Building with light
Frank Lloyd Wright was a visionary and pioneering architect who transformed the way buildings are designed and experienced. He is best known for his philosophy of organic architecture, emphasizing harmony between human structures and their natural environment. Wright created spaces that blended with nature, using natural materials, open floor plans, and horizontal lines. He also mastered the use of light, not only as a visual element, but also as a structural necessity. Unafraid of breaking traditional architectural rules, the boldness of his work characterizes his most famous designs: Fallingwater and the Guggenheim Museum. Frequently surrounded in controversy—from his personal life to his radical designs—he pushed boundaries, navigated criticism, and in the end, left a legacy that inspires. As we celebrate America’s 250th year, join us as we explore the innovations of one of America’s most famous architects.
Each month, our Journeys of Innovation series tells the stories of inventors or entrepreneurs who have made a positive difference in the world. This month’s story focuses on architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his use of design patents in his work.
Do you know an innovator or entrepreneur with an interesting story?
He disappeared for hours, walking landscapes alone.
He spoke in confident, yet cryptic, declarations.
He was the subject of rumors and tragedy.
He teetered on the verge of bankruptcy.
He inspired the iconoclastic architect Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s novel "The Fountainhead."
Frank Lloyd Wright is a household name, known for works like Fallingwater in Pennsylvania and the Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art in New York. He was also an enigma.
Wright was fascinated with light—the way it could slip through narrow openings, stretch across floors, and bend around corners as if it possessed a quiet will of its own. Light was a character in his life. But light only exists in conjunction with darkness, a law of nature exemplified by a man who built a transformative architectural legacy all the while wavering himself between light and darkness in his personal life.
“Conceive now that an entire building might grow up out of conditions as a plant grows up out of soil and yet be free to be itself…Dignified as a tree in the midst of nature but a child of the spirit of man.”
A set of Froebel blocks are on display at Wright’s Pope-Leighey House. Wright turned Froebel blocks from simple to sophisticated. (Courtesy of Janet Gongola)
Long before Wright drew his first walls, he held them in his hands—Froebel blocks—a gift from his mother.
Wright was born and raised on the prairie lands in rural Wisconsin. His mother, Anna, had the deep sense that her son would become a great architect, and she sought to inspire him.
Attending the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Anna purchased Froebel blocks—a set of geometrically-shaped maple blocks that could be assembled to form two- and three-dimensional structures—as a gift for her young son.
Wright played with his Froebel blocks for hours. In small, clumsy fingers, the softly polished blocks felt light but not hollow, with a faint natural grain texture. From the blocks, he learned not just how to build, but also how light behaves within what is built—how it interacts with planes, edges, and angles; how it creates patterns and complex shadows; and how it moves across a structure.
In his own words, Wright explained: "The smooth shapely maple blocks with which to build, the sense of which never afterwards leaves the fingers: so form became feeling."
As a young, self-taught architect without a high school diploma or college education, Wright moved from Wisconsin to Chicago to gain experience at a small architectural firm. He used the small firm’s connections to get his designs in front of Louis Sullivan—co-founder of the prestigious Adler & Sullivan architectural firm—whom Wright idolized. Impressed by Wright’s drafting skills, Sullivan hired Wright as a draftsman.
Wright signed an agreement to limit his design work to the firm in exchange for a $5,000 advance salary payment. Using the advance to purchase property in Oak Park, then a small village filled with Victorian-style houses, fields, and trees, Wright set up a home for his first wife, Catherine, and their growing family of six children.
Despite agreeing to exclusivity, Wright began moonlighting for the Luxfer Prism Company, which was located in the same building as Adler & Sullivan. He also secretly took on house designs—these houses are known now as “bootleg” houses. He needed the extra income to support his panache for the expensive, filling his home with art and culture.
When Sullivan uncovered these breaches, he fired Wright. Wright did not repay the salary advance, but instead created a competing architectural firm located on the top floor of a downtown Chicago building that Sullivan had designed. The two did not speak for many years, though Wright never stopped regarding Sullivan as “Mein Lieber Meister” (my beloved master).
As the Industrial Revolution spread at the turn of the century, builders started creating skyscrapers. The lower floors of these structures were dark with natural light blocked by adjacent buildings and alleys. With the prism designs he created for Luxfer, Wright guided light into that darkness in all directions through the prism glass.
Wright secured 45 design patents for the ornamental appearance of his prism designs, which resemble the basic geometric shapes of his Froebel blocks.
Wright’s “flower” from Design Patent No. 27,977 was the only one of his prism designs produced on a mass scale by Luxfer Prism Company. (Graphic by Rebekah Oakes/USPTO)
From royalties he collected off his patented prism designs, Wright built a studio addition to his Oak Park home. Away from the bustle of downtown Chicago, he moved from studying light to shaping it. He could feel light on his skin. He could see the unobstructed horizon.
