Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, Taliesin West, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Arizona desert, borrowed its lines from Mount McDowell as a backdrop.
The famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was 60 years old when he discovered Arizona and its desert landscapes in 1927. Powerfully challenged by this new field of possibilities, he returned there ten years later with his third wife, Olgivanna, to acquire land on which to build a residence secondary school and thus escape the harsh winters of Wisconsin. It was in a desert expanse, north of Phoenix and at the foot of Mount McDowell, that he fell in love with a property with “a view of the ends of the world”. The base, the Taliesin Westwhich will be built there will have to shelter its home, but also a desert laboratory to nourish new inspiration thanks to this privileged proximity with a nature of raw beauty.
In line with the organic approach dear to the architect, the project he initiates is deeply connected to the environment in which it is located. “Frank Lloyd Wright and his assistants drew inspiration from the desert by manipulating materials found on the site. The masonry of the walls of Taliesin West thus results from a mixture of stone and sand from the property. They also seem to emerge from the desert”, explains Stuart Graff, president of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
The mountains that stand out in the distance naturally condition the shape of the roofs, and the giant cacti, which punctuate the Sonoran desert, the structures sketched by the architect and his team. If they resist the extreme conditions of the place, there is necessarily a lesson to be learned. “Quelle prodigious construction that this solid saguaro! Or the trellis stem of the cholla! Nature, forced to spare material because of the extreme conditions to which it is subjected, has developed with the saguaro a frugal economic model by reinforcing vertical stems and braiding tendons capable of maintaining its structure in place for at least six centuries.”, wrote Frank Lloyd Wright in 1940. He will also requisition this new knowledge for various other projects, such as the Suntop Homes, in Pennsylvania.
Redwood beams are quickly arranged and a white canvas is stretched over what looks, at first glance, strictly like a camp. This impression will fade when the architect integrates glass and steel to make his project part of a sustainable approach. The different units making up the estate are linked together by terraces, stairs, gardens and a lake. Almost randomly, as if they had belonged to the desert since the dawn of time.
Inside, the master leaves the stone bare and orders a decor serving his lifelong purpose, that of connecting man and his environment. “Frank Lloyd Wright believed that furniture should be connected to architecture to create a total work of art. Which comes back to the essence of organic design where the different elements of a composition form a whole”, reports Stuart Graff. The visionary even created, for the Garden Room, a chair inspired by Japanese origami, the “Taliesin 1”, which will be reissued by Cassina in 1986 and in 2018, in collaboration with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Its inclined back makes it a privileged observation post.
Each year, Frank Lloyd Wright’s ambitious project, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, welcomes around 100,000 visitors – students, architects, designers and individuals – driven by a desire to engage in learning. , notably through an educational program developed by the Taliesin Institute. “The principles of organic architecture outlined by Frank Lloyd Wright (building in harmony with the earth, honoring matter and bringing people closer to nature) are as relevant today as they were in his time”, rightly notes Stuart Graff.
A cabaret draped in red houses artistic performances in a timeless setting.
