The Greatest Architect Ever - Elie Weinstein

We walk in and out of them every day, live in them, work in them, eat in them, and do almost everything in them; buildings. The one person who has really changed the way buildings are made is Frank Lloyd Wright, the father of contemporary architecture. He has so many architectural achievements, and each one is so special and intriguing that you could just stare and try to put together drawings of one building. Walking up the Guggenheim, a museum in New York, New York built by the genius himself and filled with sketches and models of his dreams and realities is just amazing. His idea and creativity was brilliant: to create buildings and living spaces that were practical and flowed with nature rather than destroyed it. This theme is especially distinguishable in his most famous and one of his most beautiful works, Falling Water. It is a house that is now used as a museum to pay tribute to Frank. Situated on a hillside in Pennsylvania, Falling Water not only overlooks but is built on top of a waterfall that cascades right in front of it and flows down into a stream. The house is also surrounded by trees that were already there, instead of removing them and creating a garden.
Frank demonstrated his abilities as a child because Anna, his mother decorated his room with engravings of English churches, and she bought him a set of blocks which he used to play with; she wanted him to become an architect. At the age of 19 Frank left to Chicago and set out to build a life in architecture for himself. In his career, he made many sketches, most of which were built, all following his principle that form follows function.
Frank Lloyd Wright inspires me because his designs and ideas serve as a model for today’s architectural style and technique. I have long wanted to pursue a career in design, and wether it be automotive or architectural, I want my designs to follow Frank Lloyd Wright’s philosophy of building our structures in a way so that humans can live harmoniously with nature. This is essential at the moment when it comes to designing almost anything, in order to lessen pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation. Apart from that, isn’t it just amazing that the “modern” houses that are designed today -- geometric in form, sleek, raw-looking, surrounded by plants -- are made in the same style that a man who was born way over a century ago did? Hopefully architects and designers in general can be inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s accomplishments. Maybe one day I’ll design and mass produce a car that runs on air, or build an underground house in order to let let trees grow. Albert Einstein once said that “Imagination is more important than knowledge;” it is this mindset and creativity that Frank Lloyd Wright had that is essential to the evolution of the way we live on Earth.