Once the winter home of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin West is a visionary architectural achievement. In the late 1930s, Wright designed and built the complex in Scottsdale, Arizona, as the winter counterpart to his original Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Each site included his living quarters, studio, and campus for his schools of architecture.Taliesin West covers 600 acres of rugged Sonoran Desert at the foot of McDowell Mountain. The landscape is an integral part of the site: Wright employed rocks and sand on the property as key ingredients in his masterpiece. He didn't limit himself to native materials, however, but also used plastics, canvas, and concrete in innovative ways.
Despite its historic status, Taliesin West is no museum. Since 1940, the vibrant complex has been the headquarters for the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. The foundation strives to preserve Wright's contributons to architecture and to promote organic architecture that blends with its natural environment, of which Taliesin West is a dazzling example.