So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

Within an hour of arriving in Arizona, my mother announced that she wanted to move there. Even though we were driving around at night, I could easily see what attracted her to the area.

For starters, the temperature was about fifty degrees in December. This rarely happens back home, and if it does, is clearly indicative of a larger problem, i.e. global warming.

But more striking to both my mom and me was Arizona's architecture.

The Native American and Hispanic influence on Southwestern architecture is seen in several ways: the earthy tones of the buildings and homes, the materials (such as adobe) used to build, and the artwork decorating either the building's walls or surrounding areas.

My family and I further explored this architecture by visiting Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter retreat, located right in Scottsdale, just miles from where we stayed.

I've previously visited only one other house of Wright's, the Darwin D. Martin House in Buffalo, New York, back when I was fifteen, and a little (okay, a lot) less interested in creatively designed homes. I retained nearly no information from my tour, and remember very little about the house itself; my only memories are in the form of a few photographs taken on a disposable camera (and with a pretty unseasoned eye).

This time around, I paid significantly more attention to my surroundings and learned quite a bit of information. Taliesin West is home to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, an organization that conducts programs, owns The Archives, and operates the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

All of Wright's buildings are constructed by his students, a fact that I found extremely impressive and fascinating. In all my years as a student, no matter how great my love for writing, or singing, or anything else, I doubt I was ever ready to tackle a project of that magnitude. Writing a thesis was painful enough.

Take a look at some of their work:

Some other fun facts I learned:

- Frank Lloyd Wright was quite the ladies' man, and his romantic life involved many tumultuous and tragic stories, some of which are detailed in T.C. Boyle's The Women. Coincidentally, I stumbled upon this book a week later, sitting on the shelf of Venice Beach's Small World Books, where it was listed as a staff recommendation.

- John Lloyd Wright (one of FLW's sons) invented Lincoln Logs, which were my favorite childhood toy (I've clearly always been a huge nerd). I still have a Rubbermaid box full sitting in my parents' basement.

Despite my love for building things out of wooden logs and Legos, I've never particularly been interested in the finer details of architecture. But I'm completely taken in by Wright's work - the beauty, the individuality of each structure, and the sheer number of places he's designed over his life. And what I like most about his work is the manner in which the styles of his buildings reflect their location. I now really want to explore more of his constructions, primarily the Guggenheim (which I'm a little appalled that I've never visited, given my proximity to New York) and Fallingwater, easily the most gorgeous of his works.