Story and photos by Neil Shea

Taliesin West

Frank Lloyd Wright’s ghost plopped down heavily beside me on the concrete wall. He was vaporous, but well dressed: a radiant combination of Winston Churchill and the Quaker Oats guy. The desert morning was cool. Sunlight melted shadows on the courtyard before us. The day was shaping up beautifully, but the phantom of America’s most famous architect was glum.

“The architect must be a prophet . . . a prophet in the true sense of the term,” he said, frowning. “If he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.” I scanned the buildings around us and I understood what he meant. Frank had been a prophet. He predicted exactly what a community college campus would look like – and then he built it in the desert outside Phoenix.

“Well, you really hit it here, Frank,” I said. “This was forward-thinking back in 1936. Take this wall for example …” I slapped my palm down beside him. “This was some good-looking shit.”

Frank wasn’t buoyed by my comment. He didn’t seem to notice. I got the feeling this ghost didn’t converse so much as make grand statements – a common trait among ghosts. Frank hung around for a bit, babbling to himself like a drunk. He shook his head, asked if I had matches; I didn’t. Then he stood and wandered off toward the gift shop where well-dressed tourists were buying post cards and paperweights. I considered following. But then, the tour was about to start.

That morning I had suggested to friends in Tempe that we go to a shooting range; but none was open (it being Christmas). So the decision for morning activity was made in a less violent direction, and we headed to Taliesin West, the architecture school and dwelling Wright designed and raised in Scottsdale.

Wright is one of America’s premier designers. His drawings are symphonies on paper, beautiful and detailed. He is famous for his groin-kick arrogance and for designing such structures as Falling Water, the stream-straddling house in the Pennsylvania woods. He’s an immense figure who, nearly 50 years after his death, still inspires art and controversy in equal measure. Taliesin West is one of a handful of Wright sites that have become Meccas for design buffs.

I find that the historic homes or mausoleums of famous dead people usually aren’t very interesting. They tend to be stuffy, dusty time capsules. In Lenin’s Tomb, for instance you will find people lining up to see Lenin – creepy, pickled Lenin – but you won’t find the juicy stuff he’s famous for: murder, revolution, syphilis. With this in mind, I wondered if Taliesin West would provide more than a walking path surrounded by guardrails.

Above the entrance, a red metal sculpture of the Native American symbol that Wright took as his personal logo hung on a chimney. Before us, Wright’s palace compound crept back into the desert, its rooftops cantilevering into a Tidy-Bowl-blue sky. The sound of water trickling in hidden courtyards drifted pleasantly through December air. It reminded me of entering a Zen garden. But instead of red-robed monks, black-clad architecture students flitted past like extras in a cowboy movie, saying nothing, staring at the ground, knowing they’d be shot before the next scene.

origami chairs inside Wright's former living quarters

Taliesin West is still an active school of architecture. Tours begin at the gift shop (where I could still see Frank’s ghost, glaring at the tourists) and wind through campus. Our guide hustled us to a courtyard dominated by a large boulder covered with Native American petroglyphs that had been hauled out of the desert. I fell to the back of the group, and observed.

Campus buildings are formed of red rocks embedded in beige concrete, like toffee chunks sprinkled in cookie dough. A pool opened along one edge of the campus, an unusual oasis in the red-brown dryness. An equally out-of-place patch of lawn surrounded the pool. Not far off were a trio of circular fountains. These were puzzling luxuries; nowhere needs lawns, pools and fountains less than the water-starved American West. Perhaps sensing the problem, our guide mentioned that Wright had wanted the campus to embrace the desert – but also comfort its visitors. He had understood, I guess, the magnetic pull of water, its salubrious glimmer and sound.

As we walked from building to building, room to room, our guide pointed out some of the items Wright designed that aren’t buildings. In his living quarters, a phalanx of large windows overlooked the desert. Before them were several of Wright’s plywood `origami’ chairs and pieces from his personal art collection. Elsewhere, his modernist light sconces illuminated the darkness but did not drive it away, leaving the lamps hanging moodily from bare concrete walls, like trophy heads taken from ancient Norwegian gods.

Wright’s ghost also lives in the rooms he built for his other passion: entertaining. Our guide that many celebrities partied here with Wright and his third wife, Olgivanna. It made Taliesin West sound like it had been, in its heyday, a sort of up-scale version of the Playboy Mansion. In Taliesin’s small cinema, its sloping, European-style cabaret, its auditorium, we finally got a sense of Wright’s appetites; clearly he had many. I also began to understand the fatherly affection he felt toward his students.

Wright believed students should learn more than building and designing at his school – they should also learn how to live. He loved hosting black-tie parties and insisted his students bring appropriate outfits for such events. He also encouraged them each to learn an instrument and develop their social skills – their schmoozing skills. Wright understood the importance of the meet-and-greet. He knew that if you don’t court the rich, you’ll never have funding for your masterpiece, no matter how innovative or beautiful.

Throughout Taliesin West I was impressed by ideas – but not their execution. Wright’s vision wasn’t much to look at. His dependence on raw concrete seemed sloppy. The architecture wasn’t timeless but looked outdated. I kept expecting to find the Brady Bunch house around the next turn. I wondered: if anyone other than Wright had built this, would I think it was special? The answer was No. Wright was a man of prophetic imagination, but he didn’t necessarily carry his musings very far into reality. Strip Taliesin West from the cult of personality that’s accrued over the years and you have a great idea that went off sort of half-baked.

campus offices

I found that Taliesin West was an example of architecture’s main fault: it is too attached to ego. For all the time and energy spent arguing the social value of architecture, and for architects’ grand claims that their art can change (or even save) the world, most people don’t get it. If they do get it, it’s usually because there’s a famous name involved. I began to see that Wright is no longer an architect; he is a Liquid Hero, poured in to fill a spot in the mythology of architecture.

Taliesin West, like many other historic sites, is a monument to a dead man, and the group that preserves it has ensured it remains immutable. People visit to catch a glimpse of a ghost. Unfortunately visitors aren’t allowed to wander or experience Wright’s work alone (I was lucky to bump into the old man), in a way that might transcend the dead quality of the place. This is sort of understandable, given that it is a working school. But isn’t wandering alone the most compelling reason to visit any sort of museum or historic site? Aren’t such places supposed to provide visitors a chance to face art or history one-on-one, allow them to experience the indescribable feeling that rises in the shadow of history?

Structures live while their creators live. When creators die or leave, their spaces fade, the glow of life seeps from the walls. This is especially true in the desert, where life mixes harshly with water, light and dust, the forces that ultimately destroy built things. Taliesin West has become like the cliff dwellings in the care of the National Park Service. At cliff dwellings and other sites, preservationists shore up crumbling walls, divert runoff, even raise huge metal roofs over ancient structures to prevent them doing what they most want to do – crumble.

courtyard fountains

Experiencing architecture will never be a thrill ride. Exploring abandoned ruins in the backcountry, where decay is not controlled and solo rambling remains possible, is as close as visitors can get to feeling the history locked inside a building. At Taliesin West, visitors are given a drive-thru history of one man and his vision that will probably be meaningless to non-architects or non-designers. Taliesin West might be a monument of architecture, but it’s sort of like Lenin’s corpse – a disappointing shell.





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