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Step 1
In the 1920s Wright came to Arizona to work on several resort projects and stayed on several months in a camp called "Ocatillo," which was built in the desert of boards and canvas. The projects never came to fruition but Wright never forgot the experience of desert life.
In 1937, when he was 70 and getting tired of spending winters at Taliesin, his home in Wisconsin, Wright brought some land outside Scottsdale and began construction on Taliesin West. The first buildings constructed were temporary quarters for Wright, his wife Olgivanna and daughter Iovanna—a structure called "Sun Trap." Later on an office, drafting room, kitchen, dining room, apprentice quarters, the "kiva"--a communal space for concerts, film screenings, theatrical productions, private quarters for the Wrights, living rooms, garages and shops, a cabaret theater and a music pavilion were built. -
Step 2
Wright's held that a building should be designed to organically blend in with its natural surroundings. Taliesin West was built of something he called "desert masonry"--native stone placed into wooden forms with cement poured in all around. Roofs were made of sheets of canvas stretched between redwood beams. The grounds were "landscaped" with native cacti, trees, rocks and bushes.
Wright and the members of the Taliesin Fellowship spent half the year in Arizona, making the trip in a caravan of cars and trucks painted Wright's favorite color, Cherokee red. Wright died in Phoenix in 1959 and Olgivanna spent most of her remaining twenty-six years at Taliesin West. She gave orders that her husband's remains were to be disinterred from the cemetery at Taliesin in Wisconsin, cremated and mixed with her ashes and placed in a wall at Taliesin West. This infuriated Wright's children and grandchildren from his first marriage. Some people speculated that Olgivanna never really felt completely at home in the Wisconsin Taliesin, which Wright had built for his mistress Mamah Cheney in 1911, and indeed, Wright was buried close to Cheney. Taliesin West, on the other hand, dates solely from the period of his marriage to Olgivanna. -
Step 3
As with the Wisconsin Taliesin, Taliesin West is a complex of buildings arranged around a series of terraces, courtyards and scenic views. Wright said that when looking for a country building site pick where you think you'll be far enough from the city and then go ten times farther than that. His advice has proved correct, because what was desert for miles and miles around is now wall-to-wall subdivisions. The driveway comes in from the west to the east, ending in an entrance court with the garages, shops and Sun Trap (now a house called Sun Cottage) to the left, the cabaret theater straight ahead to the northeast and the music pavilion beyond it. Much of the rest of the house stretches off to the southeast.
Wright's bunker-like office and study has been turned into a reception area. Beyond that is the main drafting room with pergola. In keeping with the times the old blueprint vault now houses computer wiring. Before exiting the drafting room, look off to the right at the pool and terraced gardens. From there visitors pass the kitchen and original dining room and a guest suite and enter the former loggia, which is now the main dining room. -
Step 4
Wright was not a big fan of air conditioning and tried to take advantage of natural breezes whenever possible, but after his death the loggia was glassed-in, closed off from the prevailing breezes. Wright's heirs have made other concessions to modern living: his redwood roof trusses have been reinforced with steel and his canvas roof coverings have been replaced with white fiberglass.
At the end of the loggia are the kiva and some of the apprentice quarters, though others are dotted throughout the Taliesin grounds out in the desert. There's also the Wright's suite, with two bedrooms, a sitting room and a cave-like room with a fireplace. At the end of this wing is the 56 by 34 foot garden room, the main living room in the house, which is now used for Fellowship cocktail parties and formal events.
