Frank Lloyd Wright's posthumous architecture

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a spate of posthumously built works by Frank Lloyd Wright. Using the architect's archive as a kind of repository of designs that can be adapted for new clients, programmes and sites, these buildings stake out an ambiguous claim upon Wright's name and legacy. The growing body of posthumous architecture presents a range of often unacknowledged and unexamined challenges to Wright's celebrated canon of built works, and to the architectural discipline more generally, troubling conservationists, historians, tourists and foundations alike. These problematic buildings are the subject of this essay, which examines the contemporary appeal of Wright's archive and brand, to open up serious questions about the authenticity, authorship and authorisation of an architect's works realised long after their death.