Frank Lloyd Wright, the great American Architect, was one
of the first to consciously design and build structures and interiors as a part
of their environment, in a unified whole. Buildings were not considered separate
from their furnishings, surroundings or inhabitants. To Frank Lloyd Wright, a
building needed to ‘grow’ from its immediate surroundings and environment, to appear
as one continuous unit.
He was the first to coin the term "Organic
Architecture". In the Architectural Record (August 1914): “…the ideal
of an organic architecture... is a sentient, rational building that would owe
its ‘style’ to the integrity with which it was individually fashioned to serve
its particular purpose – a ‘thinking’ as well as ‘feeling’ process.”, Frank Lloyd Wright wrote, “... In
organic architecture then, it is quite impossible to consider the building as
one thing, its furnishings another and its setting and environment still
another. … The spirit in which these buildings are conceived sees all these
together at work as one thing.”
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| View of the Drafting Studio |
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| Frank LLoyd and Olgivanna Wright's Living Quarter |
Founded in 1937, Taliesin West was Wright’s design laboratory for
organic architecture and, at the same time, one of its prime examples. It was
the winter home for the Taliesin Fellowship, where fifty to sixty apprentices
could study under the architect. Every winter, when Wright and his students
returned, he would see the place with fresh eyes, adding and removing walls
here and there, experimenting with building materials. In Taliesin West he used
the design principles of organic architecture, which can be summarized as the
following:
- Use building materials
in their natural state
- Build in harmony with
nature
- Let the building grow
out of the earth
- Allow the interiors to
flow and engage in a dialogue with the outdoors
- Break the box — remove
the corners and free the space
- Design “from the
inside out” — express the interior through the exterior form of the building
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| View from Prow |
When Frank Lloyd Wright arrived at the foot of the McDowell
Mountains in present-day Scottsdale overlooking the desert, he was reminded of
the ocean floor and that inspired the layout of the complex. As a keynote of
his design, shaped like the prow of a ship pointing to the horizon, he created
a shallow pool, which served as water storage in case of a fire and to clean
the canvas sheets which formed the weather protection for the rooms before the
glass was installed.
Another example of Wright’s abstracted interpretation of the
surrounding nature is the slanted roof lines that echo the surrounding
mountains; brightly painted, carved wood forms jutting like spiky wildflowers. “Wright
wanted others to experience this amazing place as he experienced it”, said
Frederick Prozillo, Director of Preservation at Taliesin West. The triangle
shape repeats itself in section, elevation and floor plan. Using low level,
horizontal planes the buildings were kept low to the ground to insure effective
natural ventilation and protection and shade from the intense desert sun.
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| Floor Plan 1938 |
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| Drafting Studio and Pool |
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| Apartment, Sunset Terrace and Garden Room |
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| Dinning Room |
Every aspect of design and detail of the project was given
particular attention by Wright. Besides closely accounting for the arid desert
climate, Wright implemented local and site provided materials for the
construction of the house and foundation. The structure's walls were built by
the students as part of their curriculum and made of local desert rocks,
stacked within wood forms before being filled with concrete. Once the concrete
set, the wood forms were removed to expose the rocks and concrete.
Wright always favored using the materials
readily available on site rather than transporting it there. This matched not
just his philosophy and aesthetic, but also the critical economic and logistic
constraint of bringing any exotic material to what was then a remote location. The
architecture of Taliesin West described in Wright’s own words: “There were
simple characteristic silhouettes to go by, tremendous drifts and heaps of
sunburned desert rocks were nearby to be used. We got it all together with the
landscape…”. The flat surfaces of the rocks were placed outward facing and
large boulders filled the interior space so concrete could be conserved.
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| Water Tower |
The rich red hue (a favorite Frank Lloyd Wright color) from the
redwood timber along with the earthy, sandy hues from the concrete and stone of
the walls creates a close natural relationship between the house and landscape.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s typical color pallets can be reviewed here:
https://www.ppgvoiceofcolor.com/collections/frank-lloyd-wright/the-original-taliesin-color-palette-from-1955
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| Compression Door |
One of Wright's most famous design tools can be found in
abundance at Taliesin West. It is his use of “compression and release”, which
is also known as “tension and resolution” or “embrace and release". By making
entrance spaces to a building a confining "compressing" experience Frank
Lloyd Wright made the visitor mildly uncomfortable and then, by encouraging
them to move into the larger main room, a feeling of relaxation, or "release”.
This "release" also imparts a feeling (or impression) of freedom. As
one can see in the image below, Wright designed entrances as narrow hallways
with extremely low ceilings, often no more than six feet high. The
claustrophobic hallways encouraged a flow of traffic into the main room,
thereby preventing people from obstructing the entrance. A similar concept of
encouraging certain behavior through architecture can be seen in the group dining
room of Taliesin West. This room had ceilings that were also uncomfortably low,
which encouraged diners to sit at the tables instead of standing.
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| Compression |
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| Release |
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| Dining Room View while Seated |
Taliesin West is one of the great examples how drawing
inspiration and all aspects of its design from the surrounding environment can
enrich both, the architecture itself as well as the environment it sits in,
making it a truly organic architectural complex.
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| Garden Room Interior |
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Garden Room Exterior
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