Art-chitecture: Taliesin through the eyes of Frank Lloyd Wright
Maya Carroll

Artist or Architect?

Driving through the countryside of southern Wisconsin in late summer, enjoying a playful breeze through the open window, the mood is noticeably lighter.  The winding country roads are lined with lush green foliage crouching beneath a brilliantly blue sky. In the distance, rolling hills are plowed and ready for harvest, with their stacks of hay curled up in bundles, much like an impressionist painting. The scene is reminiscent of a faraway land, meticulously captured on canvas.

In fact, that is why famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his family chose to call Spring Green their hometown. Born into the comfort and luxury of a Welsh heritage, Wright’s mother settled in Wisconsin because it reminded her of her parents’ home in Northern Wales.  Consequently, Wright grew up basking in this pastoral countryside, developing a love for the land and forming ideas of what is beautiful, natural and pleasing to the senses, which he would later incorporate into his designs of houses, gardens, picturesque views and surrounding landscapes.

Perched on the brow of the hill, Taliesin served as the summer home of Wright and his family for 48 years and is still lived in today by private owners. Taliesin, which means “shining brow” in Welsh, is a sight for the eyes and a feast for the senses. With its many wings and terraces reaching out along the crest of the hill, the building embraces the site rather than overpowering it. Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, Robert Campbell, called Taliesin the “greatest single building in America."

The landscape surrounding Taliesin is breathtakingly beautiful, and the artist in Wright appreciated every aspect of its splendor.  From his careful layout of interior spaces and placement of windows, the architect guided the eye to views he considered most spectacular.  The master bedroom overlooks a deep ravine created by glaciers thousands of years ago, now majestically overgrown with balsam and birch trees hugging a glassy, silver lake.  As natural as the surroundings seem, each sight within the grounds of the 600-acre estate has been carefully planned and orchestrated by a single man. With a keen eye for detail, the artist and architect were one within Wright.

Organic Architecture

Wright preached the beauty of native materials and insisted that buildings grow naturally from their surroundings.  He loved the hill in Spring Green where he once played as a young boy and knew instinctively that a building built on top of the hill would destroy its natural setting. 

“I knew well by now no house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it,” Wright wrote in his autobiography. “Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.”

Throughout his work, Wright emphasized bringing the elements of nature within the home and living as one with his surroundings. He called these designs Prairie Houses, with low, horizontal lines and wide overhanging eaves that reflected the layout of the hills in which they were situated. Wright used materials unique to the area around Spring Green to build Taliesin.  Every piece of wood that went into its construction was cut at the local lumberyard, the limestone was quarried from a mile away and even the plaster in the walls was mixed using sand from the rivers in southern Wisconsin. Wright liked to blend textures not because it was necessary but because it evoked the feeling of being within nature while inside his dwellings.

“Architecture, after all, I have learned – or before all, I should say – is no less weaving and a fabric than the trees,” Wright wrote. 

As an artist better known for his work at the drafting table than his expertise with a brush and palette, Wright constructed his home to be supremely natural. The entrance into Taliesin is designed with low ceilings, forcing one to duck down and move forward into the main opening of the room toward the expansive vistas and brilliant view that lie beyond its glass walls. The large and seamless windows span from ground level to the top of an 18-foot ceiling. Such framework is typical of the homes Wright built during this period of his life, after he returned from an extended stay in Japan to design the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.

Wright’s emphasis on aesthetic beauty didn’t fall short of touching upon a single corner of the house, aligning each window and frame to reflect nature. 

“The lines of the hills are the lines of the roofs; the slopes of the hills, their slopes,” he wrote. 

Even the light wood walls were built in the shade of broad eaves, creating shadows and depth to reflect the flat, sandy stretches of the river below. Wright also tended to the garden, overseeing the planting of each flower and tree to make sure it matched precisely with his expectations.  The external settings were a permanent display of art for the architect. The trees and the terrace formed the backdrop to his studio while the expansive valley became a portrait commanding his room.  Instead of using a brush and oil acrylic paints, Wright used construction and plywood to create his masterpieces.

