News - Big Trouble at Taliesin
Posted by JoeVare, 15 April 2005

If you are one of the students at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West in Arizona you have some things to worry about. First you have to worry about all of those tour groups constantly wandering the property, then you have to worry about those rumored accreditation problems at your still experimental school, then you have to worry about the fact that the dean and half of the faculty have recently left, then you have to worry about the fact that most of the fellows who are in charge are not getting along with everyone as they're getting older (average age 76) and not being replaced. What you don't have to worry about is having enough room- enrollment has dropped from an already small 23 students to a noticeably smaller 11 students within the last year.

The school believes itself to be a living piece of Frank Lloyd Wright's legacy and the curriculum is unique among US architectural schools. There are no scheduled classes, no grades. Students practice "organic" (not green) architecture and are required to actually build projects to earn their degree. There is no time limit as to when your studies are complete, you're ready when they say you are (with tuition at a relatively reasonable $12,000 US a year). The school is really the heart of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which runs both Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Within the last year, a group of former graduates called fellows clashed with the dean over the direction of the school, causing him to resign and leave the school in disarray. A big problem but unfortunately not the foundations biggest problem.

An article in the Arizona Republic newspaper reported that the foundation decided at an meeting that they need to raise $100,000,000 US to survive, a big problem for an organization that in the past five years has only been able to raise $5,000,000 US. Recent problems outside the school include revolving leadership, a falloff in tourism, an aging volunteer force that needs to be replaced with paid employees, a possible loss of their tax exempt status and decades of deferred maintenance that will require major work at both Taliesins- work at the Wisconsin campus is estimated to be at least $30,000,000 US.

Wright was never a very good businessman, he fought off the repossession of Taliesin by local banks on more than one occasion. Today his aging, former students are doing their best to keep his original dream alive, imagining that if Wright was alive today that he would still be doing whatever he was still doing in 1959.

Learn more about Frank Lloyd Wright at ArBITAT Architects
Go to the Wright Foundation site