The Unexpected Life Behind Architecture’s Rebel, Frank Lloyd Wright

The Unexpected Life Behind Architecture’s Rebel, Frank Lloyd Wright

Aimee Heidelberg - May 13, 2023

The Unexpected Life Behind Architecture’s Rebel, Frank Lloyd Wright
Crowds in from of Boy’d Department Store, Missouri, USA (c. 1910). Public domain.

Wright Hated Cities

Wright was no fan of the state of cities. He found them overcrowded, poorly designed, and lacking cultural and social quality. He once said, “To look at the plan of a great city, is to look at something like the cross-section of a fibrous tumor.” Wright would not avoid cities, however. One of his last big projects was the Guggenheim Museum along Central Park, which required him to make an extended stay in New York City. But Wright had a vision of making cities better. He developed his idea, Broadacre City, to create a better city, based on the automobile (one of Wright’s lifelong loves), to decentralize the urban core and focus on the individual. As with his architecture, the parts of the community all played into a whole, to serve as “urban form and democratic ideas” to allow for individual growth.

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