Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 – 1959) is widely viewed as the foremost American architect of the 20th century, designing more than a thousand buildings during his career, including their accompanying interiors and furnishings.
Born in the Midwest state of Wisconsin, United States, he spent much of his professional life there, though he also practised in California, New York and Japan. His hot temper meant his life was peppered with personal scandal and financial worry.
Furniture was integral to Wright's design philosophy. He believed that architecture, interiors and furnishings must arise from the same conceptual principles – an approach he described as 'Organic Architecture'.
Organic Architecture
Wright hated the fussy furniture imitating historic styles available in the United States in the 1890s. His concept of 'Organic Architecture' required furnishings to 'be of the building itself' – to reflect the same design principles and materials as the architecture.
"In Organic Architecture… , it is quite impossible to consider the building as one thing, its furnishings another and its setting and environment still another. The Spirit in which these buildings are conceived sees all these together at work as one thing…The very chairs and tables, cabinets and even musical instruments, where practicable, are of the building itself, never fixtures upon it…"
To fulfil this ideal, Wright had to design his own furniture, despite having little wood-working experience. Strongly influenced by the British Arts and Crafts movement, he started in 1889 with his home in Oak Park, Illinois. Here he designed simple furniture in local oak that he felt reflected contemporary American democratic ideals.
For corporate settings, Wright's furniture was more structurally and functionally innovative, and often made of metal, such as the one developed for the Larkin Building in Buffalo, New York (1904) or for the cleaning products manufacturer Johnson Wax in Racine, Illinois (1936). The Johnson Wax office furniture echoed the design of the company's headquarters, with the circular form of the chair created to reflect the treatment of the supportive columns in the main area of the building, the Great Workroom. The upholstery was colour coded to distinguish different operations within the company. Here, the Cherokee red indicates that the set was used in the credit department.
Design approach
Wright shared the social reform principles of the Arts and Crafts movement, believing that art and design had a role to play in improving society and everyday life, drawing inspiration from many sources, including nature.
Unlike many European Modernists, Wright did not advocate for standardised, functional furniture, but rather designed each item for a unique interior, use and client. His first independent commission was William H. Winslow House in River Forest, Illinois, in the 1890s.
In both architecture and furniture, he was preoccupied with geometric forms and strong intersecting planes. The furniture was 'architectonic' in that it was architectural in character. Wright's built-in furniture harmonised with the materials and scale of interiors. The free-standing furniture, when arranged as a group, could create an intimate, secondary space within a room. Decoration was to be integrated into, rather than applied to, a surface or architectural element.
Workshop practice
Given the bespoke nature of Wright's designs, his furniture was available to only a small number of clients until late in his career. But unlike Arts and Crafts designers, Wright saw the value of machines, extolling their "wonderful cutting, shaping, smoothing and repetitive capacity", which could master, with ease, the signature square-section spindles of his chairs.
But not all firms were willing to take on Wright's unusual designs. He often had to seek out small specialist firms to produce his furniture, using a combination of machine tools and hand-finishing.
The Kaufmann Office
The Kaufmann Office was designed by Wright between 1935 – 37 as a private office for prominent businessman Edgar J. Kaufmann (1885 – 1995) for his Pittsburgh department store. After meeting him in 1934, Kaufmann became a significant patron of Wright's work, demonstrating his loyalty most notably by commissioning Fallingwater (1935), a residence often considered to be the architect's masterpiece.
The Kaufmann Office is a rectangular room made entirely of swamp cypress plywood panels (240 in total) – its size and layout dictated by the American standard plywood board size of 8 inches by 4 inches. Wright was known for his interest in, and exploration of new materials. In the design of the office, he demonstrated his love for plywood by using it across the entire room. Covering the floor, walls and ceiling, he elevated the humble material to a luxurious finish. Wright also used plywood decoratively to create a spectacular abstract mural surrounding the desk. He believed that decoration should be 'of the surface', and so the design creates an organic focal point.
Wright was a strong advocate that the interior of a space, along with the building that housed it, should be a complete work of art, and therefore also took responsibility for the design of the furniture, upholstery and lamp – the first two executed in collaboration with Finnish-American textile artist Loja Saarinen (1879 – 1968). Kaufmann didn't make any alterations to the space in the 20 years he used it, a testament to the success of the design.
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