- 5/24/2025
Today, AD is delving into the work of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright and exploring three of his designs: Tirranna, the David & Gladys Wright House, and Toy Hill House. Wright’s philosophy of organic architecture aimed to unite structure and landscape–he believed a home should not be placed upon the land but grow from it, standing in harmony with its natural surroundings. Watch as we tour a collection of Wright’s homes designed according to this philosophy and discover how the famous architect let nature shape his work.
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00:00Frank Lloyd Wright designed over 500 buildings across 33 states.
00:07His work helped define modern living and gave America its own architectural voice.
00:21Wright's philosophy of organic architecture aimed to unite structure and landscape.
00:26A home, he believed, should not be placed upon the land but grow from it,
00:31natural, intentional, and inseparable from the environment around it.
00:35From the rolling plains of his youth to the vast silence of the Sonoran Desert,
00:40working until his death at the age of 91,
00:43Wright spent much of his life's work trying to define, elaborate, and sharpen his philosophy.
00:49In this video, we explore a selection of Frank Lloyd Wright's projects
00:53that demonstrate how he treated the landscape not as a backdrop but as a collaborator,
00:57spaces that invite the outside in and express the essential principles of organic architecture.
01:03While not a complete portrait of his philosophy,
01:06these works offer a window into his enduring vision of harmony between the built and the natural.
01:11We begin in Arizona, where he spent his later years.
01:15Drawn by its harsh climate and rich natural materials,
01:18he found the perfect setting to test his ideas of organic architecture.
01:22As Phoenix's population grew rapidly,
01:25Wright became concerned about what he called
01:27the ever-advancing human threat to the integral beauty of Arizona.
01:31In turn, he crafted designs that embraced the desert,
01:34shaping a civic identity grounded in the landscape itself.
01:38Project 5011, How to Live in the Southwest, known as the David and Gladys Wright House,
01:46is a clear expression of Wright's desert mission to design in harmony with the land.
01:55When your father is the most celebrated architect in America,
01:58the greatest gift he can give you is a house.
02:01Frank Lloyd Wright designed this house for his son David and daughter-in-law Gladys,
02:05using many of the same ideas that he was building into the Guggenheim Museum.
02:10Spirals are fascinating forms.
02:13They can symbolize the infinite, or longevity.
02:16David and Gladys Wright, they both lived to be more than a hundred years old.
02:20At the David and Gladys Wright House,
02:22the spiral really takes on a unique sense of longevity
02:25as it moves from one generation father to the next generation son,
02:30and even today as it moves between father and daughter working on this restoration.
02:41Located in the Arcadian neighborhood of Phoenix, Arizona,
02:44this neighborhood was once filled with orange groves.
02:47Today, it's a residential neighborhood.
02:52It's a special place.
02:53It's unlike anything else that Frank Lloyd Wright did in the course of his career,
02:56and we're so excited to show it to you.
03:02The entry to this house really begins here, at the bottom of a spiral ramp.
03:09This whole experience coming up the ramp,
03:12it's this little journey that Wright's taking you on.
03:14The movement through space is something that Wright calls the continual becoming.
03:18This idea that space is constantly unfolding and revealing itself.
03:22And you really see that as you climb up the ramp,
03:25and come up here to the entry.
03:28Now that we're at the top of the ramp,
03:29we see this beautiful landscape.
03:31We're out in this bright sun,
03:33and Wright wants to create a juxtaposition.
03:35So he's going to take us in under a low ceiling,
03:38and sort of a shaded, darkened space.
03:40Wright has this technique that he calls compression and release.
03:49Being enveloping, darker space,
03:52and then opening up into a lighter, brighter, more expansive space.
03:58This is very similar to taking a walk through nature,
04:00where you might be walking on a forest path.
04:03Nature is embracing you,
04:04and then suddenly you're in a clearing,
04:06where you're open to the sky.
04:08There's bright light all around you.
