Taliesin West in Scottsdale

Hello...we're back.  Pat and I have been spending the last several days in Phoenix visiting our son, Patrick.  Last night, we met up with one of her cousins, whom she had not seen since 1958, and his family for dinner. We had a great evening at the Cheesecake Factory and found her cousin's extended family to be very enjoyable company.

Today, with the temperatures moderating a little bit (only 109 degrees today!), we drove up to Scottsdale to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and his architectural school.  Taliesin West was built in 1937 by Wright and his students and served as his architectural school until his death in 1959,  After his death, it continued as the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and is active to this day.  Many of the faculty at the school were tutored by Wright himself  before his death, and today's architectural students are able to learn from those who were taught by Wright himself.

The facility is designed to be "organic" to its surroundings, meaning that it utilized as many of the features of the land on which it was built as well as materials native to the area.  If you've ever seen pictures of his designs, you will remember that the buildings are very linear, with horizontal accents and lots of open space inside.  This is also true with Taliesin West, as you'll see from some of the pictures we managed to take today. Interesting fact...Wright designed 1,050 buildings, of which 550 were actually built.  A total of 409 survive today, many of them now over 100 years old.

Here is Pat in front of a small fountain near the entrance to the facility:

Here are a few random pictures we took today:

This is the outside of Wright's personal office:

More pictures more or less at random:

This is the living room in Wright's personal living quarters:

More pics:

A sculpture garden created by one of his students:

This is a Music hall that was added shortly before his death:

And,finally, this is a Lego model of Taliesin West that contains over 250,000 individual pieces and was created by one of Wright's students (now an alumnus):

We had a very nice time today and our tour guide (a retired Chicago English Teacher!) was extremely knowledgable and had very interesting commentary all during the tour.  Tomorrow, it it's not as hot as the fires of Hades, we're planning to take in one of the museums in downtown Phoenix, if we can find downtown Phoenix!