Amid this tranquility, Wright established his “Prairie style,” the first-ever completely American style of architecture. He did not coin this descriptor; critics and architectural writers did after Wright published an article titled, “A Home in a Prairie Town,” in the Ladies’ Home Journal in 1901.
Prairie houses are characterized by low horizontal lines, flat roofs with broad overhanging eaves, glass windows grouped in horizontal bands, and Roman bricks. They emulate the flat, expansive landscape of a prairie, reminiscent of Wright’s upbringing in Wisconsin. In these designs, Wright used the banded windows to stretch light across long, horizontal surfaces and blur the boundary between the indoors and the outdoors, creating the sense of oneness with nature.
“A building should appear to grow easily from its site and be shaped to harmonize with its surroundings if Nature is manifest there.”
Through the early 1900s, Wright designed many Prairie houses for a variety of clients, especially in Oak Park. He also visited Japan for the first time and found himself surrounded by traditional wooden buildings and an emphasis on harmony with nature. These aspects of Japanese life reinforced his “organic architecture” philosophy, and fascinated with Japanese art and architecture, he became a collector and dealer of Japanese woodblock prints.
Built in 1910, Robie House in Chicago is recognized as Wright’s most famous Prairie-style house. It features an extraordinary light screen. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
As a feature of his organic architecture, Wright began incorporating his own leaded glass windows into his designs. He called them “light screens”—geometric abstractions made mostly of clear glass with touches of warm colors. He likened them to the shoji screens he saw in Japan.
Wright’s light screens were unique from other leaded glass of the day and more reminiscent of his prismatic patented designs. Wright angled some pieces of glass. When light strikes angled glass, different colors appear depending on the time of day, similar to the light dispersion with prismatic glass.
Critics initially were unsure what to make of Wright’s designs. The unconventional layouts and lack of ornamentation conflicted with almost everything people expected from houses at the time. They were labeled as radical. But in time, critics, especially internationally, gained respect for his work and pivoted to describing it as groundbreaking.
Despite attaining professional fame, Wright traded the light of that success for the shadow of personal scandal where he remained on-and-off for years.
While designing a home for Edwin Cheney, Wright fell in love with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, his client’s wife. Wright and Mamah formed a deep connection, bonding over shared interests in philosophy, literature, and progressive ideas. Their relationship turned romantic, shocking society.
This 1914 magazine article is one example of how Wright and Borthwick’s relationship was sensationalized in the press. (Courtesy of Chronicling America/Library of Congress)
Seeking refuge from the public scorn, they left their spouses, fled to Europe, and stayed in Germany for over a year. By European standards, Wright’s relationship with Mamah was less shocking and they could live more freely without constant public backlash. In this open living environment without the pressure to design, Wright expanded his intellectual world, mixing with the European avant-garde, and his ideas started to circulate widely. He also published his Wasmuth Portfolio, a two-volume collection of his designs, that turned him into an international figure overnight.
Unwelcome in Chicago social circles upon their return to the United States, they settled in Taliesin, Wisconsin. Wright built a home for Mamah and resumed his architectural practice. While he was on a business trip to Chicago, a deranged servant locked Mamah, along with her two young children, in the dining room, set the house afire, and attacked those who escaped with an axe. Everyone was killed.
Only six months after the mass murders, Wright entered into a new relationship—and scandal again—with Miriam Noel, a wealthy divorcee. At the time, he remained still married to his first wife. Miriam moved to Taliesin and financed the repairs caused by the fire.
Finally obtaining a divorce from Catherine, he married Miriam, but their marriage was short-lived. She left after five months and engaged him in protracted divorce proceedings that lasted several years, triggering yet more scandal.
Wright continued to secure architectural design commissions, boosted by the admiration he gained in Europe, but he spent money as fast as he earned it. He enjoyed fine food and wine, entertained aristocratically, and poured money continually into building and rebuilding Taliesin and Taliesin West, his winter retreat in Arizona. He surrounded himself with more art and more fine furnishings — his woodblocks alone included hundreds to over a thousand pieces at any given time. He drove chic, high-quality vehicles, favoring Lincoln Continentals. He donned a distinctive, expensive wardrobe, often wearing long capes with hats and carrying a walking stick.
Using his home as a workshop, studio, and social space, all under a single roof, he lived communally — and quite defiantly — with his apprentices. Although more assistants than formal pupils, Wright’s daily routine with his apprentices melded into one continuous, creative environment. Wright was intense, informal, and highly demanding; he offered total immersion into his world.