04:10It is an emotional journey that we take.
04:14Much of the work on this house,
04:16the delineation, the renderings,
04:18and the design of the rug,
04:20were done by a Wright apprentice from China, named Ling Po.
04:24Ling came over from China in the 1940s,
04:26and worked with Wright,
04:28and worked at the foundation for many decades
04:30after Wright died in 1959.
04:32There's another important sense of intergenerational continuity
04:38that's reflected in this house.
04:40Frank Lloyd Wright designs this house
04:42for his son David and David's family.
04:44Today, the current owners are Bing Hu,
04:48who has brought his daughter,
04:50a newly minted architect,
04:52into the restoration of this house.
04:54On this property,
04:56David and Gladys Wright House
04:58come to my attention.
05:00A spec builder bought the property
05:02from the family
05:04with the intention to demolish the house
05:06and create the two spec houses.
05:08So the first I learned that
05:10is like we got to rescue this.
05:12My dad called me and asked me
05:14if I would consider leaving my job
05:16to come work with him
05:18to restore the David and Gladys Wright House.
05:25It means a lot for my parents
05:27to come as Chinese immigrants
05:29and sort of be here
05:31preserving the legacy
05:32of American architecture as well.
05:40This ceiling is constructed
05:41of Philippine mahogany.
05:43It's a wood species
05:45that you can't get today.
05:46Unfortunately,
05:47because the roof leaked
05:49into this room for many years,
05:50this mahogany ceiling
05:52became stained.
05:53And because you can't get
05:54this wood anymore,
05:56cleaning and removing
05:57that staining
05:58is a meticulous craft.
06:00If any board gets destroyed,
06:02you actually have to replace
06:03the whole ceiling
06:04and indeed all the wood
06:05in the house
06:06because it's all one species.
06:07So one of the things
06:08that I love about this restoration
06:09is the very careful attention
06:11to detail.
06:12Because the house
06:14hasn't been properly maintained,
06:16especially the most beautiful wood
06:18you can see.
06:19If you see it before,
06:21there was a night and day difference.
06:23When we started to dig to uncover it,
06:25there were like three or four layers
06:27of spray foam insulation up there.
06:29Anytime there was a big storm,
06:31I think the owners were just like,
06:33go spray up another layer
06:34and hopefully it'll do it this time.
06:37Embarking on this journey
06:38kind of felt like we were able
06:39to uncover history of the past
06:41that wasn't written.
06:45Beyond the look of the ceiling,
06:47it also has a really interesting function.
06:49Wright loved to connect interiors
06:51and exteriors.
06:52We have a piano here in the room.
06:55Wright loved the piano.
06:57Everybody in his family
06:58was musical.
06:59Music was something
07:00that they gravitated to.
07:01Well, how do you get your musical performances outdoors?
07:06You create a ceiling
07:08that will reflect the sound out
07:10through these doors
07:12and down into the courtyard
07:14where you might be gathering for a party
07:16or just relaxing on a Sunday afternoon.
07:21Wright had learned about acoustics
07:23in his first apprenticeship in Chicago
07:25with Dank Maher Adler,
07:27one of the great acousticians
07:29in American architectural history.
07:31And he brought that into his practice
07:33and used it everywhere,
07:34but seldom with such dramatic effect
07:36as you see in this house.
07:45Up here on the rooftop terrace,
07:47we can really see Wright's intention,
07:49how he connects the building
07:51with the landscape.
07:52Out to our southeast,
07:54we see the Papago Buttes.
07:57And behind me in the other direction,
07:59the head of the camel,
08:00off Camelback Mountain.
08:02By firmly centering this building
08:05between these two landmarks
08:06that nature provided,
08:08Wright gives us the sense
08:09of being part of this world
08:12and not merely on it,
08:13but at one with it.
08:17You'll notice that we're actually
08:18walking under the house
08:20because the house is elevated.
