialism. This commercial success stands in direct opposition to the public's ambivalence (at best) to most of the art seen inside. The new modern art museum, replete with restaurants, cafes, and shops, serves more as entertainment centre then house of scholarship. The new international museums show a predictable canon of international art stars. Like an airport, you can't tell whether you're in New York, London, or Kathmandu without a written guide. In the case of the Guggenheim Bilbao, nearly half of its visitors are non-Spaniards. Bilbao has no other major tourist attractions. The tourist atmosphere of contemporary museums unfortunately applies to much of the art as well. Art that is gimmicky and easy to consume lends itself especially well to these museums. (Andersen, 1992)

As a prime example, outside the Guggenheim Bilbao, stands (or sits) an over-sized sculpture by the American artist Jeff Koons. It is kitsch on a grand scale. Made of bountiful bouquets of flowers growing in pots, it stands guard in front of the museum. The consummate tourist can purchase an array of replica souvenir puppies in the museum's gift shop. It's as if the hype and scale of the new blockbuster museums destines their contents to frivolity. Koons' Puppy barks the language of kitsch and commercialism, deflecting any deeper aspirations of art. We can love it, but (like Coke) it is not the real thing. Our love for Koons is only puppy love.