Content area
Full Text
Great Escapes\ Sidebar: The Wright stuff?
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - The complex of buildings appears more to have grown from the floor of the Arizona desert than been constructed by human hands.
Low masonry walls seem to ooze from clefts in the earth. Beams sprout angularly, conforming to the craggy slopes of the McDowell Mountains in the immediate background. All of it hugs the contours of the natural landscape, a terrace rising slightly here, a walkway dipping out of sight there.
Taliesin West, on the outskirts of Phoenix, is a monument of sorts - to America's greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, and more specifically to his concept of organic architecture.
This was "natural architecture ... informal architecture, architecture in the reflex," according to Wright, as quoted by biographer Brendan Gill.
You've heard of thinking outside the box? Wright took it a step further. He sought to "destroy the box" (his words). And the box - and its attendant conformist thinking - lies scattered in crumbled bits about the grounds of this place.
The construction of Taliesin West was begun in 1937, when Wright was 70 years old and world-renowned for his innovative, often radical designs. It was to be his winter home, a retreat from the harsh winters of his Taliesin digs in Wisconsin, and also an instructional and experimental laboratory, both for him and the many young architecture students who were finding their way to his knee.
Today, it is still the site of a year-round architectural school, as well as headquarters for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. And the public is welcomed for a wide range of tours.
While strolling the grounds with a guide, even in the searing heat of summer, it doesn't take long to gain an appreciation for the concepts.
Most modern developers would survey a hillside site such as this and promptly employ bulldozers to scrape off a long, flat building pad. Then a behemoth structure would go up, varying only slightly from a basic rectangle, and the aspect of the house would face directly west, toward Phoenix and the sunset.
Wright rejected all of that. This home would be one with its surroundings, and it would point in multiple directions at once.
"That was the main principle in...