Nature and organic influences, particularly the shapes, forms, patterns and colours of plants. He grew up in rural Wisconsin and much of his design considered the interaction of his buildings with the natural environment.
3. Music was important to Wright whom once said “architecture is a kind of music”6. His father, Carey Wright was an amateur composer and Frank Lloyd Wright’s favourite composer was Ludwig van Beethoven.
4. Wright often wrote about his appreciation of Japanese art, prints and buildings. In 1917 he wrote about Japanese art that, “When I first saw a fine print about twenty-five years ago it was an intoxicating thing.”7 He first travelled to Japan in 1905, and his 1910 rendering of Winslow House, seems to mimic Japanese artist Ando Hiroshige’s use of vegetation8 as a frame for the image. in 1912, he wrote the book “The Japanese Print: An Interpretation”9. He spent many months visiting Japan in 1913, 1917 and 1918 to work on the Imperial Hotel, in Tokyo.
5. Wright’s mother was a teacher and purchased a Frederick Froebel Gift set, of geometric kindergarten building blocks at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In his autobiography, Wright said that “these primary forms and figures were the secret of all effects… which were ever got into the architecture of the world”10. He is widely quoted as having said “the maple wood blocks… are in my fingers to this day”.
Whilst, Louis Sullivan was both a precursor of Modernism and an inspirational force to Wright, he disagreed with the Sullivan’s view that “form follows function”, especially as it was adopted by the Bauhaus movement, preferring a philosophy ‘form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union’11.
Wright believed that form and function are both important, and that a building should be viewed aesthetically whilst being practical for the intended use. For example, a house should be designed for the family living in it, an office for the workers, or for example the Guggenheim art museum being designed to emphasise the beauty of the artwork and to enhance the visitor’s experience.
