[originaltext] In my opinion, Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest American a

In my opinion, Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest American architect of the 20th century. People who know his designs well point out that his roofs often leaked, his ceilings were too low, and his houses were uncomfortable. In my presentation, however, I’ll be focusing on the virtues of his designs. For what you will see, it would be hard to dispute that he manipulated space extremely well, some of his smallest houses look gigantic, and he had great respect for the materials he used and also a tremendous skill for placing his buildings in harmony with nature. Wright’s career began when he was young. He was just a teenager when he helped build the chapel on his family’s property in Wisconsin. And from there, he got hired as a draftsman by the project architect. So it was a very long career. He died at 91, while his final major work, the Guggenheim Museum, was still being built. Today, we’ll cover what we consider to be the two great periods of his career, Wright’s works before the Tokyo Imperial Hotel completed in 1922 and everything after Falling Water, a private residence in western Pennsylvania completed in 1936. The first period started around 1896, when he made a dramatic shift from the classical tradition to the arts and crafts movement. Here, the emphasis was on order, consistency and unity of design.  Things were kept simple with minimal decoration. Natural forms were very important. Let’s take a look at a slide of his own dining room done in this style.