Works

Taliesin West

tal-ee-ESS-in (Welsh: shining brow)

Citation Formats

General Reference

Arts and Music Atlas. "Taliesin West." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-arts.interactiveatlas.org/works/taliesin-west.

APA Style

Arts and Music Atlas. (n.d.). Taliesin West. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-arts.interactiveatlas.org/works/taliesin-west

BibTeX

@misc{artsandmusicatlas-taliesin-west,
  author = {Arts and Music Atlas},
  title = {Taliesin West},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-arts.interactiveatlas.org/works/taliesin-west},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Taliesin West is the winter counterpart Frank Lloyd Wright began building in 1937 on 491 acres of Sonoran desert in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains near Scottsdale, Arizona, sharing its Welsh name and shining-brow siting principle with the original Wisconsin Taliesin. Wright and his Fellowship apprentices built it themselves each winter from local desert rubblestone and redwood, and Wright kept refining it as his own home, studio and architecture school every season until his death in 1959; the site also preserves 64 documented petroglyphs left by the Hohokam people who lived there centuries earlier. It remains the headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

Facts

Location

12621 North Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, Scottsdale, Arizona, United States 1

Architectural Style

Organic architecture in a desert idiom, structures laid out on a 45-degree grid answering the angles of the surrounding McDowell Mountains. 1

Structural System

Low masonry walls of desert rubblestone set in concrete, originally roofed in redwood-framed canvas panels resembling tents, later replaced with acrylic panels. 1

Primary Material

Desert masonry (local rock set in concrete), redwood framing, canvas and later acrylic roofing panels. 1

Building Type

House and studio (Wright's own winter residence and architectural school) 1

Commissioned By

Frank Lloyd Wright himself, as his winter home, studio and desert laboratory for the Taliesin Fellowship 1

Construction

from 1937 1

UNESCO Inscription Year

2019 2

One of eight Wright buildings inscribed together as The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright; also a US National Historic Landmark since 1982.

Current Use

Headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, operated as a museum and educational center with tours and events 1

Visitor Access

Open for guided tours and events 1

Cross-Tradition Connections