Nicole Aimone, Editor-in-Chief
The School of Architecture at Taliesin announced recently that it will be dropping the term “Taliesin” from its name and has severed ties with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and will move forward as just the School of Architecture.
According to a press release, the school will continue forward with its new name while upholding the “learning by doing” principles of architecture Frank Lloyd Wright founded the Taliesin fellowship program in 1932.
The school has not only left behind a name association with Taliesin, but will also be relocating its program away from the Taliesin campus just outside of Spring Green. The program will now continue at Corsanti in Paradise Valley and Arcosanti in Mayer, both in Arizona.
“Being in residence at Cosanti and Arcosanti will allow the school to continue its tradition of hands-on experimental architecture and to focus, as both Soleri and Wright did, on the relationship between the natural world and the human-made environment, the role of craft and “making” in architecture, and the use of experimental materials and technologies. Our students are encouraged to respect and work within the landscapes around them while developing their own innovative concepts and projects,” said Chris Lasch, president of The School of Architecture.
Crosanti and Arcosanti are maintained by the Cosanti Foundation, which honors Paolo Soleri, an apprentice of Wright.
“Our collaboration with the school is a welcome link between our shared past and a bonded future. Paolo Soleri, Wright’s one-time apprentice, possessed a similar passion for exploratory architecture that we now have the opportunity to bring to like in the form of a graduate degree program offered by—The School of Architecture,” said John Walsh, a former board chairman of the Cosanti Foundation, in a press release.
The program’s students have traditionally spent winters in Arizona, and summers in Spring Green, which Elaine McEwen, the School of Architecture’s Academic Coordinator, said students will continue doing throughout summer 2021.
“This summer, the school will convene an intensive summer studio that will investigate iconic architecture in and around Chicago and Wisconsin, with a focus on Frank Lloyd Wright’s seminal mid-western work,” said McEwen.
The program will include a weeklong education of Wright’s Wisconsin sites, which will be conducted at the Wyoming Valley School, the program’s home base.
In addition to an intensive education of Wright’s work throughout the state, students will also attend the official opening of the Mazomanie Pavilion, an outdoor performance structure and bandshell designed by School of Architecture students in 2019.
“The school is looking forward to getting back to its midwestern roots this summer, if only for a time, while it continues to look for a new permanent Wisconsin-based location,” said McEwen.
McEwen did not indicate when the school plans to have a Wisconsin based location, or if the school would continue its traditional journey back to the area each summer, following 2021.