Odds are that you’ve heard the name Frank Lloyd Wright, and odds are that you know his name is associated with really cool buildings. That checks out because Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator that designed over 1,000 structures over the span of just 70 years. He was the creator of what we now know as Prarie Style which had to do with how buildings were laid out; so rather than a ton of small rooms, buildings had fewer, larger rooms creating a flow that just made a little more sense. But the thing is, Frank Lloyd Wright was just an all-around interesting human for a lot of different reasons, so today we’re looking at some lesser-known facts about our guy.
He was a major advocate for green design. And no, we don’t mean avocado green carpet, walls, sinks, and toilet seats, we mean that Wright fully believed we could all be more sustainable when it came to architecture. In fact, in 1954 he wrote a book titled The Natural House which discusses all the ways he felt we, as a whole, could achieve this. In short, Wright felt that the buildings that he was designing and what was being built could be an extension of their natural surroundings.
We’re going to go from 0 to 100 with this next fact, in 1914 while Wright was away on business in Chicago, a disgruntled servant set the house on fire. As if this wasn’t crazy enough, the servant also murdered seven of the residents of the home including Wright’s partner at the time.
If you were a big fan of Lincoln Logs as a kid, then you’ll appreciate knowing that it was in fact Frank Lloyd Wright’s son that patented them in 1920, but not without some inspiration from his old man. Lincoln Logs were modeled after the construction methods Wright Senior used when building the Imperial Hotel. (Which Jon, his son, helped work on!)
In our brains, there are a lot of design elements that cross over, so while we know that designing a house and designing a dress are two very different things, we can’t help but think there are some design similarities there. And apparently, Wright was ready to take the challenge head-on when he decided to dabble in fashion design. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of documentation that exists regarding this, but we imagine his designs were *chef’s kiss*.
Something else Wright dabbled in? Dealing Japanese art. Wright did this for most of his life until his death in 1959. It’s been said that he made more doing this than he did designing.
