Frank Lloyd Wright's landscape design relied on abstractions

Frank Lloyd Wright influenced contemporary architecture to have a more holistic approach

Frank Lloyd Wright’s work throughout the 20th century introduced concepts like open plans, floor-to-ceiling windows, and community-focused design. His “organic architecture” philosophy can be seen as a predecessor to today’s sustainable architecture.

Frank Lloyd Wright was known for his uncompromising personality and visionary architecture

Written the year of his death, this article reflects on Wright’s notorious arrogance and difficult personality that kept him at odds with his contemporaries and the architectural establishment of the time. However, his boldness was an essential trait that helped define his legacy.

Wisconsin left a deep impression on Frank Lloyd Wright and his work

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright openly adored his home state’s “pastoral” landscapes, red barns, and down-to-earth residents. Wright also referenced the state as a huge inspiration for his design style.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed hundreds of buildings

Frank Lloyd Wright was a prolific architect and built hundreds of structures across America, and even a few in Japan and Canada. From humbler homes in Illinois to sprawling mansions in California, Wright experimented with different styles throughout his career and varied in each of his designs.

Taliesin offered Frank Lloyd Wright an oasis away from gossip and scrutiny

After a public affair that damaged his reputation, Frank Lloyd Wright built a hideaway for himself and his mistress. This grand Wisconsin structure is now a National Historic Landmark after experiencing two major fires, each followed by major renovations.

Frank Lloyd Wright's houses are historically hard to sell because they're old, subject to local landmark commissions, and often unfashionable

Georgia O’Keeffe and Frank Lloyd Wright were longtime friends

In the early 1930s, famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright invited Georgia O’Keeffe to become the master artist at the newly formed Taliesin Fellowship. O’Keeffe turned him down, but the letter sparked a decades-long friendship, rooted in their shared love for art and American landscapes, which continued until his death.

Prairie style homes are low with dramatic horizontal lines

Prairie style houses are characterized by their long, low, and boxy open plans, emphasizing horizontal lines. Inspired by his upbringing in Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright spearheaded the Prairie style and created houses according to this plan from 1899 to 1910.

Many of Wright's buildings used radiant heating

Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings weren’t just radical because of how they looked, but many of them also incorporated stunning technological innovations. Radiant heating is one of Wright’s most popular heating systems, offering the comfort of walking on warm floors on a cold day.

Legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed the SC Johnson headquarters in Wisconsin, aiming to make a cathedral-like workplace

The symbol of the American lawn

Trimmed, pure green lawns are the norm in US yards and require regular mowing, fertilizing, and weed whacking to keep in order. They are cherished for their simple aesthetic and as a soft area for walking or playing near the house. Still, they are also so-called monoculture zones with only one plant species, lacking biodiverse resilience. This article traces the history of the lawn in America and the contemporary debates over its future.

Thomas Jefferson is rumored to have anonymously submitted a design for the White House

Of the design submissions for the White House, one is rumored to have been submitted by Thomas Jefferson, an amateur architect. Though his design did not win, he later influenced the grounds as president, adding formal gardens, wooded areas, and a carriage drive.

How Charles Blair Macdonald changed the design behind golf

Macdonald's contributions to golf course design, including 21 principles still used today, are just as legendary as the game's players. This deep dive into the mostly forgotten figure explores his legacy, including why he never charged for his services.

O'Keeffe's flowers are one of her most famous—and most misunderstood—motifs

Both critics and fans alike believed O'Keeffe's flower paintings were of female genitalia, though the artist never welcomed that interpretation. Part of the reason was that Freudian analysis was popular at the time they were first exhibited. Another was that her partner, Alfred Stieglitz, along with others in the art world, insisted on her work being erotic. Below is "Abstraction White Rose" from 1927.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Jasper Johns’ works often captured familiar symbols and made them abstract

Some of pop art’s most famous works toy with the push and pull between recognizable and hidden. ARTnews dissects seven well-known pieces by Jasper Johns—including works of American flags and maps—to explore the relationship between obvious iconography and invited analysis common to the genre.

Defining Dalí's surreal aesthetic

Salvador Dalí is known for his modernist paintings, but his surreal aesthetic has lived on long after his passing, with elements of his art making their way into fashion, film, and interior decorating. This incisive Artnet explainer unpacks the elements that make up Dalí's larger artistic vision and highlights the ways they still appear throughout popular culture.

