We’re eager to share what we’ve learned
more valuable. We have to find a way to live here in a way that makes sense.
That means building with the land, as Wright showed us. We must use the desert and make it our own, finding ways to adapt those rocks, those cactuses, the light and the heat itself into shelter. When I see Taliesin West and the Wright House, I see the desert honored and remade by humans.
There are moments where the hardness of the desert becomes a cradle of stones the architects softened into places to sit, lean or gather around the fireplace, and spaces where the building doesn’t just shade, but narrows down to funnel the breezes until it is 20 degrees cooler in these shadowy places.
On a larger scale, Wright showed us how to always be aware of the natural beauty around us. Just as the Wright House echoes Camelback, so Taliesin West lines up with the volcanic peaks to its southeast, while the ridges of its drafting studio and guest rooms follow the lines of the McDowells to the north.
From the front terrace, the Valley spreads out before you, while behind you small courtyards provide moments of oasis, shade and fragrant flowers.
What desert living isn’t about
made out of the Valley itself.
We must also build in a way that does not rely completely on air conditioning and turns our back to our community. We must find ways to align ourselves with the mountains, the canals, the slope of the desert, the landmarks that both nature and humans have left us, so that we always know where we are.
We must also see our buildings as places of gathering and arrival, not just destinations where we close ourselves off from other humans and the world around us.
How we can do that is something we are learning at our school, which is an accredited graduate program in architecture.
We see ourselves as a research and development laboratory for the future of Phoenix and the human-made environment in general. Our students live in desert shelters they have designed and built themselves, so we learn by doing and by living in the Valley.
Now, we are reaching out to work with high school students and local professionals to design and build improvements to Globe and Miami, as well as other local sites.
Soon we will be doing all of this not just at Taliesin West, but also at the David and Gladys Wright House.
This will make us all the more able to learn from what Frank Lloyd Wright left us in buildings and thoughts so we can design a better future for all of us here in the Valley. Aaron Betsky is the dean of the School of Architecture at Taliesin.