Frank Lloyd Wright 1 (Architecture)

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Yeong Min Kim 1 Encyclopedia of Architecture: THE DEVELOPMENT OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S EARLY RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE: FROM 1887 TO 1905 Frank Lloyd Wright’s first professional foray into the realm of architecture was marked by his ambitious move to Chicago and his subsequent employment at the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee in the year of 1887.i After a brief eight-month stint with Silsbee,ii Wright soon began working as the gifted protégé of the greatly admired Louis H. Sullivan at Adler & Sullivan, where he eventually became Sullivan’s chief draftsman and later managed the firm’s residential design work. iii Wright’s engagement with architectural firm Adler & Sullivan thus paved the way to an extensive and impressive architectural career that left behind an inspiring oeuvre of buildings, projects, and drawings. Although Wright’s early involvement with Adler & Sullivan, or what he called the “only moderns in architecture,” proved to be influential in the development of Wright’s architectural style, Wright also began cultivating his own sense of style that is revealed in many of his early buildings.iv Evidence of his developing style of a tailored, geometric simplicity of design is dramatically demonstrated in the James Charnley house of 1891, one of Wright’s early works during his employment at Adler & Sullivan. The building as a whole evokes an Italian Renaissance villa, and the decoration- especially that of the balcony- is very Sullivanesque,v but through abstraction and strict geometry, the masses and volumes rightly become Wright’s own. The plan of the house is simple and symmetrical about an east-west axis, and the uncomplicated disposition of the interior space is reflected in the


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Frank Lloyd Wright 1 (Architecture) by Yeong Min Kim - Issuu