Frank Lloyd Wright House in Phoenix, Arizona

From the mid 1930's until his death in 1989, Frank Lloyd Wright lived in Wisconsin in the summers, and in Arizona in the winters. In 1937 he built a house east of Phoenix which he called Taliesin (tah-lee-ESS-en) West. His house in Spring Green, Wisconsin, was called Taliesin, which means "shining brow" in Welsh. On January 5th, 2009, we visited the Phoenix house and took a tour conducted by an excellent guide.

FLW was born in 1867, and made architectural history with his bold new ideas. Our guide mentioned many interesting things about him. He was definitely a self-promoter, always wearing a suit and tie even at his home here in the Sonoran desert, in case a potential client called on him.

He built the house near a large hill in the Sonoran Desert. He was no wimp working from a comfortable office -- he camped out here when he started building the house in 1937. The house was built largely by the students who clamored to study under him, and was built with local materials as much as possible. This was in tune with his philosophy of melding the outside and inside, and also saved a lot of money. So, with free labor and low-cost materials, he was able to build the house for minimal costs.


In those days there were not strict controls like now over moving artifacts, so he moved a few attactive rocks into his garden that happened to have petroglyphs (markings by ancient native Americans) on them. Better not try that today!

For the first years there were many open walls, with canvas that was rolled up for daylight. Finally, his wife convinced him that the windows and walls should be enclosed with glass, to keep the blowing sand out and control the temperatures.

The inside of his buildings have low ceilings, and the rooms are broad. He was a fan of Japanese art and architecture, and this shows in his designs. The chairs in the living rooms were surprisingly comfortable, with the sloping armrests which resembled origami. And the tables and chairs were low, as in Japan. We all sat down in the living room as the guide explained things to us, but this room design and the furniture were so comfortable I think we all could have spent a few hours just sitting and relaxing. And if FLW were there, he would have played the piano you can see in the living room in front of the guide. He and his wife were also musicians.

In the garden he had a fire-breathing Japanese dragon, about two feet high sitting on an eight-foot high rock. There was a gas pipe in it which would blow flames four feet out of it's mouth down toward whoever was there! Oompah!

Many of his students were artists in other ways, and there are a large number of art objects in the patio. He died in 1959 at the age of 91, but the student activities are still going on, with students coming to the site and working on projects which they build and live in for the school term.

We have visited other Frank Lloyd Wright creations in New York City, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. And we will continue to visit them whenever our travels take us near. He was flamboyant, married three times, spent time in Japan, and was generally an interesting guy. For biographical information on him, go to http://www.prairiestyles.com/wright.htm. And for more information about and many pictures of Taliesen West, go to http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Taliesin_West.html .

The next posting will be about the Dale Chihuly glass art exhibit in the Desert Botanical Gardens, where Chihuliy's art objects were mingled with the various cacti and other desert plants. Spectacular!