名人轶事:Frank Lloyd Wright，1867-1959

（单词翻译）

Frank Lloyd Wright，1867-1959: The greatest American building designer of the

twentieth century

One critic said Wright's ideas were 50 years ahead of his time.

VOICE ONE:

I'm Phoebe Zimmerman.

VOICE TWO:

And I'm Steve Ember with the VOA Special English program People in America.

Today we tell about the life and work of the greatest American building

designer of the twentieth century, Frank Lloyd Wright.

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Frank Lloyd Wright 

Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings for more than seventy years. He did most

of his work from nineteen hundred through the nineteen fifties. He designed

houses, schools, churches, public buildings, and office buildings.

Critics say Frank Lloyd Wright was one of America's most creative architects.

One critic said his ideas were fifty years ahead of the time in which he

lived.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in eighteen- sixty?seven in the middle western

state of Wisconsin. He studied engineering at the University of Wisconsin. In

eighteen eighty?seven, he went to the city of Chicago. He got a job in the

office of the famous architects, Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler.

Several years later, Wright established his own building design business. He

began by designing homes for people living in and near Chicago. These homes

were called "prairie houses."

VOICE ONE:

Prairie houses were long and low. They seemed to grow out of the ground. They

were built of wood and other natural materials. The indoors expanded to the

outdoors by extending the floor. This created what seemed like a room without

walls or a roof.

In nineteen-oh-two, Wright designed one prairie house, called the Willits

House, in the town of Highland¹ Park. The house was shaped like a cross. It was

built around a huge fireplace². The rooms were designed so they seemed to flow

into each other.

VOICE TWO:

Robie House      

Visitors to Chicago can see another of Wright's prairie houses. It is called

the Robie House. It looks like a series of long, low rooms on different

levels. The rooms seem to float over the ground. Wright designed everything in

the house, including the furniture and floor coverings.

Wright's prairie houses had a great influence on home design in America. Even

today, one hundred years later, his prairie houses appear very modern.

VOICE ONE:

In the nineteen thirties, Wright developed what he called "Usonian" houses.

Usonia was his name for a perfect, democratic United States of America.

Usonian houses were planned to be low cost. Wright designed them for the

American middle class. These are the majority of Americans who are neither

very rich nor very poor.

Frank Lloyd Wright believed that all middle class families in America should

be able to own a house that was designed well. He believed that the United

States could not be a true democracy if people did not own their own house on

their own piece of land.

VOICE TWO:

Usonian houses were built on a flat base of concrete. The base was level with

the ground. Wright believed that was better and less costly³ than the common

method of digging a hole in the ground for the base. Low?cost houses based on

the Usonian idea became very popular in America in the nineteen fifties.

Visitors can see one of Wright's Usonian homes near Washington, D. C. It is

the Pope-Leighy House in Alexandria, Virginia.#p#副标题#e#

(MUSIC)

VOICE ONE:

Frank Lloyd Wright believed in spreading his ideas to young building

designers. In nineteen thirty?two, he established a school called the Taliesin

Fellowship⁴. Architectural students paid to live and work with him.

During the summer, they worked at his home near Spring Green, Wisconsin.

Wright called this house "Taliesin." That is a Welsh name meaning "shining

brow." It was built of stone and wood into the top of a hill.

During the winter, they worked at Taliesin West. This was Wright's home and

architecture office near Phoenix⁵, Arizona. Wright and his students started

building it in nineteen thirty-seven in the Sonoran Desert.

VOICE TWO:

Taliesin West   

Taliesin West is an example of Frank Lloyd Wright's ideas of organic

architecture taking root in the desert. He believed that architecture should

have life and spirit. He said a building should appear to grow naturally and

easily from its base into its surroundings. Selecting the best place to put a

building became a most important first step in the design process.

Frank Lloyd Wright had discovered the beauty of the desert in nineteen twenty

-seven when he was asked to help with the design of the Arizona Biltmore

hotel. He continued to return to the desert with his students to escape the

harsh⁶ winters in Wisconsin.

Ten years later he found a perfect place for his winter home and school. He

bought about three hundred hectares of desert land at the foot of the McDowell

Mountains near Scottsdale, Arizona.

Wright said: " I was struck by the beauty of the desert, by the dry, clear

sun-filled air, by the stark⁷ geometry of the mountains."  He wanted everyone

who visited Taliesin West to feel this same sense of place.

VOICE ONE:

His architecture students helped him gather rocks and sand from the desert

floor to use as building materials. They began a series of buildings that

became home, office and school. Wright kept working on and changing what he

called a building made of many buildings for twenty years.

Today, Taliesin West has many low stone buildings linked together by walkways

and courtyards. It is still very much alive with activity. About seventy

people live, work and study there. Guides take visitors through what is one of

America's most important cultural treasures.

VOICE TWO:

Falling Water     

In nineteen thirty?seven, Wright designed a house near the city of Pittsburgh,

Pennsylvania. It is a fine example of his idea of organic architecture. The

house is called "Fallingwater." It sits on huge rocks next to a small river.

It extends over a waterfall. From one part of the house, a person can step

down a stairway over the water.

"Fallingwater" is so unusual and so beautiful that it came to represent modern

American architecture. One critic calls it the greatest house of the twentieth

century. Like Taliesin West, "Fallingwater" is open to the public.

VOICE ONE:

Frank Lloyd Wright also is famous for designing imaginative⁸ public buildings.

In nineteen?oh?four, he designed an office building for the Larkin Soap

Company in Buffalo⁹, New York. The offices were organized around a tall open

space. At the top was a glass roof to let sunlight into the center.

In the late nineteen thirties, Wright designed an office building for the

Johnson Wax Company in Racine, Wisconsin. It also had one great room without

traditional walls or windows. The outside of the building was made of smooth,

curved brick and glass.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

In nineteen forty?three, Frank Lloyd Wright designed one of his most famous

projects: the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York City. The building was

completed in nineteen sixty, the year following his death.

The Guggenheim Museum in New York

The Guggenheim is unusual because it is a circle.  Inside the museum, a

walkway rises in a circle from the lowest floor almost to the top. Visitors

move along this walkway to see the artwork on the walls.

The Guggenheim museum was very different from Wright's other designs. It even

violated¹⁰ one of his own rules of design: the Guggenheim's shape is completely

different from any of the buildings around it.

VOICE ONE:

When Wright was a very old man, he designed the Marin County Civic¹¹ Center in

San Rafael, California, near San Francisco. The Civic Center project was one

of his most imaginative designs. It is a series of long buildings between two

hills.

Frank Lloyd Wright believed that architecture is life itself taking form.

"Therefore," he said, "it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the

world yesterday, as it is lived today, or ever will be lived."

Frank Lloyd Wright died in nineteen fifty-nine, in Phoenix, Arizona. He was

ninety?one years old. His buildings remain a record of the best of American

Twentieth Century culture.

(MUSIC)

VOICE TWO:

This Special English program was written by Shelley Gollust and Marilyn

Christiano. It was produced by Lawan Davis. Our studio engineer was Max

Carroll. I'm Steve Ember.

VOICE ONE:

And I'm Phoebe Zimmerman. Join us again next week for another People in

America program on the Voice of America.