Just outside Scottsdale, Arizona, you will find Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West.

The famous architect had a turbulent life, filled with both success and failure. In 1928, he had reached a low point. He was 60 years old when he first visited Arizona. The desert landscape gave him new inspiration, so he set up a camp here in the winter of 1938 with his apprentices and began building Taliesin West.

David Cooper Photography
David Cooper Photography
The name Taliesin West was given to this place, which served as his winter home. Taliesin East, his summer home, is in Spring Green, Wisconsin.
David Cooper Photography
They developed the desert rubble stone used to build Taliesin West. The idea was to blend in with the landscape and reflect its forces, colors, and shapes.
David Cooper Photography
Arizona is an area of great contrasts; natural events have shaped the state in titanic ways. It was this struggle and the resulting landscape that Wright sought to reflect in his architecture. His use of water is especially beautiful.

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David Cooper Photography
David Cooper Photography
David Cooper Photography
Although the plan was to reflect the unique Arizona landscape, Wright also placed various Asian sculptures throughout his estate, which he brought back with him from his travels around the world.
David Cooper Photography
David Cooper Photography
The main structure is a house, which he occupied. Around the house, students constructed imaginative and striking shelters of their own.

Some of these are still present today and can be seen during your visit. Special tours are available for this area of the site, as Taliesin West is now the campus for the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. A guided tour will take you through the house and grounds.

Taliesin is a real eye-opener. You have to see it to appreciate the full magnitude of this man’s vision.

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