A 1962 CBS documentary on legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright has the famed designer being quite frank about his thoughts on architecture.
Here’s an excerpt, to give an example: “I’ve been accused of saying I was the greatest architect in the world. If I had said so, I don’t think it would be very arrogant, because I don’t believe there are many, if any. For five hundred years what we call architecture has been phony in the sense it was not innate, it wasn’t organic, it didn’t have the character of nature…”
Frank Lloyd Wright  (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) embraced what he called organic architecture. He believed that a building should be a part of the nature that surrounds it: “It graces its environment rather than disgraces it,” he says in the documentary.
One of his most famous works is the Fallingwater home (or Kaufmann residence) built in 1935 in rural Pennsylvania. The home, in a design that amazed and astounded critics and architecture buffs at the time, spans a waterfall. Its unique cantilevered design solved the problem of having enough living space on a too small plot of land. It is the perfect example of the architect’s belief that the buildings we inhabit should complement their natural environment.
There are critics of the structural design of Fallingwater, specifically with  the cantilevered reinforced concrete balconies that extend out over the falls. The cantilever was a fairly new design element, and there was no such thing as the high-tech reinforced concrete that we know of today. The balconies that Wright built cracked and sagged, even while under construction, and would have continued on their path of degeneration if not for the intervention of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, which funded the structural reinforcement of the home using modern technology.
Wright was a leading proponent of the Prairie School of architecture of the late 19th / early 20th centuries, which was the basis of his organic architecture principle–that a structure should seem like it evolved from its natural landscape. The horizontal lines of the Prairie style were thought to resemble the natural prairie landscape.
He also introduced the Usonian design principle, of which the buildings were built without exterior ornamentation, had no attics or basements, and a strong visual connection was made between interiors and exteriors of the structures. It was Wright’s vision for planned cities and architecture of buildings for the United States. He built approximately 60 middle-income, single-family homes utilizing this style. The single-story homes typically had flat roofs, natural cooling and passive solar heating through the use of cantilevered overhangs, and natural light made available with clerestory windows. They were L-shaped around small garden terraces and were built using native materials. Wright introduced the carport with the Usonian design. The Jacobs House is one of the first, built in 1936, and most famous that he designed in this style. The California ranch home is reminiscent of the Usonian design.
During the Depression Wright founded the “Taliesin Fellowship,” an apprenticeship school in Spring Green, Wis., teaching his theory of organic architecture. Another school was opened in Arizona, where apprentices were to live off the land and build their own structures to inhabit.
Wright died during intestinal surgery in 1959.
In concurrence with his comment at the beginning of the CBS documentary, the American Institute of Architects, in a 1991 national survey, named Wright as “the greatest American architect of all time.”
