MASSARO HOUSE

Massaro House is a private island residence inspired by designs of a never-constructed project conceived by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It is located on the privately owned Petre Island (sometimes spelled Petra Island) in Lake Mahopac, New York, roughly 50 miles north of New York city. As designed it was known as the "Chahroudi House" for the client who commissioned it; as built it gained the name of its owner, Joseph Massaro.

WILLITS HOUSE

The Ward W. Willits House is a building designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Designed in 1901, the Willits house is considered the first of the great Prairie houses. Built in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, the house presents a symmetrical facade to the street. One of the more interesting points about the house is Wright's ability to seamlessly combine architecture with nature.

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright, June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures, 532 of which were completed. Wright believed in designing structures that were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was best exemplified by Fallingwater (1935), which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". His creative period spanned more than 70 years. Wright was the pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture and he also developed the concept of the Usonian home in Broadacre City, his unique vision for urban planning in the United States. In addition to his houses, Wright designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums and other structures. He often designed interior elements for these buildings as well, including furniture and stained glass. Wright wrote 20 books and many articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe. Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time". His colorful personal life often made headlines, notably for leaving his first wife, Catherine Lee "Kitty" Tobin for Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the murders at his Taliesin estate in 1914, his tempestuous marriage and divorce with second wife Miriam Noel, and his relationship with Olga (Olgivanna) Lazovich Hinzenburg, whom he would marry in 1928.

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FALLING WATER

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT FOUNDATION: WWW.FRANKLLOYDWRIGHT.ORG
Fallingwater is a house designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935 in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, 43 miles (69 km) southeast of Pittsburgh. The house was built partly over a waterfall on Bear Run in the Mill Run section of Stewart Township, Fayette County, Pennsylvania, located in the Laurel Highlands of the Allegheny Mountains. The house was designed as a weekend home for the family of Liliane Kaufmann and her husband, Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr., owner of Kaufmann's Department Store. After its completion, Time called Fallingwater Wright's "most beautiful job," and it is listed among Smithsonian's "Life List of 28 places to visit before you die." The house was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966.[3] In 1991, members of the American Institute of Architects named Fallingwater the "best all-time work of American architecture" and in 2007, it was ranked 29th on the list of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA. Fallingwater stands as one of Wright's greatest masterpieces both for its dynamism and for its integration with its striking natural surroundings. Fallingwater has been described as an architectural tour de force of Wright's organic architecture. Wright's passion for Japanese architecture was strongly reflected in the design of Fallingwater, particularly in the importance of interpenetrating exterior and interior spaces and the strong emphasis placed on harmony between man and nature. Contemporary Japanese architect Tadao Ando has said of the house: I think Wright learned the most important aspect of architecture, the treatment of space, from Japanese architecture. When I visited Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, I found that same sensibility of space. But there was the additional sounds of nature that appealed to me.
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The organically designed private residence was intended to be a nature retreat for its owners. The house is well-known for its connection to the site. It is built on top of an active waterfall that flows beneath the house. The fireplace hearth in the living room integrates boulders found on the site and upon which the house was built — ledge rock which protrudes up to a foot through the living room floor was left in place to demonstrably link the outside with the inside. Wright had initially intended that the ledge be cut flush with the floor, but this had been one of the Kaufmann family's favorite sunning spots, so Mr. Kaufmann suggested that it be left as it was.[citation needed] The stone floors are waxed, while the hearth is left plain, giving the impression of dry rocks protruding from a stream. Integration with the setting extends even to small details. For example, where glass meets stone walls no metal frame is used; rather, the glass and its horizontal dividers were run into a caulked recess in the stonework so that the stone walls appear uninterrupted by glazing. From the cantilevered living room, a stairway leads directly down to the stream below, and in a connecting space which connects the main house with the guest and servant level, a natural spring drips water inside, which is then channeled back out. Bedrooms are small, some with low ceilings to encourage people outward toward the open social areas, decks, and outdoors. Bear Run and the sound of its water permeate the house, especially during the spring when the snow is melting, and locally quarried stone walls and cantilevered terraces resembling the nearby rock formations are meant to be in harmony. The design incorporates broad expanses of windows and balconies which reach out into their surroundings. In conformance with Wright's views, the main entry door is away from the falls. On the hillside above the main house stands a four-bay carport, servants' quarters, and a guest house. These attached outbuildings were built two years later using the same quality of materials and attention to detail as the main house. The guest quarters feature a spring-fed swimming pool which overflows and drains to the river below. Wright had initially planned to have the house blend into its natural settings in rural Pennsylvania. In doing so, he limited his color choices to two colors, light ochre for the concrete and his signature Cherokee red for the steel. After Fallingwater was deeded to the public, three carport bays were enclosed at the direction of Kaufmann jr. [sic], to be used by museum visitors to view a presentation at the end of their guided tours on the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy (to which the home was entrusted). Kaufmann jr. designed its interior himself, to specifications found in other Fallingwater interiors by WrighT.
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In 1909, after 20 years of marriage, Wright suddenly abandoned his wife, children and practice and moved to Germany with a woman named Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the wife of a client.

