Frank Lloyd Wright at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao on artrepublic.com

The exhibition features 63 visionary architecture projects that range from private homes and civic and government buildings to religious and performance spaces, as well as unrealized urban mega-structures.

The show’s singular layout allows visitors to discover the heterogeneous nature of Wright’s designs in nearly 200 of the renowned architect’s original drawings together with 12 new scale models and digital animations that bring his unrealized projects to life. This comprehensive overview of his work will take on special significance in the context of a landmark of 20th-century architecture, namely the building designed by Frank Gehry to house the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

From Within Outward The Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit illuminates Wright’s pioneering contributions to the redefinition of architectural space; he emphasized the importance of a building’s interior space in shaping and informing its exterior, which constituted a central theme in his work. As Wright himself said, “The building is no longer a block of building material dealt with, artistically, from the outside. The room within is the great fact about building — the room to be expressed in the exterior as space enclosed.” Few designs in Wright’s oeuvre illustrate the concept of designing “from within outward” as well as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, in which the interior form gives shape to the building’s exterior shell.

While the trend in Western construction was to force individuals to adapt to a predetermined built space, Wright proposed the inversion of this dynamic by creating spaces “designed for living”. According to Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, Director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives in Scottsdale, Arizona, which is the primary source of loans for this exhibit, “Rather than a retrospective, this exhibition focuses on Wright’s belief in the power of space to transform our lives and takes a new look at his incredibly diverse range of imaginative solutions to the spatial needs of human beings which, from a creative perspective, can continue to provide valuable solutions to the challenges of today and tomorrow.”

During a career spanning over 70 years, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959), who died just six months before the opening of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, worked independently, with a unique and personal style unlike that of his contemporaries which allowed him to develop a new sense of architecture. His belief that a building’s form should be designed to suit its function has influenced several generations of architects.

OPENING HOURS: Tue –Sun: 10.00 – 20.00

Image Credits

Frank Lloyd Wright, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1943-59 , Perspective, "Reception", Graphite pencil and colored pencil on paper, 74 x 98.4 cm, The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, FLLW FDN # 4305.092, © 2009 The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona, Solomon R. Guggenheim MuseumNew York, 1943-59, Exterior view, © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New, York

Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona, 1937-59, View from prow to drafting studio and original dining room, The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, © 2009 The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona

Frank Lloyd Wright, Larkin Company Administration Building (demolished) Buffalo, New York, 1902-06 Exterior view, The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, FLLW FDN # 0403.0030, © 2009 The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona, Larkin Company Administration Building (demolished) Buffalo, New York, 1902-06, Interior court view, Print, 45.7 x 66 cm, The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, FLLW FDN # 0403.164, © 2009 The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona