Taliesin West

Last week, on our great southwestern American wedding road trip, we had a few days in Arizona. One afternoon I went to Taliesin West near Scottsdale, which I'd never heard of except on a Thorn Tree travel forum the night before.

Turns out it was where Frank Lloyd Wright lived half the year with his third wife, a beautiful campus in the desert where he also brought his apprentices every year, rotating on and off for six months with the other Taliesin in Wisconsin.

His "thing" was building to compliment the natural environment. Therefore, the entire place was made from boulders from the site put into wooden molds with smaller rocks and sand filling, poured with concrete and then exposed. All original lighting was through canvas, which diffused the light beautifully. The place is still active, used for the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, with some thirty apprentices every year as well as lots of staff and tourists.

Low profile buildings that reflected the triangular mesa backdrops

THE FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT FOUNDATION is a non-profit organization dedicated to conserve the priceless tangible and intangible assets that are the legacy of FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, create and envision new works of art and human community, educate the public and building worldwide awareness of the critical importance of creative and sustainable arts, technologies and policies related to the planning, design, and construction of the built environment.

The front of the house
The view towards the valley, which was basically uninhabited when he built the place in the 1930s. When the power lines went up, he went to pieces, appealed to Truman to bury them underground, to no avail.

Fireplace in his room, almost all of hisrooms had fireplaces, which he said were the soul of the home.
Terra cotta statues from China. He had one ofthe most extensive Asian art collections of any American in his era.
The reality of the building does not consistin the roof and walls but in the space within to be lived in - Laotse