Design Style by Robert Green Architect AIA | |
Taliesin West | |
Frank Lloyd Wright was ninety years old when I arrived. In the mornings he would slowly walk around the camp (Taliesin was a winter camp in the desert) talking with his students, watching the work going on, and designing new projects in his mind as he did so. Afternoons he spent in the drafting room, looking over the drawings which had been done and sketching in changes he thought were needed. He had an early supper and usually was in bed by 7 p.m., to preserve what energy he had. When I arrived, there were about eighty people there, counting Mr
and Mrs Wright, their daughter, Iovanna, son-in-law Wesley Peters, who had
been married to their other daughter, Olgivanna (a lovely woman, I heard,
who had been killed in a car accident); also there were men and women who
had been with the Wrights for many years, and their children; plus all the
newer apprentices and their wives, if they had any. The Wrights and
the people who had been there for years all lived in permanent quarters;
the newer people, like myself, lived in tents out in the desert, away from
camp. We were to spend the six winter months there at Taliesin West,
the summer months at Mr Wright's home and farm back in Spring Green,
Wisconsin, where we studied architecture and grew our own food.
At Taliesin West, we were allowed to pick the location
(within a certain area) where we could place our tents and where we would
sleep each night. We were helped to pour the concrete slab and raise
the standard tent, approx. 12 feet by 12 feet. Also we were given a
cot and an air mattress and a sleeping bag. If we wanted more, or if
we wanted to design our own habitat, Mr Wright would pay for the materials
and we were allowed to build what we wanted. All within reason of
course.
But I felt that I had come to study architecture with the
greatest architect of all time, Frank Lloyd Wright, and not to become a
tent maker; so I was content with the minimum tent in order to spend my
time where I thought it mattered. It was cold on the desert at night, and yet so warm during the day, even in January, that I often took my shirt off to add to my tan. I used to love walking into the camp from the desert in the mornings. Usually still cold, the air crisp; I needed to cross two dry arroyos, each about eight feet deep and twelve feet wide, which during the rainy season would be roaring funnels of water, carrying the runoff from the mountains beyond. |
That winter tent
camp, set in the middle of the Arizona desert as if it had simply grown
out of the soil and rocks, spreading out along the desert floor, its
masonry walls made from those same rocks and concrete, battered in angles
reminiscent of the mountains and hills beyond, its wood fins accenting the
roof line in jagged slashes, bordered by the desert with its saguaro
cactus sentinels stepping among the buildings like sentries.
Mr. Wright designed Taliesin west to be a winter "camp". And he
used a mixture of concrete and stones indigenous to the site, topped by
light wooden framing and translucent canvas stretched between, which was
the roof, and which suffused the spaces below with a wonderful, soft
light. Forms were built for the low concrete walls and stones placed
inside the forms and then the concrete poured around the stones: a method
of construction that Mr Wright invented. (I designed one house with
walls such as these; but, what seemed simple and cheap when constructed by
twenty young volunteers, was expensive and a terrible pain when contracted
out to a builder here in Atlanta. I did only the one.)
But I loved Taliesin West. In fact, it is my
favorite of all of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings. After I left, it
was more than two years before I stopped having dreams of being back
there. Of course one had to check out the heights of beams and
ceilings before running through the area with abandon: I laid my scalp
open once or twice on a low hanging beam. In fact, this reminds me:
three of us young men were standing in the lobby of the underground
theater at Taliesin one day when Mr Wright entered. Mr Wright was
five-six, whereas each of us were six-one. The ceiling (concrete) of
the small lobby was only one inch above our heads. Mr Wright looked
up at us and with a twinkle in his eyes, said, "Well, boys, if people had
been as tall as you are when I began my career, the whole scale of my
buildings would be different." And then he laughed and walked on.
I doubt it. I think Mr Wright did his buildings for
himself.
And I see nothing wrong in that. Of course if he
had had a client who was well over six feet tall, I'm sure he would have
taken the fact into consideration.
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