When he was a child in Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright's mother encouraged him to make buildings and furniture out of blocks and paper. Later, Wright decided to study engineering and attended the University of Wisconsin for two years. He left the university to join Louis Sullivan's architectural firm in Chicago, working for Sullivan for five years as a designer and draftsman until he left to start his own practice.

One of Wright's core beliefs about architecture was that a building should fit its natural setting. In the houses he designed in the Chicago area in the early 1900s, he tried to express the Midwest's flat expanses of land through long, low lines and roofs that hung beyond the walls. This "prairie house" style also featured an interior with open spaces and carefully placed windows.

In addition to houses, Wright designed many public buildings as well, including churches, office buildings, factories, and hotels. One of his most unusual and controversial designs was for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City in 1943. Wright designed this modern-art museum as one long, spiraling ramp that wound around the inside of a very large room. The art is hung on the walls, and visitors slowly walk up the ramp to view the works.

Wright's influence on architects of several generations has been tremendous. As early as the 1910s, architects in Europe were learning from his ideas about interior space. Wright also spent a great deal of his time teaching younger architects, lecturing, and writing about architecture.