Get an Inside Look at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West Desert Shelters
Tucked away in the scenic McDowell Mountains near Scottsdale, Arizona, Taliesin West was, beginning in the 1930s, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and the epicenter of his Taliesin Fellowship. Today it’s a National Historic Landmark and the home of the School of Architecture at Taliesin, as well as the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, whose three pillars of preservation, innovation, and education are still very much in practice. Case in point: the apprenticeship program.
After purchasing the land, Wright brought aspiring architects to his property to help him build the estate in exchange for education and experience. And it was then that the desert-shelter concept was born as the budding designers would set out into the arid landscape with the white, ten-foot-by-ten-foot sheepherder tents they were issued upon arrival. Not content to merely prop them up, many of the creative apprentices also began erecting impressive structures complete with masonry, concrete, wood, and textiles. This tradition lives on today, with students building and living in the dwellings of their own making. Here, an exclusive look at a collection of Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired shelters at Taliesin West.