FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND TALIESEN WEST

Frank Lloyd Wright, distinguished American architect, is one of the noted builders of our time. He and his student architects spend the winters at their camp, Paradise Valley, Ariz. The two most widely known edifices in Arizona, not counting the prehistoric cliff dwellings, are San Xavier Mission, near Tucson, and Taliesen West, north of Scottsdale. The former was completed in the 18th Century, the latter in the past few years. Both are in and of the desert. Taliesen West is the winter camp of Architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Here Mr. Wright and the Taliesen Fellows come each November and reside until May. It is a busy architectural workshop in the desert of Paradise Valley at the foot of the McDowell Mountains. From Mr. Wright's summer home, Taliesen, House of the North, at Spring Green, Wisconsin, and from Taliesen West come plans and designs for every sort of edifice in which man works, lives or worships. When these plans and designs have been translated into wood, glass, steel and concrete, the world will come to marvel at them. Generations of future builders will study them, as present-day designers as avidly study them because the man who created them is considered by many as the greatest architect in the world today, one of the leaders in modern architectural thought. The builder of Taliesen is as well-known in foreign countries as he is in Wisconsin or Arizona. He is one of America's most renowned citizens. It is inspiring to know that a man who has spent a long life building things, and who is just as active today as he ever was, can attract the attention of a world whose attention is generally devoted exclusively to prizefighters, movie stars, and politicians. Mr. Wright spent his childhood and youth on a farm in southern Wisconsin, attended for several years engineering school in Madison, and for seven years served as apprentice to Dankmar Adler and Louis H. Sullivan. He began his architectural practice in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1894. For the next twenty years he designed and built nearly one hundred houses throughout the Midwest for which no precedent existed anywhere. These houses were characterized by a natural use of native materials, more liveable plans with low vistas and wide-spreading eaves. Mr. Wright took the human being for his "scale," bringing the whole house down in height to fit the normal one, broadening mass out, and bringing it down in spaciousness. Outstanding among his achievements during this period are the Larkin Administration Building in Buffalo, the first fire proof, air-conditioned office building in the United States using metal bound plateglass doors and windows, all-metal furniture and magnesite as an architectural material; Unity Temple of Oak Park, the Midway Garden (now destroyed) in Chicago; and the group of houses known as the "Prairie Houses" of which the Robie House in Chicago and the Coonley House in Riverside are the best examples. Mr. Wright was in Tokio, Japan, from 1916 to 1920,

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and TALIESIN WEST

TALIESEN WEST, THE WINTER CAMP of Frank Lloyd Wright, is a creation of meteoric or volcanic desert-stone, low grade rough redwood, cement and canvas. It blends gracefully into the desert that surrounds it. Its beauty enhances and is enhanced by the beauty of the desert. Work on this structure began ten years ago and was a work of devotion on the part of the students of the Taliesen Fellowship. It is such an integral part of the terrain in which it was built that it seems to have been standing in the desert forever.where he designed and built the Imperial Hotel. By use of the principle of flexible continuity and cantilever design he built a building that withstood unharmed the severe earthquake of 1923, a fact that seemed to surprise everyone except Mr. Wright. The passing years have seen more and more outstanding buildings appear as the creations of this man, each of which have given something new and functional to modern Architecture. Notable examples of Mr. Wright's work is "Fallingwater," the house poised above a waterfall at Bear Run, Pennsylvania; the Johnson Administration Building and Johnson House in Racine, Wisconsin; a southern estate for Leigh Stevens; and the university at Lakeland, Florida. The Johnson Floor Wax people at Racine estimated that publicity and comment caused by the Johnson Administration Building and the Johnson House in periodicals throughout the world would have cost several million dollars had the firm purchased the same space in advertising columns. Whether it is an art gallery in San Francisco, a church in Kansas Citywhether it is a factory, home, school or mortuary-if Mr. Wright designs it, it is news. And darned good building, too, if you please!

Mr. Wright first came to Arizona as a consultant on the Arizona Biltmore. He stayed here at the behest of Dr. A. J. Chandler, who asked him to design San Marcos on the Desert. When this resort was in the blueprint stage the depression set in, and construction of the resort was never begun. By this time, however, Mr. Wright began to feel the spell of the desert; so each winter since the Middle Thirties he and the young students making up the Taliesen Fellowship have made Arizona their home. In 1938 they began construction of Taliesen West, the permanent winter camp of Mr. Wright and the Fellowship. The word "Taliesen" is Welsh and was adopted because of the Welsh ancestry of its master architect. It means "shining brow" and was the name of the only British bard ever to sing the glories of the Fine Arts.

The Taliesen Fellowship, Apprenticeship in Architecture under the direction and leadership of Frank Lloyd Wright, was founded by him at his home and workshop in Spring Green, Wisconsin, in the fall of 1932. The Fellowship is a way of life the principles of which lie deep in the nature of Structure that is Organic Architecture, propounded by its leader. For the past seventeen years this changing group of young men and women has been making its own life, in Wisconsin and later in Arizona, building its own buildings, cooking its own meals, studying and learning, actually participating in the creation of new buildings that are appearing all over America. More and more of the disciples of Mr. Wright, having completed their apprenticeship under him. have gone into the field of Architecture all over the country, many with notable success. Once when a young apprentice was asked by an outsider what he was learning at the Fellowship, he replied: "How to work hard!" There are few idle moments at Taliesen, and the one who works the hardest is the leader of the group. Taliesen West is no resort for young men and women wanting to lounge about enjoying the sunshine. It is a workship with emphasis on "work" in sunny, pleasant surroundings with inspiration and vigor gained from the desert that surrounds the camp. When the Fellowship returns this fall, the leader and the group will be engaged in designing buildings for clients in many parts of the United States. There will not be a busier place in the desert. . . R.C.