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Taliesin West, Garden Room, 12621 North Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, Scottsdale, Maricopa County, AZ
- Title: Taliesin West, Garden Room, 12621 North Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, Scottsdale, Maricopa County, AZ
- Creator(s): Historic American Buildings Survey, creator
- Related Names:
Wright, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Olgivanna Hinzenberg
Entz-White
Perez, Adam M. , field team
Longoria, Arthur , field team
Vasquez, Ashley M. , field team
Loredo, Francisco A. , field team
Knox, Jazmyne , field team
Morin, Mark R. , field team
Jeon, Taejoo , field team
Xu, Zhao (Stephanie) , field team
Lee, Benjamin J. , delineator
Wright, Crystal E. , delineator
Long, Doug P. , delineator
Ramirez, Erin A. , delineator
Knott, Isaac E. , delineator
Reed, Megan Suzanne , field team
Rosales, Karina D. , delineator
Alvarez, Samuel J. , delineator
Pemberton, Sue Ann , faculty sponsor
University of Texas at San Antonio, School of Architecture + Planning , sponsor
Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation , sponsor
McPartland, Mary , transmitter - Date Created/Published: Documentation compiled after 1933
- Medium:
Measured Drawing(s): 7
Data Page(s): 11 - Reproduction Number: ---
- Rights Advisory:
No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government; images copied from other sources may be restricted. (http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/114_habs.html)
- Call Number: HABS AZ-218-G
- Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
- Notes:
- 2023 Charles E. Peterson Prize, Second Place
- Significance: The Garden Room at Taliesin West represents Frank Lloyd Wright's Organic Architectural ideologies and principles. Wright incorporates sustainable elements and features throughout the design in deference to the natural environment, inhabitants, and context. Wright and his apprentices built Taliesin West between 1937-59, a period often referred to as Wright's "Second Golden Age." The Taliesin West complex is located within the arid, desert foothills of the McDowell Mountains in Scottsdale, Arizona. It became Wright's winter home and the academic campus for his Taliesin Fellowship. The Garden Room was a large living room for the Wrights, opening onto an enclosed garden, and used for Fellowship social occasions as well. The structure incorporates stones from the surrounding desert as exposed features of the concrete. Known as "desert masonry," the approach combined the structural benefits of concrete and the inherent aesthetic of desert materials. Historian Frederick Gutheim has written that "Tuned to nature within and nature without, man and architecture were all of a piece and never more vividly so than his own beloved places in Wisconsin and Arizona." The Wrights and the Fellowship inhabited Taliesin West between Thanksgiving and Easter of each year, continuing the construction of the complex through 1941. By this time additional buildings had been completed including the Garden Room (in 1940), Wrights' living quarters, Apprentice Court, and Guest Deck. Conceived as a as a living room for the Wrights, the Garden Room, became a shared space for Fellowship parties, music events, and conversation. The room connects to the Dining Cove through a glass door to the north. The latter space is smaller and more enclosed than the Garden Room, notwithstanding an expansive high ceiling near the large fireplace. It was an intimate dining space for the Wrights and their guests. The walls of the Garden Room and Dining Cove, like the other buildings on campus, were of desert masonry construction. The floors were originally concrete covered with a rose-colored shag carpet; the current carpet is white. A roof of redwood frames and operable canvas panels similar to that in the Drafting Studio and Office slopes upward. The east side of the room opens onto a terrace and the Wrights' private garden. The west wall of the room is lined with built-in benches covered with upholstered seat cushions and pillows. The room's south end originally had an opening that looked out to the valley and Camelback Mountain beyond that has since been enclosed. The grand piano originally located in the Drafting Studio was moved to the south end of the Garden Room and next to it stood Iovanna's harp, which was also later moved. Throughout the room there are also small wooden hassocks with cushions for additional seating. In 1946, Wright had glass added to the clerestories on the east side of the Garden Room. In addition to the introduction of glass, the Garden Room was redecorated with new rugs and furnishings and many of the desert plants, such as the staghorn and prickly pear cacti, were removed and replaced with non-native plantings. The most recent addition to the displayed art, the Chinese Screen Painting, resides in the Dining Cove. Removed in the late 1980s due to its deteriorating condition, this fascinating multi-media, eight-panel screen depicting the birthday celebration of the Taoist immortal Queen Mother of the West was recently beautifully restored and reinstalled. Many remodeling projects have been undertaken since the Garden Room was constructed in 1940. The southern end of the room has been fitted with a massive desert masonry fireplace, fixed glass clerestories offer views of the mountaintops, and the entire room has been enclosed by glass so that it may be mechanically heated and cooled throughout the year. Wright broke with traditional thinking on home design by introducing open-space concepts at a time when most homes were conceptualized as having spaces with clearly defined walls and purposes. Part of his "desert laboratory," he used the Garden Room as prototype for flexible spaces designed from their inception for multiple purposes. The space was equally conducive for a formal evening event attended by seventy-five people or a conversation beside the fireplace for a more intimate gathering of two or three. As a complement to the architecture's angularity, origami lounge chairs were added in the early 1950s. Dinner was served on small triangular tables placed together throughout the room. Concerts took place after dinner at the end of the room where there was a large piano, quartet stand, and harp. The massive redwood trusses that support the canvas overhead in the Office, Drafting Room, and Garden Room display the intentional geometric design concepts at work at Taliesin West. They cast shadows along their own lines as well as on the walls of stone and concrete terraces. Wright avoided linear planning at Taliesin West, favoring slopes and prominent angles that reiterate the slopes and angles of the mountains in the surrounding desert.
- Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N2566
- Survey number: HABS AZ-218-G
- Building/structure dates: 1939-1940 Initial Construction
- Building/structure dates: 1946 Subsequent Work
- National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 74000457
- Subjects:
- Place:
- Latitude/Longitude: 33.606879, -111.845576
- Collections:
- Part of: Historic American Buildings Survey (Library of Congress)
- Bookmark This Record:
https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/az0718/
The Library of Congress generally does not own rights to material in its collections and, therefore, cannot grant or deny permission to publish or otherwise distribute the material. For further rights information, see "Rights Information" below and the Rights and Restrictions Information page ( https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/rights.html ).
- Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on images made by the U.S. Government; images copied from other sources may be restricted. http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/114_habs.html
- Reproduction Number: ---
- Call Number: HABS AZ-218-G
- Medium:
Measured Drawing(s): 7
Data Page(s): 11
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- Call Number: HABS AZ-218-G
- Medium:
Measured Drawing(s): 7
Data Page(s): 11
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