80 years of Fallingwater, by Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in Richland Center, Wisconsin in 1869 and died in Phoenix, Arizona in 1959. He is considered one of the Modern Movement’s fathers in architecture and one of the most important architects of the XX Century, with Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. Wright was placed in Chicago, San Francisco, Spring Green (Wisconsin) and Phoenix (Arizona). His life as an active architect in the USA was from 1889 to 1962 and in Japan between 1915 and 1923.

Wright was born into a protestant family. His father was a preacher of the unitary church, from which he inherited a romantic view, in continuous searching of the universality and the non-conformism. In 1885 he began to study civil engineering at Wisconsin University and worked as a draughtsman for an engineer-constructor. Two years later, in 1887 he was placed in Chicago where he worked for Joseph Lyman Silsbee, an architect of picturesque nature. Shortly afterwards he became a member of Louis Sullivan’s and Dankmar Adler’s studio, and he was responsible for it in 1889. In thid year, he started the construction of his first house, in Oak Park, Chicago (1889-1890).

With Sullivan, he made the Charley’s House in Chicago (1891-1892). But at the same time and independently of his work at Sullivan’s studio, he took part of the construction of the Wainwright Building (1890-1891) and the Schiller Building (1891-1892). In 1893 he broke up with Sullivan and he established on his own account, working as domestic architecture.

In 1901 he began his first great creative phase, the “Prairie Houses” period. In this phase, he made the space a real discipline. His most outstanding works were Susan Lawrence Dana’s House in Springfield ¡1902-1904), Avery Coonley’s House in Riverside (1906-1908) Frederick C. Robie’s House in Chicago (1906) and the unitary temple of Oak Park (1905-1908). He also built the Larkin Company Administration Building in Buffalo, New York (1902-1906) where he tacked the theme of the work space.

Wright published in the Architectural Record magazine in 1908, the called 6 organic architecture principles; although he said he had written them in 1894. The principles are: simplicity and elimination of the superfluous; to each client, his lifestyle and his house style; correlation among the nature, topography and architecture; adaptation and integration of the building in his environment and the harmony of the used materials (conventionalization); material expression; and at least, the analogy between the human qualities and the architecture.

In 1909 he decided to travel to Europe and he prepared two synoptic publications with the editor Wasmuth in Berlin. In this phase, Wright has already more than 130 works built. He came back to the United States in 1910. In 1922 he was placed in the family lands in Spring Green. Here he planned the called Taliesin House, which would be his house, architecture studio, art gallery and farm. He would extend and modify it during the next years because of two fires in 1914 and 1925.

In 1913 he changed his ornamental language due to European influence and his architecture became more geometric as a consequence, inclusively cubist. This change can be appreciated in the Midway Garden in Chicago (1913-1914) or the Imperial Hotel of Tokyo (1913-1923).

He planned after Mrs. George Madison Millard’s house “The Miniature” in Pasadena (1923), John Storer’s house in Hollywood (1923-1924) and Samuel Freeman’s and Charles Ennis’s houses in Los Ángeles (1923-1924); houses built with reinforced rubblework and walls made of moulding concrete ashlars. But Wright moved to the Arizona desert in 1927, where he found other natural conditions to adapt to. Here he projected a hotel complex in San Marcos, near Chandler, Arizona (1928-1929), which is a growth model that Wright compared with the landscape.

In the 30s, the financial scandals and the consequences of the great depression prevented him from carrying out many of his designs and he only projected the Kaufmann Family’s Vacation House: “Fallingwater”, in Bear Run, Pennsylvania; where Wright unified the nature, the technology and the social organization. In this phase, Wright used the term “Usonians” Which referred to the union of the terms USA, utopia and “organic social order”. One example of that is Herbert Jacops’s House in Madison, Wisconsin (1936-1937). Simultaneously, he built the de Johnson & Company’s headquarters in Racine Wisconsin (1936-1939) and his adjoining tower, where are the investigation laboratories (1943-1950). In 1943, his most important project came: the Art Museum “non-objective”, put in charge by Solomon Guggenheim on 5th Avenue in New York, finished in 1959.

In the 50s, Wright exaggerated increasingly the formal aspect of his buildings. His last projects were: the unitary church of Madison (1945-1951), the synagogue of Beth Sholom in Alkins Park, Pennsylvania (1953-1959), the Annunciation Church in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin (1955-1961) and the Martin County’s civic centre in San Rafael, California (1957-1962).

