Taliesin West - Frank Lloyd Wright

The American Institute of Architecture named Frank Lloyd Wright the "Greatest American Architect of all time" in 1991.  If Frank were alive, he would have said, "Just American?"  Wright began to love Arizona when here in 1927 collaborating on the Biltmore.  In 1937, he bought a couple hundred acres 26 miles from Phoenix in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains as a winter camp for him and his wife Olgivanna and the students from his architecture school.  His "organic" architecture is in line with nature.  (Check out Phoenix Art Museum exhibit on now:  http://www.phxart.org/FLW/.)  The buildings are made of local rock placed in forms then filled with concrete.  Ceilings were canvas to let in natural light. Glass windows came later.  Taliesin means "shining brow" in Welsh, and Taliesin West forms a brow line in the McDowells.  "No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill," Wright said. The reflecting pool acts as a fire break, as Wright had lost much in his life to fire.  I have always loved Frank Lloyd Wright's work.  Chicago Mayor Richard Daley named October 17, 1956, the day before my birth, as "Frank Lloyd Wright Day."  I must have felt it in my heart.