Taliesin West

On Thursday, January 17, we drove to Scottsdale, a suburb of Phoenix, to visit Taliesin West. This is the winter home and architectural school established by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930s. He bought this property in 1937 including the hillside and several hundred acres. He then built a home of stone, cement and canvas and brought students here to study his architectural designs. When he built low buildings and set them down the hillside instead of on top of the hill, he explained that the "brow" not the top was a more pleasing place to build. Taliesin is Welsh for "shining brow".

To this day, there is an architectural school on the campus - students spend half of the year in Arizona and the other half in Wisconsin at Taliesin East.
All the buildings are set low to the ground and blend in with the surroundings. Building lines are long and linear.

The rock walls are rough concrete and rocks taken directly from the hillside - no cutting of rocks was done - the most flat side was placed in the form and concrete poured around it.  When Taliesin was built, there was no glass - only canvas was used to protect from the elements - but remember this was a winter desert place for Mr Wright and his students so not much protection was needed. Many rooms have fireplaces for cool evenings.

Mrs. Wright's bedroom as well as her husband's next door, overlooked an inner courtyard.

Many sculptures are found all around the site - this one of mother and children is in the "breezeway" - an open area between buildings that provides wonderful shade and cooling breezes in a hot environment.

One of the last places on our tour was this six sided pool - cool, refreshing and so typical of Frank Lloyd Wright designs.