A Visionary

Sometimes sacrificing function for beauty, Wright’s homes are a vision for the eye but often an inconvenience for the owner.  Research specialist Keiran Murphy, responsible for many of the preservation projects at Taliesin Preservation Inc., said Wright's work, similar to any old building, constantly requires maintenance.

“The hardest part is the fact that he experimented with his designs a lot and was changing them all the time,” she said.

At the Taliesin site, Wright brings together large panes of glass with a thin line of mortar so as not to obstruct any views of the hills. However, the mortar has started to disintegrate, allowing the external elements to penetrate its surface.

"Insulation is an issue with any old house built before 1960," said James Dennis, the owner of Wright's 1936 Jacobs House in Madison. “We improved the radiant heating system back in 1984 by replacing the original cast-iron pipes with polypropylene tubing. There is still heat loss through the sandwich walls whose core boards are wrapped in a tar paper that provides a moisture barrier but little insulation.”

Rachelle Messner, a tour guide at the Taliesin site, now called Preservation Inc, said she believes Wright would be surprised at the idea that Taliesin has become a museum with tours conducted regularly.

“This home was under its third major reconstruction at the time of Wright’s death in 1959, and was constantly evolving with every new idea he had,” Messner said.

Fires destroyed parts of Taliesin twice, once in 1914 and again in 1925. Today, Taliesin is often referred to as "Taliesin 3" because of the twice destroyed living quarters. Yet, Wright did not hesitate to explore with new materials and means of construction, recycling plywood to construct tables and planting old plumbing pipes in his garden as trellises.

Wright favored the evolvement of his work and liked to redesign the layout and functions of the space while living there.  Until his death in 1959, he never stopped adding to or changing Taliesin and it is known as the longest ongoing architectural project of his career.

“Frank Lloyd Wright was a true visionary,” said Murphy.  “He was going for a certain look and figured technology would catch up to him.  I admire the way he invented means which allowed for his visions and artistic impulses to take flight.”

Wright was one of the first in his time to install hydraulic water control, which he employed in the waterfalls at the base of the hill to direct the flow of the water toward his gardens and ponds.  Taking it a step further, Wright personally took care of eliminating all the brown spotted cows in the Spring Green area. In that way, he would be left with the traditional and according to him, more aesthetically pleasing, black and white cows.

His experimentation of altering the landscape blended effortlessly with his designs and architecture.  Wright designed the “Bird Walk” at Taliesin, a suspended bridge overlooking the 600-acre estate, for his third wife, Olgivanna, to walk out upon and observe wild creatures from the vantage point of treetops.  Always looking at the details, Wright strongly opposed the electrical posts with their strung wires that were eventually erected on his land.  Initially, he handed paint buckets to his apprentices with the instructions to paint the posts green so they would blend in better with­ the surrounding view.  Then he went one step further and ordered the lines to be buried underground and out of sight, something that did not become routine in rural America until many years later.

An Artist’s Temperament

From the moment a visitor enters the Taliesin site, Wright is in control of every aspect involved in the experience. On the path up to the hill, where the house sits, a waterfall serves as a beautiful greeting with the hum of falling water and the smell of freshness.  Walking up to the house on a graceful hill lends to views of more valleys beyond the orchards Wright planted himself.

“I saw the vineyard now on the south slope of the hill, opulent vines loaded with purple, green and yellow grapes,” he wrote. “There were to be strawberry beds, white, scarlet and green over the covering of clean wheat-straw.”

Not only did Wright master control of the views of his structures, but he also dictated the way a guest walks into a room by manipulating lighting, the ceiling height and the floor.  Emerging into Wright’s master bedroom at Taliesin Preservation Inc. feels as though an artist is presenting his work to each visitor personally. An entire wall of windows at the far end of the room brings in a private view of nature and faces west with spectacular views of a setting sun each night.

