Open Culture's Journal

How Frank Lloyd Wright Became Frank Lloyd Wright: A Video Introduction

Frank Lloyd Wright is unlikely to be displaced as the archetype of the genius architect anytime soon, at least in America, but even he had to start somewhere. At nine years old, as architecture YouTuber Stewart Hicks explains in the video above, Wright received a set of blocks from his mother, who hoped that “her son would grow up to become a great architect, and she thought the creativity unlocked and practiced with these blocks could kick-start his journey.” Evidently, she wasn’t wrong: “by the time Wright attempted to design his first building years later, he spent countless hours arranging the blocks,” familiar as he was with “proportion, symmetry, balance, and other principles of design well before he ever picked up a pencil.”

Of course, most of us played with blocks in childhood, and few of us now bear much comparison to the man who designed Fallingwater and the Guggenheim. But his mother’s toy selection was just one of many factors that influenced the architectural development that continued throughout Wright’s long life.

In fifteen minutes, Hicks explains as many of them as possible: his early opportunity to work on “shingle-style” homes, whose cruciform layout he would adapt into his own designs; his arrival in a Chicago that was still rebuilding after its great fire of 1871, when there were vast skyscraper interiors to be created; the new Midwestern manufacturing money prepared to commission homes from him; and his inspiring encounters with Japanese aesthetics, both at home and in Japan itself.

After returning from a 1905 Japan trip, Wright got to work on Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois. He had it built with the relatively new material of reinforced concrete, thus getting “in on the ground floor of a technology that could completely transform what buildings could do,” making possible “soaring cantilevers, graceful curves,” and other elements that would become part of his architectural signature. A few decades later, the United States’ suburb-building boom made Wright’s rural-urban “Usonian” homes and “Broadacre City” plan look prescient; indeed, “almost every single house inside of a postwar suburb bears his trace.” His willingness to appear in print and on film, radio, and television kept him in the American public consciousness, and he made sure to instill his principles into generations of students. Frank Lloyd Wright may be long gone, but he made sure that his vision of America would live on.

What Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unusual Windows Tell Us About His Architectural Genius

A Virtual Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Japanese Masterpiece, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo

What It’s Like to Work in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Iconic Office Building

Frank Lloyd Wright Reflects on Creativity, Nature and Religion in Rare 1957 Audio

Frank Lloyd Wright Creates a List of the 10 Traits Every Aspiring Artist Needs

How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Son Invented Lincoln Logs, “America’s National Toy” (1916)

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.