Frank Lloyd Wright

​Toytown and the City

By Edwin Heathcote

​CLOSE READING

​Frank Lloyd Wright Sr. (June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years.

8 Frank Lloyd Wright Buildings Given UNESCO World Heritage Status
https://images.app.goo.gl/bmEZ3iPbQmj4JHF99

​​The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright

​Beth Sholom, dedicated on Sept. 20, 1959, is the only synagogue ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and, with it, he aimed to re-invent the design of a modern American synagogue while creating a new American architecture.

​​Beth Sholom

​​UNESCO

​​Frank Lloyd Wright

Let's first meet....

Parag 1.

​CLOSE READING

​“Early in life,” wrote Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), “I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change.” Frequently described as America’s greatest architect, Wright was, of course, a genius and honest arrogance suited him well. But, if he was not a man given to crediting anyone or anything for inspiration, he never failed to acknowledge the architectural influence of the building blocks developed by Friedrich Fröbel, the German inventor of the kindergarten, that he remembered playing with as a child. “The smooth shapely maple blocks with which to build, the sense of which never afterward leaves the fingers: so form became feeling.”

1. ​What does honest arrogance mean?

2. and hypocritical humility?

3. To what extent are they opposite descriptions of someone's character?

4. Change these terms with more common words.

5. Can you explain how this comparison helps in understanding the rest of the paragraph?

Parag 2.

​CLOSE READING

So there is symmetry in the way that in 1916, four decades or so later, his son John Lloyd Wright himself became a figure of influence in the world of construction toys. John had worked with Frank on the rebuilding of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, where both men had been struck by the Japanese method of building foundations on a series of notched logs which allowed some tolerance in case of earthquakes. John returned to the US to patent the principle for Lincoln Logs, a construction toy based on a series of miniature logs which locked together to create little buildings, inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999 and is still on sale today.

What influenced what?

Parag 4.

​CLOSE READING

The toys we buy our children allow them to build worlds of their own, limited only by the often strange visual vocabulary of their construction sets – but do they influence the worlds we build ourselves in later life? How are architecture, engineering and design influenced by the toys we played with as children? And are the increasing ubiquities of digital (as opposed to physical) play going to radically alter the way we conceive and build in the future?

1. ​How many questions is the author asking?

2. a. Which question seems to sound like a worrying issue?

   b. Rephrase this sentence in a way that it does not express worry, but interest or curiosity.

3. Which sentence expresses a fact?