08:22This courtyard is an outdoor room,
08:27but it wasn't just a room to gather in,
08:29maybe have a picnic in.
08:30It also originally had a pool.
08:32Also because the pool itself
08:34being constructed out of concrete block
08:36slowly over time begins to disintegrate,
08:39something that Wright didn't anticipate
08:41when he built the house.
08:42So today, we just have the memory of the pool
08:45reflected here.
08:46David Wright worked for the Besser Manufacturing Company
08:52and they made concrete block molds.
08:54And so David insisted that his company's molds
08:56and concrete block be used
08:58for the construction and design of this house.
09:04And for Wright,
09:05concrete block wasn't simply an industrial material.
09:08He saw it as elevated,
09:09and this particular block,
09:11I think he really enjoyed.
09:12And so you'll see that at the end
09:14of wherever there was a concrete slab,
09:16he included this decorative block
09:18with a circular motif
09:20and then this piece coming out of it.
09:26It also shows something that Wright really enjoyed
09:28about working with concrete,
09:29which is called in architecture terms,
09:31plasticity, meaning that it's moldable.
09:42The plan for the future of this property,
09:44I want to become my architecture design studio.
09:48I can open my door to let my client come.
09:51So that's kind of indirect way
09:53to welcome the public to able to see this masterpiece.
10:01In Arizona, Wright's vision deepened
10:03amid the beauty of the desert,
10:04but it wasn't his first exploration
10:06of how nature and community could coexist.
10:09In 1948, in the wooded hills of Pleasantville, New York,
10:12he helped create Usonia,
10:14a cooperative neighborhood
10:15that embodied his belief in affordable,
10:17well-designed homes rooted in nature
10:20and free from urban congestion.
10:24Frank Lloyd Wright designed these houses
10:26with the objective of making them
10:28out of natural products
10:30and providing people an opportunity
10:32to be close with nature,
10:34fairly simple structures,
10:36and yet one that was special,
10:38not like a cookie-cutter house
10:40that everybody else had.
10:45My name's Brian Renz.
10:46My family and I are owners of
10:48the Frank Lloyd Wright, Bertha,
10:50and Saul Friedman House,
10:52also known as Toy Hill,
10:53here in a community called Usonia,
10:55which is part of Pleasantville, New York.
10:58Usonia, as a community,
11:00started way back in the 40s
11:01when two architects in the city
11:03decided to be interested
11:05in a cooperative community.
11:08Frank Lloyd Wright assisted in this.
11:10He helped lay out the roads.
11:11He helped lay out plans for the properties.
11:14We've had the opportunity
11:15to meet the Friedman family,
11:17and as a matter of fact,
11:18we even have a video.
11:20It showed this house being built
11:22and other neighborhood houses,
11:24including Frank Lloyd Wright,
11:26being present and active on the site.
11:28Because of the peculiar nature
11:29of the community and the fact
11:31that it had the cooperative ownership,
11:33it was a very novel concept at the time.
11:36People in the surrounding community
11:38are said to have referred to it
11:40instead of Usonia,
11:42that they referred to it as Insania.
11:47The first thing you'll notice
11:48as we walk up to the house
11:49is this most unusual carport.
11:54It's said that Frank Lloyd Wright
11:55was the first person
11:56to put car and port together,
11:59something he did throughout the country.
12:01His homes rarely had garages.
12:03This particular carport
12:05is most unique.
12:06It's a single pillar of concrete
12:09with a 20-sided polygon of concrete
12:13that some people have described
12:15as a mushroom.
12:16The experts on Wright will suggest
12:18that he probably thought of it
12:20as more of a tree.
12:22Other people look at it
12:23and see a concrete spaceship.
12:31The geometry of the building
12:33is peculiar in that it's two cylinders.
12:35It's not exactly circles.
12:37It's a 20-side polygon,
12:39which is called an icosagon.
12:40And indeed, I did have to look that up.
