Frank Lloyd Wright

(June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959)

Frank Lloyd Wright had many great talents. He is well known for being an American architect, interior designer, writer, and educator. He also designed many things within his building designs, such as furniture and stained glass.

Several of his architectural design projects included churches and temples; many included his stained glass designs. During this time, the main use for stained glass was in church windows. He designed the Meeting house for the First Unitarian Society of Madison (Shorewood Hills in suburb of Madison, Wisconsin) in 1946. He also designed the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church (Wauwatosa, Wisconsin) in 1956.

Somewhere between 1905 and 1908, Wright designed and constructed the Unity Temple (Oak Park, Illinois.) In order to reduce the noise from traffic, he did not design windows on the street-level. Instead, Wright designed the stained glass windows of the temple to be placed in the roof, to capture the natural light. He chose the colors for his stained glass (brown, green and yellow) in such a way to give the members of the Parish a sense of nature, as they were not able to look outside.

In the 1920’s, when the very first electric floor lamps began in America, Wright was one of the first architects to design and install custom-made electric light fittings. This included some of his spherical glass lampshade designs.

As the glass industry grew, Wright welcomed the new age into his career and designs. He found it fit well with his ideas of organic architecture.

In 1928, Wright wrote an essay about glass and referred to it as the mirrors of nature, for example, rivers, ponds, and lakes.

In his early use of glass, one of his projects included strings of panes of glass along whole walls to create light screens. He wanted to gain a balance of lightness and airiness of the glass and the walls. The most integral part of his career was his ability to combine simple geometric shapes to create intricate windows.

Due to his independence, Wright’s personal styles and concepts often changed. However they most often included “Modernism”, “Urbanism” and “Organic architecture.” Due to his attention to detail with Organic architecture and the nature of glass, stained glass was often an interest to him and was portrayed in his designs.

Famous Quote by Frank Lloyd Wright:

"The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life."