Not only did Wright design the structure of a house, but he also took it upon himself to design the furniture, the light fixtures, the flooring and the china to be used within that specific dwelling. His influence touched upon each and every aspect of the owner’s life.  He even went as far as designing a wardrobe of gowns for a woman living in one of his houses, so she wouldn't clash with the interior decoration while hosting parties.

Wright enjoyed taking trips to visit friends and relatives who lived in homes he designed for them. In 1938, he constructed the Wingspread home in Racine for a good friend, Samuel Johnson. Years after its construction, Johnson remarried, and his second wife, Irene, did not relate to the house and its simple and temperate decor. She went to great lengths to redecorate the interior using her own artistic taste. However, when Wright visited the new couple a few years later, he woke himself at four in the morning to redecorate their home in accordance with his initial design.

“He took some of the furniture that he didn't think was particularly appropriate and put it in a storeroom. He changed many of the paintings, and then waited for Irene to come down for breakfast,” Johnson wrote. “I don't think she and Mr. Wright ever spoke seriously after that.”

Wright also placed his signature mark on each of his designs, with a ceramic red tile indicating its authenticity.  Although the tile symbolizes worth and pride to Wright homeowners today, it did not always come with a guarantee.  Wright was known to visit his finished work and inspect its resemblance to his original vision for the site.  If the owners were not willing to keep the home precisely as Wright imagined, he would chisel out the tile himself and walk away. However, Wright also believed in doing good for others and was a generous man, albeit a difficult one to live with.

A Devoted Mentor

During his lifetime, Wright married three times, fathered seven children and adopted his third wife's child. Although his descendants say he was not always easy to live with, due to a quick temper and a perfectionism that pervaded all of their lives, he expressed love in small ways.

There is a story told at the Taliesin site about a young girl who used to come and visit the grounds while one of her parents worked for Wright as a maid. Whenever she was in a room with Wright, she hid behind furniture or a door because his wild beard and towering top hat scared her to tears.  Knowing to take small gestures in trying to befriend her, Wright would tease her and tap her on the head with his cane, proving that he could play along with her game.

Frank and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright founded the Taliesin Fellowship in 1932 by selecting a handful of apprentices from around the country to live and study at Taliesin. The prestigious program continues to operate today as the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, under the same philosophy Wright established for his students.

“The fine arts, so called,” he wrote, “should stand at the center as inspiration grouped about architecture.”

The education at Taliesin emphasizes painting, sculpture, music, drama and dance in their places as divisions of architecture.

While he was alive, Wright took the apprentices under his wing and watched over their work with intense care.  He loved to spend time with them, as if they were a part of his family, and he required a daily afternoon gathering in his gardens to drink tea and discuss their projects.  During the winter, Wright brought the students into his home and in front of an enormous, crackling fireplace to exchange ideas and listen to music.  To him, the hearth was the heart of the home, which inspired him to center the floor plans of each building around a large fireplace. Wright designed more than 1,000 fireplaces throughout his career, each one a unique sculpture revered by owners of the home.

Art-chitecture

Walking in and around the buildings of Taliesin feels akin to visiting a historic site, a labyrinth of courtyards and gardens created by an artistic genius. Like a great painter or a sculptor, Wright chose to arrange the elements in his finished works to send a message to the viewer and evoke a feeling of relief.

As the late afternoon sun casts its long shadows across the courtyards and terraces at the Taliesin site, Wright’s vision as an artist comes into sharp focus.  From the low, elongated wings which are the roofline of the sprawling structure that form to the gently rolling valleys with their vineyards, orchards and golden corn, this artist’s masterpiece is on display to soothe the mind while stimulating the senses. Taliesin stands as a monument to Wright's artistic sensibilities and his need to work in concert with nature to create structural works of art.