12:43The main material of the house
12:45is concrete along with locally sourced stone.
12:48There are a number of quarries near here.
12:50This is compression that Wright uses.
12:54It's a standard thing
12:55in virtually all of his buildings.
12:57So as we enter,
12:59we're still compressed.
13:01We can already see
13:02that there's massive natural stone,
13:05just like in the exterior,
13:06on the interior also.
13:08One of those things he'll do
13:09to make the inside
13:11much like the outside.
13:13Welcome to the main living area in the house.
13:16What I'm going to show you first
13:18is the geometric center
13:20of the first floor of the house.
13:22So this is the exact center of it,
13:24all the way down to the floor
13:26and up to the ceiling.
13:28We have radial lines in the floor
13:31that go along with the 20-sided polygon.
13:34Each section is 18 degrees.
13:36That's the geometry throughout the house.
13:39My daughter will irreverently call the house
13:42pizza house.
13:43Everything in the house
13:44is laid out like a piece of pizza
13:46and that includes the bedding upstairs.
13:48This little corner,
13:50this we call our library.
13:52Wright's idea on living
13:54determined very much
13:55how he designed the furniture
13:56in the built-ins.
13:57Very, very little furniture.
13:59Everything's built-in.
14:00When I was speaking with the prior owner,
14:03his advice was only bring a toothbrush
14:06because there's no room for anything else.
14:09When we moved into the house,
14:11one of the first things I wanted to do
14:13was get these two chairs.
14:15They're a longtime personal favorite of mine.
14:18These were first designed
14:19at Frank Lloyd Wright's studio.
14:21They're called origami
14:23and they're seen in a lot of Wright homes.
14:25To me, they were just perfect for the spot.
14:29These tables are red oak
14:31and they're original to the house.
14:33They have part of the geometry of each room
14:35built into the table.
14:37Next, we have a classic floor lamp
14:39from Taliesin.
14:41This was purchased by a prior owner.
14:43It's been here for at least 25 years.
14:45It's present in very many of the homes
14:48in our community,
14:49but especially in Frank Lloyd Wright properties.
14:51It's a very popular lamp.
14:53One of the early clients in the cooperative
14:56was Roland Risley.
14:58He has recently turned 100
14:59and he still lives in the same house
15:02that he hired Frank Lloyd Wright to build for him
15:05when he was just 26 years old.
15:07And he's the oldest living Frank Lloyd Wright client
15:10in the entire world.
15:15I'm Roland Risley
15:17and I'm the owner of this house
15:19known as the Risley House,
15:20which was designed for me by Frank Lloyd Wright.
15:23My wife and I actually met at Cornell.
15:27In 1950, we married.
15:29At that point, we were wanting to build a home
15:32and put down roots for a family.
15:34And we were told,
15:35there's a community building affordable homes
15:37supervised by Frank Lloyd Wright.
15:39Well, let's go take a look.
15:41And it was a cooperative that was really
15:43an idealistic, egalitarian cooperative.
15:46We like that idea.
15:47We like the land.
15:48We like the community.
15:49The people who joined USonia,
15:51everybody accepted the idea of Wright and his disciples
15:54and Wright approving on the design.
15:59To show you the second floor,
16:00we need to go up Frank Lloyd Wright's circular stairway.
16:03One of the key things here
16:04is always having a hold of the handrail.
16:06They do look a little bit dangerous.
16:08Welcome to the second floor.
16:11Here at the top of the stairs,
16:13there's a couple of interesting things.
16:15We have three vent holes that are very strange.
16:18They're at the top of each of the three bedrooms.
16:22They provide ventilation to be able to flow through,
16:25but they're one of the sources of one of the big problems
16:28in the house when we have guests.
16:30I always have to warn the guests
16:32that there are no secrets here
16:34because you can hear everything.
16:38As we head back to the primary bedroom,
16:40compared to a typical suburban home,
16:43it is quite small,
16:44but you have to remember everything is built in.
