Noted American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who changed the course of America’s architectural history with his visionary designs, created 1,171 works in his lifetime. However, more than half of these designs continue to remain unrealised in the built form.

Three of Wright’s 660 unbuilt architectural designs have now been reconstructed in realistic 3D renders and floor plans by Angi. Based on the drawings by Wright, who is recognised by the American Institute of Architects as ‘the greatest American architect of all time’, these 3D reconstructions include Mrs. David Devin House (Chicago, 1896), Cottage Studio for Ayn Rand (Connecticut, 1946) and Lake Tahoe Lodge (Lake Tahoe, California, 1923).

“Wright’s plans and visualisations are things of beauty, but to experience how his unrealised sketches might feel requires a great leap,” Angi explained.

Mrs. David Devin House (Chicago, 1896)

A project executed very early in his solo architectural career for Aline Devin, this plan was one of many designs that he presented to his ‘fastidious’ client who was looking to impress her high society friends. Constant meddling from his client led to a series of experimental designs, none of which materialised in the built form.

“Although Wright was toying with this type of curvy, Sullivanesque ornamentation around this time, the home doesn’t neatly fit his progression as an architect. Unbuilt, it leaves a unique hole in Wright’s history,” Angi stated.

Cottage Studio for Ayn Rand (Connecticut, 1946)

Novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand, who had based the main character, Howard Roark in her 1943 novel, The Fountainhead on Wright, got in touch with the architect to design a summer retreat either in Connecticut or in Los Angeles. Featuring a series of cantilevered terraces in concrete or stucco, with cascading vines and fountains, the house comes complete with a top floor studio offering louvered views to the sea. While Rand was very impressed with the design, describing it as “magnificent”, the project never materialised.

“The building marries Rand’s severe streak with Wright’s celebration of nature,” Angi observed.

Lake Tahoe Lodge (Lake Tahoe, California, 1923)

“The best [buildings] had life only on paper. The most interesting and vital stories might belong to these children of imagination were they ever to encounter the field. Say, the Lake Tahoe project …,” Wright wrote in the early 1940s.

Designed without a commission for an undeveloped 200-acre plot on a mountainous woodland site in Emerald Bay, Wright’s utopian Lake Tahoe Summer Colony features prototype lodge cottages designed to adapt to the land as well as floating cabins in the bay below.

“High-walled terraces would further the sense of seclusion from society and attachment to nature,” Angi said.

Images: Angi.com

Architecture News & Editorial Desk

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