As a result of his highly unconventional lifestyle, Wright regularly suffered financial setbacks. Creditors pursued him. He evaded them. Sometimes, he shifted client funds to cover his personal expenses. Other times, he resorted to teaching, writing books, and selling Japanese woodblocks to earn money. At one point, he even declared bankruptcy.
Just as the nation was about to fall into financial despair with the Stock Market Crash of 1929, Wright met his third and final wife Olgivanna with whom he had a daughter. She was 26; he was 57. Once more, his romance brought scandal.
After his divorce from Miriam was finalized, he married Olgavanna and remained so until the end of his life. She offered a stabilizing influence, helping him to establish a true architectural school called the Taliesin Fellowship. She brought him back into the light from the shadows.
Wright described the goal of the Taliesin Fellowship was “to develop a well correlated, creative human being with a wide horizon but capable of effective concentration of his faculties upon the circumstance in which he lives.” (Courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society)
Instead of traditional classroom lectures, Taliesin fellows paid tuition and worked directly with Wright on commissions, gaining real-world experience. They studied, and they hauled stones, mixed concrete, and built walls. They also migrated with Wright between Taliesin in Wisconsin for summers and Taliesin West in Arizona for winters. Through this migration, they adapted to different climates, landscapes, and building materials.
Wright was deeply involved in his fellows’ development. He set high standards with little tolerance for mediocrity, reviewed their drawings personally, and provided critique. Sometimes, he would walk into the studio, glance at a drawing, and immediately point out flaws. Other times, he would dramatically redraw parts himself.
Wright dined nightly with his students, who prepared and served the meals. Everyone dressed formally. Telling stories or lecturing, he positioned himself as a central authority at the table. After dinner, he encouraged music, dance, and performance, believing creativity in all arts fed architecture.
As Americans struggled during the Great Depression of the early 1930s, Wright sought to bring affordable homes to the middle class. He called these designs “U.S.-onian” or “Usonian”—an acronym for “United States of North America.” Where Wright once stretched light across the horizon in his Prairie-style designs, he allowed it to settle into the ordinary with his Usonian homes.
Single story L-shaped structures with a flat roof, Wright’s Usonian houses are compact, giving the feeling of compression. They often include a cantilever, particularly for a carport, and bands of elevated windows for enhanced natural light and ventilation.
To minimize costs, he constructed the houses from local building materials, including wood, sand, stone, and clay. He likewise made the windows from wooden frames with plain glass inserts, rather than from leaded glass as used in his Prairie-style homes. These windows created a warm pattern, much like a lantern, when viewed from the exterior after dark.
The Pope-Leighey House, located less than 10 miles from the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, is one of Wright’s first Usonian homes built in the early 1940s. (Copyright 2026 Paul Burk Photography)
Just as he sought to dominate over his Taliesin apprentices, so too he sought to dominate over his clients and the architectural world. His designs often exceeded budgets, yet Wright refused to scale back. He mandated that clients seek his permission to make any changes—however slight—after his homes were built. Even the addition of a mere curtain rod or appearance of a newly-planted tree raised his scrutiny and often his ire.
By the mid-1930s, Wright’s reputation had waned. In his 70s, he was regarded as washed up. But an opportunity from one of his students gave him a chance at regaining prominence.
“Glass and light—two forms of the same thing.”
That student’s father was a wealthy Pittsburgh-based department store owner, Edgar J. Kauffman. He commissioned Wright to design a summer home in rural southwestern Pennsylvania. Bear Run, a tributary of the Youghiogheny River, flowed across the property over rocky land and down a waterfall.
When most would have built the house beside the waterfall, giving the home its distance, Wright built on top of it. He explained to Kauffman, “I want you to live with the waterfall, not just to look at it, but for it to become an integral part of your lives.”
Incorporating banded windows throughout the house, similar to the windows in his Prairie and Usonian homes, Wright choreographed light to blend seamlessly with nature. He also commanded that these windows be Waterwhite glass, a unique low-iron product, that is clearer than other glass. And he created an “invisible” corner window where “glass meets glass.” Through this corner window, he showed there is no need for traditional vertical corner supports, but instead provided for an uninterrupted, and clearly dramatic, view of the outdoors.
Light could reflect off the water and enter the home. Shadows could shift with trees and moving streams. Interior spaces felt alive, not enclosed.
Built in the mid-1930s, Fallingwater was accorded a National Historic Landmark in 1966, and designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2009. (Courtesy of Jerry Lorengo)
Fallingwater placed Wright back in the spotlight indeed, gracing the cover of Time magazine in 1938. The bold design—building directly over a waterfall—was unprecedented and photographs made Fallingwater one of the most recognizable modern houses almost instantly. Commissions flowed and Wright’s legacy in architecture was cemented into the ripples of a 30-foot waterfall.