16:46The double dresser is of particular interest
16:49because of some of the special things
16:51the cabinet maker had to think of.
16:53Notice the scroll cutting along the edge
16:55of the natural stone.
16:56The shape of the cabinet
16:58is an irregular piece of pizza
17:01and all of the drawers have to be custom made
17:04to shape to fit that.
17:06Here's an example of that.
17:07So it's not rectangular.
17:09It's not square and it would be something
17:12that they would definitely have to pay a lot of attention to.
17:15People are always shocked by the size and shape of the bed.
17:19Basically, it's the size of a queen mattress at the top
17:22and it works out that it's the size of a twin bed at the bottom.
17:25Again, it has the same geometry as all of the rooms in the house.
17:30This bed has never been moved.
17:32The wooden boards in the base of the bed are nailed to the floor.
17:37It's always been here.
17:38It's always been the same size.
17:40And surprisingly, it works.
17:43When quizzed about this,
17:45Wright would respond,
17:46everyone he ever knew was wider at their shoulders than at their feet.
17:51So he didn't think it was a problem.
17:53When we make changes in the house, we do get input from other people in the community.
17:58There's a lot of history in the neighborhood.
18:00We would discuss it with neighbors, especially those who have a long historical stake in the community.
18:06The community feeling that they've had from the early part of the history of the community even continues today.
18:12We could not possibly have anticipated how the house would influence our lives.
18:18The whole experience would become a central part of my life, a long life.
18:22I just turned 100 and there's now widespread scientific belief.
18:26Beauty in one's environment does reduce stress.
18:29I realized that not a day of my life that I failed to see something beautiful here.
18:33The light off the stone.
18:35I look at the grain of the water.
18:37Little things are just, it's beautiful.
18:40The cooperative nature of the community back in the late 40s and the early 50s is hard to reproduce in modern America.
18:51There's no question about that.
18:52But here we still have much more than the normal commitment between residents.
18:58Across state lines in New Canaan, Connecticut, sits Tirana, one of Wright's largest private homes.
19:15Set beside a waterfall and pond, the land itself shaped his vision.
19:19Its sweeping curve, red concrete and warm mahogany echo the rhythm of the natural world.
19:25One of my favorite quotes from Frank Lloyd Wright is this.
19:30Nature is the only body of God we see.
19:34What he's saying is that nature has the sacred quality.
19:38It's something that we need to take care of, that we need to treat with respect and dignity.
19:44And because we're a part of nature, we also need to treat each other with respect and dignity.
19:50This connection that Wright is trying to build into his buildings with nature, in fact, make our lives better.
19:59Tirana was commissioned by John Rayward in 1955, and it's among the last of the houses that Frank Lloyd Wright built since he died in 1959.
20:10While Tirana was being built, Wright was in New York City working on his largest commission, the Guggenheim Museum.
20:17During that time, Wright fled his suite in the Plaza Hotel and came up here to Connecticut because he enjoyed this house's connection with nature.
20:38This is one of my favorite Frank Lloyd Wright designs, but I've only ever seen it in photographs and in the drawings that Frank Lloyd Wright and his apprentices created.
20:47When I walked into the space, it really made my heart race a little bit because it's this beautiful intersection of this sweeping curve of the solar hemicycle and this rectilinear design.
20:59I don't think I've seen that in any other Frank Lloyd Wright property in the same way.
21:03And it's this beautiful expression of material in one of the most breathtaking settings of all of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings.
21:11The setting rivals even perhaps Wright's most famous work, Falling Water, in the way that the house engages nature.
21:20The curve in this house is what Wright called a solar hemicycle.
21:24What that means is that the curve follows the movement of the sun through the day.
21:30So the curve out here faces east.
21:34That means it's gathering the morning light.
21:36And as the sun moves through the sky, the light in the room continuously spreads and expands, illuminating the space not only with that natural light, but with the warmth of the sun.