Revisiting the ornamental hermit craze of the 1700s

One of the more elaborate gardening trends of the 18th century was the placement of a well-designed hermitage within the landscape, a throwback to the more religious antiquity and the Middle Ages. The trend went so far for some that they hired real live hermits, preferably older, bearded, and willing to stay quiet and out of the way. Read about the wild trend here.

Take an architectural walking tour of the National Mall

Architect Nicholas Potts leads a walking tour of the National Mall, noting that many buildings adapt European neoclassical styles into an American form, such as replacing traditional motifs with corn cobs on the columns of the US Capitol building.

How yoga philosophy inspired Thoreau

In the 19th century, yogis traveling in America emphasized the practice as a philosophical one rather than a purely physical act. Like many Americans at the time, including his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau was intrigued by yoga's mysticism, once writing, "I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated."

JMW Turner inspired the impressionists

JMW Turner was a prominent member of the Romantic movement, known for his expressive, colorful, and threatening paintings of coastal and marine scenes. Later in his career, he pushed his style to more intense colors and abstract forms, inspiring and preceding the abstract art movements, like Impressionism.

The iconic National Parks posters were the product of a New Deal arts initiative

Ranklin Delano Roosevelt established the Works Progress Administration in 1935 as a part of his New Deal. The program was intended to both create American jobs and inspire regular citizens through art. The Federal Art Project, as a part of the WPA, employed over 5,000 artists to work on projects, including the now-iconic National Parks posters.

Graffiti has its own visual language, including simple 'tags,' large block letters, and complex 'pieces'

Every graffiti artist looks to create their own visual identity, but they often rely on common folk styles, especially when they're still developing their craft. "Tags" are little more than an artist's pseudonym, while "Wildstyle" takes an abstract approach to the signature. More complicated styles, like "blockbuster," are like informal billboards strapped to the sides of buildings and subway cars.

Jungian archetypes can reveal personality traits

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung argued that we’re drawn to familiar character types—such as heroes, caregivers, or rebels—because they reflect universal archetypes embedded in the human subconscious. He believed these patterns shape behavior, motivation, and personal growth.

The story behind Copland and Graham's 'Appalachian Spring'

The ballet, which premiered in 1944, was conceived by the composer and choreographer through the mail, with the two corresponding about how the music might fit the dancing. Later, designer Isamu Noguchi would design a set that whittled the western Pennsylvanian pioneer town down to its core elements.

Whitman revolutionized American poetry

Whitman was a groundbreaking force in American literature, legitimizing the national idiom, capturing the spirit of the evolving country, and inspiring younger generations of writers for centuries to follow.

Santa Barbara’s Botanic Garden was the first to showcase the state’s native plants

Founded in 1926, the garden’s founders sought to showcase the state’s local flora as a matter of conservation, rather than the water-hungry exotics regularly being imported. This story focuses on how the garden’s design took a more natural and less formal direction.

George Washington was an expert in maps and cartography

Trained as a surveyor, Washington routinely studied, annotated, and drew maps throughout his life. He relied on cartography to navigate frontier lands, plan military campaigns across vast distances, and make strategic decisions on borders, settlement, and governance.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

Mid-century modern graphic designers, known for their bright colors and bold lines in advertising, also found success with children's books.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

Poison ivy was sent to Europe in the 1600s as an exotic, ornamental oddity, where it was purposefully grown in the English royal gardens at Kew, the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, and a few other locations.

Dorothy's famous entrance into Oz in 'The Wizard of Oz' relied on analog tricks, including a body double and sepia-toned paint, as much as it did on technology

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

Power lines are dotted with large, brightly colored balls to improve the visibility of these thin wires to helicopters and small planes and help prevent potential crashes.

In 1915, workers recovered a submarine-like vessel from the Chicago River, prompting fears of German espionage

Chaos theory—informally known as the butterfly effect—is the reason why weather forecasts are presented with probabilities rather than certainties.

Explore an interactive map built from more than 100,000 survey responses on where people find joy in their lives

Browse a detailed visual analysis of over 200,000 similes—comparisons that often use 'like' or 'as'—from popular fiction to see how frequently writers the same idiomatic expressions.

All rainbows are 'raincircles' caused by water droplets separating white sunlight into a spectrum of colors, but Earth's surface blocks the bottom half of the circle from our line of sight.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Objects can be 3D printed with light by projecting 2D computerized tomography (CT) scans onto rotating cylinders of resin, which solidify upon exposure.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.