José Juan Barba (1964). Architect from the Madrid School of Architecture (ETSAM) in 1991. He received his PhD in Architecture from ETSAM in 2004, graduating summa Cum laude with the doctoral thesis "Inventions: New York vs. Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Piranesi." In 1991, he received a Special Mention in the Spanish National Graduation Awards. Until 1997, he worked as an advisor to several NGOs. In 1992, he founded his architectural practice in Madrid (www.josejuanbarba.com). 

He is an architectural critic and, since 1998, Editor-in-Chief of the internationally acclaimed bilingual architecture journal METALOCUS (Spanish/English), recipient of several national and international awards.

Barba is an Associate Professor at the University of Alcalá and a member of several research groups. He has been invited to participate in numerous international forums on architecture and urbanism, including the II Forum of Mexican World Heritage Cities, Urban Development, History and Modernity, organized by the Pan-American Committee for Urban Development and Historical Heritage; the World Urban Development Forum (FMDU), held in Culiacán, Sinaloa, Mexico; and the International Conference on Architecture and Urbanism from the Perspective of Women Architects. He has also been invited as lecturer and guest critic at numerous national and international institutions, including the National Building Museum, Roma Tre University, Politecnico di Milano, University of Genoa, Université Pierre Mendès France Grenoble, the Madrid and Barcelona Schools of Architecture, National Autonomous University of Mexico, the Faculty of Architecture in Montevideo, the Schools of Architecture of Medellín and Ecuador, Universidad Iberoamericana, IE University, as well as the Schools of Architecture of Zaragoza, Valladolid, Málaga, Granada, Seville, and A Coruña, among others.

He has extensive professional experience in architecture, urbanism, landscape intervention, and territorial regeneration. His work has received numerous awards, including First Prize in the “Gran Vía Posible” competition for Delirious Gran Vía, Madrid; recognition for the Rivers Interpretation Centre in Zamora, awarded and exhibited at the World Architecture Festival 2008; and recognition for the Santa Bárbara Park project in Toledo. He was also awarded the Erich Degner Prize for Architecture (1995), promoted by the BBVA Foundation. His project for a Day Centre for the Elderly was included in Volume 3 of the Madrid Architecture Guide published by the Official College of Architects of Madrid (COAM) in 2007. His work has been widely published in national and international books and journals.

He served as Maître de Conférences at the Institut d’Urbanisme de Grenoble, Université Pierre Mendès France Grenoble, during the 2013–14 academic year, following his appointment through a European open competition. His work has been published internationally. He regularly serves on academic and professional juries, including the editorial competition jury for the journal Quaderns (2011), the selection committee for the European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Awards (2007–present), and the jury panels for EUROPAN 13 (2015–16) and TRANSFER, Zurich (2019). He was also invited to participate in the Biennale di Venezia 2016 as part of the exhibition Spaces of Exception / Spazi d’Eccezione.

He has authored several books, including "The Dark Line. michele&miquel, dA Vision Design" (2024), "CONGRESO ANYWAY. La ciudad de las ciudades" (2020), "#Positions" (2016), and "Inventions: New York vs. Rem Koolhaas, Bernard Tschumi, Piranesi" (2015). He has also contributed to publications such as "Espacio público Gran Vía. La Ciudad del Turismo" (2020), "Spaces of Exception / Spazi d’Eccezione" (2016), "La manzana de la discordia" (2015), and "Contemporary Japanese Architecture: New Territories" (2015), as well as chapters in numerous books, including "Women Architects: A Professional Challenge" (2009), "21st Century Architectures" (2007), "Ruta de la Plata, New Conquerors of Space" (2019), and "The City of Tourism" (2020).

Selected awards include:

•    “SANTIAGO AMÓN” AWARD, award for the promotion of architecture, COAM Madrid, 2000.
•    “PANAYIOTI MIXELI AWARD,” SADAS-PEA, award for the promotion of architecture, Athens, 2005.
•    “PIERRE VAGO” ICAC. International Committee of Art Critics Award, London, 2005.
•    FAD Award 07, Ephemeral Interventions, First Prize, M.C. Escher Exhibition, Arquin-FAD, Barcelona, 2007.
•    World Architecture Festival, Center for Research and Interpretation of the Rivers, Tera, Esla, and Órbigo, Finalist, Barcelona, 2008.
•    Gran Vía Posible, First Prize, Delirious Gran Vía, Madrid, 2010.
•    Reform of the Río Segura Surroundings, Award, Murcia, 2010.