Taliesin West ( ) is a studio and home developed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in Scottsdale, Arizona, United States. Named after Wright's Taliesin studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin, Taliesin West was Wright's winter home and studio from 1937 until his death in 1959. The complex is the headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, a nonprofit organization, which hosts tours and events there. Taliesin West is designated as a National Historic Landmark and a World Heritage Site.
Wright and his Taliesin Fellowship (later the School of Architecture) began making wintertime pilgrimages from Wisconsin to Arizona in 1935, and he bought a site in the McDowell Mountains two years later. His apprentices set up a temporary camp there, erecting the initial structures between 1938 and 1941. During Wright's lifetime, he oversaw several expansions, and some of the original construction materials were replaced. After Wright's death, the fellowship continued to modify the structures, and Taliesin West gradually gained popularity as a tourist attraction. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation began planning major renovations and a visitor center in the late 20th century. Parts of Taliesin West were gradually renovated and upgraded during the early 21st century.
Taliesin West consists of multiple structures, which are arranged on a 45-degree grid and connected by courtyards and walkways. The walls are made of desert masonry, a mixture of local rocks and concrete, which were originally topped by wood-and-canvas roofs. Triangles, hexagons, and natural motifs are used throughout the interiors. The main building includes a drafting room, kitchen, dining room, garden court, and the Wright family residence. The complex also includes spaces such as a kiva room, two performance venues, and a cottage. Over the years, commentators have praised the architecture, particularly the materials and the complex's relation to nature.
Site Taliesin West is located at 12621 North Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard within Maricopa County in Scottsdale, Arizona, United States; the main entrance is at 12345 North Taliesin Drive. The modern estate covers and has flowers planted along its border. Originally, Taliesin West was reached by an access road measuring about long. There was a masonry gate and a stanchion partway along the road. The end of the road, just outside the main buildings, has a landscaped median. An array of 4,000 solar panels is installed on the estate, near the base of a hill. The estate sits about above sea level, in a gully at the base of the McDowell Mountains. Nearby are the McDowell Mountains' two highest peaks: Thompson Peak and McDowell Peak. The surrounding desert contains volcanic rock that ranges in color from red and umber to blue-gray and purple. The estate overlooks the cities of Tempe and Chandler to the south, the Phoenix Mountains to the southwest. The Central Arizona Project canal passes by the estate as well.
Before the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright acquired the site, the land had never been developed, although several Native American peoples inhabited the surrounding area until the 19th century. Some of the boulders throughout the complex contain Native American petroglyphs, which were created by the Hohokam people. Native American millstones, pits with corn, and potsherds were still in situ when Wright obtained the land. One of the petroglyphs, representing "handshake, friendship, and fellowship", later inspired Taliesin West's official logo. According to a 2020 survey, Taliesin West contains 64 documented petroglyphs, some of which were integrated into the architecture of Taliesin West. During Wright's occupancy, nine petroglyph-bearing boulders were relocated onto the Taliesin West campus, while an additional nine remain in the original location near Taliesin Peak.
History After years of practicing architecture in the U.S. state of Illinois, Frank Lloyd Wright built an architectural studio, Taliesin, in 1911 near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Its living quarters were rebuilt twice following fires in 1914 and 1925. Wright formed the Taliesin Fellowship in 1932, inviting young architects to apprentice under him.
Development Wright had first visited the state of Arizona in 1927 while working as a consultant for the Arizona Biltmore Hotel. He returned with several draftsmen in 1929 to establish the Ocotillo Desert Camp, a temporary camp in Phoenix, Arizona, while designing a resort for the developer Alexander J. Chandler. The Ocotillo Camp was built around a plateau, on a grid of 30- and 60-degree angles. Though rising heat prompted Wright's team to leave the camp after only a few months, it was a precursor to the design of Taliesin West. Wright later wrote that he had found the camp's canvas tents to be "enjoyable and sympathetic to the desert", in contrast to the "much too heavy midwestern house", which he found oppressive. Furthermore, Wright was elderly and in declining health, and the original studio was costly to maintain during the winter.