Working with the acclaimed publisher Ernst Wasmuth, while in Germany Wright put together two portfolios of his work that further raised his international profile as one of the leading living architects. In 1913, Wright and Cheney returned to the United States, and Wright designed them a home on the land of his maternal ancestors in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Named Taliesin, Welsh for "shining brow," it was one of the most acclaimed works of his life. However, tragedy struck in 1914 when a deranged servant set fire to the house, burning it to the ground and killing Cheney and six others. Although Wright was devastated by the loss of his lover and home, he immediately began rebuilding Taliesin in order to, in his own words, "wipe the scar from the hill."

The next year, in 1915, the Japanese Emperor commissioned Wright to design the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. He spent the next seven years on the project, a beautiful and revolutionary building that Wright claimed was "earthquake proof." Only one year after its completion, the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 devastated the city and tested the architect's claim. Wright's Imperial Hotel was the city's only large structure to survive the earthquake intact. Returning to the United States, he married a sculptor named Miriam Noel in 1923; they stayed together for four years before divorcing in 1927. In 1925 another fire, this one caused by an electrical problem, destroyed Taliesin, forcing him to rebuild it once again. In 1928, Wright married his third wife, Olga (Olgivanna) Ivanovna Lazovich—who also went by the name Olga Lazovich Milanov, after her famous grandfather Marko.

ROBIE HOUSE (UNIVERISY OF CHICAGO)

The Frederick C. Robie House is a U.S. National Historic Landmark on the campus of the University of Chicago in the South Side neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, Illinois, at 5757 S. Woodlawn Avenue. Built between 1909 and 1910, the building was designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and is renowned as the greatest example of the Prairie School style, the first architectural style considered uniquely American. It was designated a National Historic Landmark on November 27, 1963 and was on the very first National Register of Historic Places list of October 15, 1966.

The Robie House is one of the best known examples of Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie style of architecture. The term was coined by architectural critics and historians (not by Wright) who noticed how the buildings and their various components owed their design influence to the landscape and plant life of the midwest prairie of the United States. Typical of Wright's Prairie houses, he designed not only the house, but all of the interiors, the windows, lighting, rugs, furniture and textiles. As Wright wrote in 1910, "it is quite impossible to consider the building one thing and its furnishings another. ... They are all mere structural details of its character and completeness."

The Robie House was one of the last houses Wright designed in his Oak Park, Illinois home and studio and also one of the last of his Prairie School houses. According to the Historical American Buildings Survey, the city of Chicago's Commission on Chicago Architectural Landmarks stated: "The bold interplay of horizontal planes about the chimney mass, and the structurally expressive piers and windows, established a new form of domestic design." Because the house's components are so well designed and coordinated, it is considered to be a quintessential example of Wright's Prairie School architecture and the "measuring stick" against which all other Prairie School buildings are compared.

The house and the Robie name were immortalized in Ernst Wasmuth's famous 1910 publication Ausgefuhrte Bauten und Entwurfe von Frank Lloyd Wright (Completed Buildings and Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright, a.k.a. "The Wasmuth Portfolio"). This publication featured most of Wright's designs, including those unbuilt, during his Oak Park years and brought them to the attention of students of the Bauhaus school in Germany and the De Stijl school in the Netherlands. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe among other great 20th Century architects, claimed Wright was a major influence on their careers. Mies van der Rohe later visited the Robie House and Wright's home (Taliesin) in Spring Green, WI.