NOT QUITE WRIGHT

ARIZONA ARCHITECTURE NOT QUITE WRIGHT

ONE SUNDAY MORNING IN 1957, Frank Lloyd Wright joined his associates and students for breakfast at Taliesin West. He was feeling “a bit sad and a bit angry,” as one of the participants later described it, from his reading of the morning's newspaper. The paper had published a rendering of the proposed new state Capitol building for Arizona, and Wright didn't think much of it. No surprise there: Favorable Wright critiques of other architects' work were of bluemoon rarity. After expounding on civilization's bleak future in the onslaught of such expedient architecture, Wright launched a discussion: “Well, boys, what would you do if you were called upon to design the Arizona Capitol?” The “boys” — his students and acolytes — knew what was coming.After some 45 minutes of talk about the Capitol site, space requirements, materials and the allure of water features, Wright rose and announced that they would proceed to the drafting room and design an alternative Capitol.

“We followed him into the drafting room [and] surrounded his desk,” his apprentice Kamal Amin, later a Scottsdale-based architect, recalled many years afterward. “With a sure hand and powerful pencil strokes, he gave exciting form to his thoughts. In about two hours, he had sketched plans and elevations for the Capitol.” architect, recalled many years afterward. “With a sure hand and powerful pencil strokes, he gave exciting form to his thoughts. In about two hours, he had sketched plans and elevations for the Capitol.” It's worth noting that Wright was 89 years old. He would die two years later — still designing, and teaching, to the end. But he had always been phenomenally fast and self-assured. His most celebrated work, the Pennsylvania house he called Fallingwater, was likewise designed in a morning.

Wright's Capitol was a glittery cavalcade of geometry. Its hexagonal heart included chambers for the House of Representatives and the Senate, with a great public hall centered between them. Wings flying off either side contained offices wrapped around courtyards with pools and fountains. Smaller hexagons budded from an aft wing to house the state Supreme Court and the governor's office. The complex was crowned with an angular, lattice-like copper and concrete dome featuring yet more interlocking hexagons. Supporting it were towering colonnades with triangular bracing structures. A wedge-like spire needled the heavens. A prescient environmental feature: The dome actually was a shade structure that would have provided a cool environment for the Legislature, public hall and gardens. Arizona architects who began designing structures like this — two decades later — were hailed as progressive thinkers. Wright's two-hour Capitol, which likely would have cost several times the tab for the rather plainer creation that was already slated to be built, was not welcomed in official circles. Wright and his fellowship took it seriously, printing 20,000 promotional flyers to distribute around the state, and even pushed for a public referendum. The American Institute of Architects pushed back, calling it unethical for one architect to compete against another firm that already had the job. In the end, the Legislature let it die. In 2004, however, a developer resurrected the design for the 125-foot spire and had it fabricated and planted as a landmark for a Scottsdale shopping and office complex at Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard and Scottsdale Road.

THE WRIGHT CAPITOL WAS ALWAYS controversial on aesthetic grounds. On the occasion of a Wright retro-