Site acquisition
Wright announced in late 1934 that he would bring his apprentices to the hot Arizona deserts during early 1935. Wright contacted Alexander Chandler, who invited the Taliesin fellows to stay at one of his properties, La Hacienda. The fellows worked at La Hacienda from January to April 1935. Wright also attempted to buy land in Arizona during that trip, visiting a site southeast of Chandler, which was owned by a farmer named Dewey Keith. Following the fellowship's 1935 trip to Arizona, Wright resolved to develop his own studio in the desert. Wright's wife Olgivanna preferred Arizona to the original Taliesin studio, whose landscape she disliked. After catching pneumonia in 1936, Wright went to see a doctor, who advised him to stay in the Arizona desert during the winter. Taliesin fellows returned to Arizona in 1936, staying at La Hacienda.; During that trip, Wright attempted to buy some federal land near the San Tan Mountains, but he needed another parcel from Keith to obtain a site of sufficient size. Ultimately, Wright could not acquire the land from Keith, and the apprentices and Olgivanna opposed that site as too remote.
In December 1937, Frank and Olgivanna Wright found a site near McDowell Peak, from Phoenix. Wright obtained about in Paradise Valley, leasing half the land and buying the rest outright. He later recalled, "On the mesa just below McDowell Peak we stopped, turned, and looked around. The top of the world", saying the landscape was unparalleled in "sheer beauty of space and pattern". Wright had paid with a $3,100 check from Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., for whom Wright was designing the Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin. The site was particularly cheap because it was not known to contain any groundwater. Although a local had warned him that it was a "waste of money" to look for groundwater on the site, Wright paid a digger to excavate a well; the digger ultimately discovered water underground. Wright ended up spending $10,000 on the well, more than what he had paid for the land itself. The well was not completed for three years; it was supplied by a subterranean river and remains in use in the 21st century.
Temporary camp and planning At the end of December 1937, Wright asked his secretary Gene Masselink in Wisconsin to bring housekeeping supplies, construction supplies, drafting boards, and musical instruments for entertainment. When the apprentices arrived at McDowell Peak in early 1938, they found a site that was completely undeveloped;; as apprentice Kay Schneider said, there was "no water, no building, nothing". Apprentices had to carry water from several miles away. Schneider recalled that, before the well was finished, the apprentices obtained water from a local farmer once a week, receiving to wash themselves for the entire week. The fellowship had little money on hand, so they were forced to ration meat and subsist on cottage cheese and grapefruit from a local farm. Another apprentice, Edgar Tafel, reflected that there was no phone service, a rudimentary septic system, and a portable power generator. Yet another apprentice, Larry Lemmon, built an earthen closet in which to store food.
Wright decided to construct the camp on a mesa near McDowell Peak's base, at the southwestern corner of the parcel that he owned. The first apprentices built their own tents using lumber and canvas. They set up sleeping bags, which surrounded the mesa to the south and west. The Wrights initially stayed at a nearby inn. The apprentices designed a temporary accommodation for the Wrights, known as Sun Trap, which was made of wood and canvas. The design of Sun Trap was derived from that of the Ocotillo camp, as well as Wright's unexecuted design for a house in the Mojave Desert in 1921. It consisted of a courtyard with bedrooms on three sides and a fireplace on the fourth side, surrounded by pieces of wooden siding. There was a bathroom in one corner and a music room in another corner; the other two corners were exposed to the elements. The bedrooms had sleeping boxes placed atop concrete pedestals, which Olgivanna loved despite their rudimentary nature.
Wright began drawing up plans for permanent structures soon after erecting the temporary accommodations. To reduce glare, he sketched the initial plans on butcher paper, since all the planning was initially done outdoors. In designing the complex, Wright wanted to blur the distinction between the buildings and the ground, giving the impression that the structures grew from the desert floor. He did not create standard blueprints; as one apprentice said, "I think that sometimes what was drawn one day was built the next." The early plans called for a collection of buildings surrounding a courtyard, accessed from the west and rotated 30 degrees clockwise from due south. At the front of the site was the drafting room, the Wrights' residence, and a pergola to the courtyard; there were two additional wings behind the courtyard. Wright subsequently revised the plans further, placing the buildings on a 45-degree grid. The final plans called for five spaces—a drafting room, a courtyard, an office, the Wrights' residence, and workshops—arranged around a pergola.
Construction
Wright's apprentices spent initially seven months of the year at Taliesin in Wisconsin and the other five months at Taliesin West.; Frank and Olgivanna Wright led "caravans" between the two studios, taking a different route every year. Because the land was so arid, the apprentices had difficulties excavating the foundations. During their first year at Taliesin West, the Taliesin fellows spent much of their time constructing these structures, rather than learning. Tafel recalled that rattlesnakes became more common as the days got warmer, while heavy rain sometimes cascaded down the arroyos on the site. In a contemporary article for The Arizona Republic, an unidentified fellow said that much of the heavy-duty construction work was performed by "the boys of the fellowship", while the female fellows made the furnishings.