Elizabeth Wright Ingraham

Elizabeth Wright Ingraham (1922 – September 15, 2013) was an American architect, educator, and author. She established an architect's practice in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her husband, Gordon Ingraham, which adhered to her grandfather, Frank Lloyd Wright's, architectural styles. In 1970, she formed her own architectural firm, Elizabeth Wright Ingraham and Associates, which she led until her retirement in 2007. She is credited with the design of approximately 150 buildings in Colorado Springs and other western cities. She also founded and directed the Wright-Ingraham Institute, which invites students and visiting faculty to conferences and workshops on environmental issues. Wright also co-founded the Women's Forum in Colorado, a group for networking and social gatherings. She was posthumously inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.

Early life and education Elizabeth Wright was born in 1922 in Oak Park, Illinois, to John Lloyd Wright, architect and the inventor of Lincoln Logs, and his second wife Hazel (nee Lundin). She was the granddaughter of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, under whose tutelage she studied at his Taliesin studio at age 15.

She decided to pursue a career in architecture at age 14. She went on to study architecture under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Armour Institute in Chicago, being one of three female students, and also took courses at the University of California, Berkeley.

She gained her architect's license in Illinois in 1947 after moving back to Chicago post-marriage. . Ingraham designed several buildings in nearby Pueblo, Colorado including First Unitarian Society (originally Unitarian Fellowship) at 110 Calla Ave., built 1961-62. The building features berms on three and a half sides of the exterior for energy efficiency and to harmonize with the southwest landscape. The structure has no windows but features multiple skylights, which originally provided light for its indoor garden, which was removed around the year 2000. Another client of hers in Pueblo was the former Christ Congregational Church on Liberty Ln. in the Belmont neighborhood. She designed a home on 7th Avenue at the top of the hill overlooking the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo. That structure features a large skylight with a large tree-sized bougainvillea in the middle of the living room.

By 1974 the couple divorced, and Elizabeth Wright Ingraham wanted to move away from her grandfather's styles and develop new architectural approaches. including the Vista Grande Community Church (1987), an expansion of the Fountain Branch of the El Paso Country Library (2006), and the Solaz, La Casa, Kaleidoscope, Beadles, and Vradenburg private homes. It was said that her favorite projects to work on were public buildings intended for the community, showcasing her belief that architects could serve as contributors to society.

Following her grandfather's lead, Wright Ingraham designed homes that had "low-slung" exteriors, integrated into the landscape, incorporated natural light, used organic building materials, and offered exceptional outdoor views. Her plan for the Kaleidoscope house included a skylight. Said to be inspired by the Rocky Mountain landscape, her work embodied the Usonian style elements with a larger focus on the preservation of the natural landscape around her. Her work was described as 'environmental architecture'

Sustainability measures shown on the forefront much of her work included block construction, solar-energy, thermomass and pre-fabrication.

Elizabeth also won a 1999 AIA Colorado Design Award for the Solaz house in Manitou Springs, Colorado.

Personal life She met her husband, Louis Gordon Ingraham (1915–1999), while both were studying at Taliesin. One daughter, Catherine Ingraham, became a professor of graduate architecture and urban planning at the Pratt Institute in New York. She is a visiting professor at Harvard University. Coincidentally, her grandfather Frank Lloyd Wright had died at the same age.