Located in the beautiful Sonoran desert in northeast Scottsdale, we experienced Frank Lloyd Wright’s brilliant ability to integrate indoor and outdoor spaces.

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To start at the beginning of this series, visit The Trip that Started it All 2014

Wright’s Winter Retreat

In 1937, at the age of 70, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship began building Taliesin West as a winter home, studio, and architectural campus. It remained in a constant state of change as Wright experimented and redesigned it over the years.

Frank Lloyd Wright has become of particular interest to me lately. Whether it’s the craftsman style or his love of blending so beautifully with nature, we find ourselves in search of his buildings whenever we travel. Following is an excerpt from the Foundation’s website that best describes his philosophy. I think it’s just wonderful.

“To Wright, architecture was not just about buildings, it was about nourishing the lives of those sheltered within them. What were needed were environments to inspire and offer repose to the inhabitants. He called his architecture “organic” and described it as that “great living creative spirit which from generation to generation, from age to age, proceeds, persists, creates, according to the nature of man and his circumstances as they both change.”

“Wright himself grew up close to the land and in touch with its creative processes and it gave him constant inspiration for his architecture. He believed architecture must stand as a unified whole, grow from and be a blessing to the landscape, all parts relating and contributing to the final unity, whether furnishings, plantings, or works of art.

To materially realize such a result, he created environments of carefully composed plans and elevations based on a consistent geometric grammar, while skillfully implementing the integration of the building with the site through the compatibility of materials, form, and method of construction. Through simplification of form, line, and color, and through the “rhythmic play of parts, the poise and balance, the respect the forms pay to the materials, and the repose these qualities attain to,” Wright created plastic, fluent, and coherent spaces that complement the changing physical and spiritual lives of the people who live in them.”     – READ MORE

We Can’t get Enough of Frank

Because of our excellent tour guide and of course this beautiful campus, this was a wonderful tour. She was so dedicated to the foundation and to portraying Wright as the brilliant and dedicated teacher of architecture that he was. She really added to the experience by telling stories and bringing out the little nuances that made him as human as we are. It must have been a great honor to learn from him. We left this place and immediately made plans to see the “original” Taliesin, in Spring Green, WI. So close to home, but we had never been there.

Next up: Taliesin

Happy trails,
Barb