21:49It's even an early form of sustainable design because the sun is being used to heat the space, especially in winter.
21:57Wright loved materials, the integrity of materials, the intrinsic character of materials, and bringing that out was something that was a central part of his organic architecture.
22:07Even humble material like this concrete block, Wright left it exposed not only to show what the house was built from, but also to show how the concrete itself was made.
22:19But he does something unusual with it.
22:21The horizontal joints between concrete block units are deeply raked.
22:27You see that horizontality expressed because that horizontality is the relationship with the earth itself.
22:34The vertical joints are raised a little bit so that they're flush with the concrete masonry unit.
22:40Those two things together underscore this horizontality and the relationship of building, people, and the land itself.
22:48He juxtaposes this material with this really warm, wonderful Philippine mahogany.
22:55And when you put these two things together, show the coolness of the block and the warmth of the wood.
23:01And once again, we get a bit of an emotional experience just by the juxtaposition of materials themselves.
23:07And if you imagine a walk through the woods, you don't just see one thing.
23:12You see different kinds of trees, shrubs, bushes, and other plants.
23:17Nature does not like a monoculture.
23:19That actually doesn't really work very well.
23:21Wright is replicating that experience on interiors by creating these juxtapositions of material.
23:28The material that starts inside the house extends outside.
23:38There's this continuity of material broken only by this thin pane of glass that draws your eye outward.
23:45And inside and outside start to become a bit blurred.
23:55This is the primary suite.
23:57Today, it's used as an office.
23:59It's a small space, and there's a reason for that.
24:01Wright wanted to connect people with other people, even within a family.
24:06And so he creates these designs to push you outwards.
24:11The concrete block of the wall lines up in an exterior planter so that there's nature within the walls of the building, even though it's outside.
24:22And you also encounter the pool.
24:24You start your day with this connection with water.
24:27And that's important in this house because the name Tarana was selected by Wright to signify the relationship of this house to the Noraton River, right outside the window here.
24:39And that swimming pool really floats out over a pond that he's created by damming that river.
24:45And then you have the river itself.
24:47So there's always this connection with running water.
24:50Tarana being an Aboriginal word for running water.
24:54You'll notice how narrow this hallway is.
25:02There's a reason for that.
25:04We don't spend time in hallways, and Wright doesn't want you to spend time in this hallway.
25:09As you emerge from the bedrooms that line the space, he really wants you to move out, but head directly to that living space, that big open floor plan that's connected with that primary view that's setting above the river and into the forest.
25:26This is now one of the many bedrooms that exist in Tarana because that primary bedroom that Wright had designed for the Raywards was quite small.
25:43They came back to him a few years after the house was initially built and asked him to design a more expansive primary suite for them.
25:52A much larger bedroom, still having a connection with the natural world, but also a huge primary bathroom suite.
26:01And here in the bedroom, a circular dressing area and closet.
26:05There's even an observatory above this bedroom suite so that at night, Mr. Rayward could go up and through a telescope gaze at the stars.
26:18Because the house had such a beautiful setting, Wright designed it in a way that would take advantage of the natural landscape.
26:25He left the natural stones in situ just where the river had placed them hundreds if not thousands of years ago.
26:32And he gives the house this great sense of repose, the gray of the concrete withdrawing, the warmth of the wood emerging so that the building seems to have always belonged in this setting.
26:44When I first encountered Wright's work as an eight-year-old boy, it was the space and the light that got me all excited because I'd never seen anything like it.
27:05Today, the space and the light still excites me because I now understand why that gives us the feeling that it does, why we feel different in a Frank Lloyd Wright house.
27:18And that's because he uses space and light to create the sense of intimacy with the world around us.
27:24It concerns me that there's so much land architecture, it's just functional, when what we could do and what we should do is take that inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright to give their clients a gracious way to live as part of the world around them, connected with everybody and everything that will make their lives better.
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