In the desert near Phoenix

Taliesin West

Wanted: Iconoclast

Must  be willing to risk chance of having a successful career every day.  Ability to annoy and enrage friends and critics alike central to your success. Pay is dependant solely on ability but typically ranges from nothing to very little.  However, some Iconoclasts make millions and inhabit history books.  Application is simple: begin breaking rules today.

"Coming in the house would be something like putting on your hat and going outdoors."

                        - Frank Lloyd Wright, on one of his designs

On his death in 1959 at the age of 91, Frank Lloyd Wright had over one hundred active projects on his desk.  Many notable men work until the day they die productively and well.  Mr. Wright worked better, the nearer to the end of his life he approached.

Standing in any of the low slung rooms of the sumptuous structures of his complex at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, AZ it is difficult to imagine a more successful, celebrated – and rare – iconoclast than Frank Lloyd Wright.  The spaces are at once vaguely disconcerting (due primarily to their profound originality) and, once you have a chance to settle in, they are also the most delightful, purposeful and amusing spaces I have ever inhabited indoors. 

There are touches everywhere, indoors and out, of  Wright’s seemingly fanatical application of original ideas.  Clearly, and frankly, not all of those ideas worked perfectly well – as even the tour guide acknowledged.  But the over all effect of being in several Wright designed spaces, sitting down for a moment on his furniture and just inhabiting for a moment is this:  you come away completely convinced (and such is not always the case, is it?) that the experts, critics, and scholars are absolutely correct.  Frank Lloyd Wright was very simply the very best architect the nation ever produced.

purloined view of Frank's aluminum bathroom...

Taliesin West operates an accredited architecture school which admits 35 students a year.  Out of several thousand expressions of interest, it was explained that interest in attending the school at Scottsdale on the Taliesin property (about 550 acres of mostly virgin Sonoran desert in northwest suburban Phoenix) dwindles when students are informed they will be designing, constructing… and living in, their own personal dorm room for the duration of their education.  Each of these personal structures, averaging maybe 200 square feet, is a central component of the style of education that the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture practices.  Namely: you better design something you’d like to live in.

Over twenty shades of red appear in the Taliesin West pallet - pictured: theater chairs with the first known instance of 'aisle path lighting'

Wright certainly did.  He designed, built, lived, worked, and taught at Taliesin West for the last 30 or so winters of his life – commuting between another facility  (along with his students and everybody else in the household) in Wisconsin.  The architecture students still make the yearly trek to Spring Green located on the Wisconsin river near Wright’s birthplace in Madison.

I’ve not verified this, but the tour guide reported that Wright designed over 1,200 structures and perhaps half of them have ever been built.  Someone does put up a Wright structure every once in a while, the last one was completed last year somewhere.  If you’re interested in being an iconoclast, and if you’re rich, you should consider building one.  Plans can be made available as I understand it.

Archer sculpted by architecture school student

Not everyone who pisses off the establishment and defies convention at every turn is rewarded with the successes of Frank Lloyd Wright, but most of the iconoclasts I have known seem to live a fuller life and have more fun.  They just may have to do it in a 200 square foot bungalow in the middle of the desert.

Sounds OK to me.

M. Lee

-on the road to SF