Wright Mania

I think I'm becoming something of a Frank Lloyd Wright groupie.  This particular part of the trip started with walking past Robie house in Chicago practically every day.  (It's about two blocks from Elly's house and on the way to the kids' school.)  I continued with a visit to another Wright house in Springfield, IL.  Then I remembered that Taliesin West was somewhere out there in the Southwest.  Having googled it, I decided to add Scottsdale, AZ to my itinerary.

It was so worth it.  Amazing setting and amazing architecture.  It was also my introduction to the desert in bloom, as Taliesin West sits in the middle of over 100 acres of desert land that is being preserved in its original condition.  So much so, in fact, that Wright boycotted bringing electricity to the area because he so disliked the sight of the utility poles and eventually the even bigger metal structures.  It didn't succeed, of course.  Electricity came to the area.  But Taliesin West is very proud of the fact that they have recently added solar panels which are quite well masked by the normal vegetation.  Vegetation which includes a form of cactus that gave Wright the idea of how to support the skyscrapers he designed.

Taliesin and its sister school in Wisconsin are still very much schools of architecture and the apprentices, as Wright insisted on calling them, still build their own structures for housing in the desert and sleep there, although there are dining and study and technical facilities available in the main buildings at Taliesin.  The solutions they have come up with to keep the packrats and other desert critters out of their structures are really amazing.  One of them actually suspended his living quarters off the ground -- after he carefully calculated the maximum height a packrat could jump.

I also discovered, and got to sit in, a Wright Origami Chair.  It is made of wood and looks as though it is a folded piece of origami with cushions.  It is also the most comfortable chair I have ever sat in.  If anyone ever comes across one of them or a source for them, let me know.

After the last stop on the tour, I finally became an official groupie and took out a membership.  After all, there are Wright buildings all along my route back east.  Or I can make it that way.