Seeking to harness Wright’s vision, Solomon R. Guggenheim commissioned him for a new museum to house modern art in New York City. Guggenheim gave Wright the freedom to experiment, and he opted to use light to enhance movement.
Wright famously described the Guggenheim as an “inverted ziggurat.” It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2008 and named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2015. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Wright was displeased with the location, and in typical Wright fashion, he let his displeasure be known. “I can think of several more desirable places in the world to build this great museum, but we will have to try New York,” he wrote. As a compromise, he was permitted to select the museum’s exact spot.
Wright chose a plot of land next to Central Park on Fifth Avenue and 89th Street on the Upper East Side. With this location, he sought to bring the Guggenheim as close to nature as possible. And with his design, he sought to contrast with the surrounding rectilinear brownstones and skyscrapers.
Wright originally wanted to construct the Guggenheim of “Cherokee red” marble—his favorite color. In a 1938 Architectural Forum article, he quoted Russian scientist Kliment Arkadevich Timiriazev, stating “the color red is invincible. It is the color not only of blood—it is the color of creation.” Quite surprisingly and perhaps in a rare occurrence, his preference was rejected.
The Guggenheim is an enormous, white, cylindrical, concrete building with a Plexiglass dome—one circular eye—through which light plunges downward to the atrium. In addition to the oculus, narrow skylights run along the edges of the spiral, providing a soft glow of diffused light.
Visitors take an elevator to the top and walk down a spiral ramp that winds around the rotunda. Light pulls visitors into the galleries, pushing them from Impressionist art to modern art on the descent from the dome.
From commission before World War II to construction after, 16 years passed. Several factors caused the lag. Wright modified his design — 700 sketches and six sets of working drawings. Guggenheim acquired additional property. Building materials increased in price after the war.
Frank Lloyd Wright authored about 20 books over the course of his life, along with hundreds of articles, lectures, and essays. Two years before his death, he wrote "A Testament," an autobiographical and philosophical exposition of his career. It was his final extended written statement. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
Unfortunately, Wright did not see his final masterpiece bring artistic expression to light. The Guggenheim opened in 1959, six months after Wright’s death at the age of 91.
Though not always loved, or even liked, by family, students, or clients, Wright is regarded as one of the greatest architects of the 20th century. He designed more buildings than he could ever see completed — a total of 1,114 structures. Of those, 532 were constructed and roughly 400-430 stand to this day across 33 states.
The American Institute of Architects — despite his refusal to join —awarded him with their highest honor, a Gold Medal, in 1949 and subsequently named Fallingwater “the best all-time work of American architecture” through a member poll in 1991. He also received the Franklin Institute’s Frank P. Brown Medal in 1933 for his innovative engineering and design, especially Fallingwater. And he was honored with a Royal Gold Medal in 1941 by the Royal Institute of British Architects. His greatest recognition is not, however, a trophy; it is his lasting, global influence on modern architecture.
Over his seven-decade career, Wright moved from light to shadow and back, both personally and professionally. In the process, he transformed the role of natural light in architecture. He showed that light is not just something that fills a building, but instead is something that defines it — guiding movement, shaping perception, and connecting people, space, and the natural world.
Credits
Produced by the USPTO’s Office of the Chief Communications Officer. For feedback or questions, please contact inventorstories@USPTO.gov.
Story by Janet Gongola. Contributions from Rebekah Oakes and Whitney Pandil-Eaton. Photo at the top of the story featuring Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin is courtesy of the Chicago History Museum. Graphic on the USPTO.gov homepage is by Gabriella McNevin-Melendez.
References
De Feo, Anthony. “The Prismatic Glass Tiles of Frank Lloyd Wright.” Daily Art Magazine. Accessed April 2026. Glass Tiles by Frank Lloyd Wright | DailyArt Magazine
Fazzare, Elizabeth. “Fallingwater: Everything to Know About Frank Lloyd Wright’s Masterpiece.” Architectural Digest. Accessed April 2026. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: Everything to Know About the Masterpiece | Architectural Digest
“Frank Lloyd Wright and the Guggenheim Museum.” Guggenheim New York. Accessed April 2026. Frank Lloyd Wright and the Guggenheim New York | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation
“Frank Lloyd Wright’s Leaded Glass.” Frank Lloyd Wright Trust. Accessed April 2026. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Leaded Glass | Frank Lloyd Wright Trust
“Let there be Light: Luxfer Prisms as a part of the Modern Store Front, with a page for Architects.” Chicago: American Luxfer Prism Company, 1910.
“Luxfer Prism Glass.” The Wright Library. Accessed April 2026. Frank Lloyd Wright
“Pope-Leighey House” and “Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.” Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Accessed April 2026. Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
Secrest, Meryle. Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
Weintraub, Alan et al. Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses. New York: Rizzoli, 2005.
