Soon I will finish my appointment as the Visiting Teaching Fellow at the School of Architecture at Taliesin. I thought it would be fun to share a bit of what is happening here. We are wrestling back the legacy of American modernist Frank Lloyd Wright’s radical dedication to progressive experimental architecture from Froebel® Blocks, LEGO® sets, and stained glass tchotchkes from the desert enclave of Taliesin West. It feels like every architect I talk to has a small pom-pom in their pocket they are secretly waving, and to those cheers I offer the following work.

The most well-known experiment to hail from the school is the final thesis project. Original apprentices in Taliesin West were given a tent to sleep in for simple shelter in a remote condition. However — architecture students being curious as they are — they eventually began to flex on one another by building continuously complex and outrageous digs. Evolving that to today creates a year-long research and design project culminating in the construction of a full-scale architectural model which typically performs as a desert dwelling. This dwelling is a space for introspection and reflection regarding the larger implications on the built environment through a written document which is completed as a post-occupancy exercise.

However, the best of these built projects have found a way to comment on global contemporary architectural issues such as the anthropocene, post-digital, and radical reuse.

Perhaps no other field provides looser a condition of what counts as knowledge than the architecture thesis. I am acutely aware of the slippery slope of this specific assignment turning into a misguided attempt to rescue the outdated model of the architect as master builder. However, the best of these built projects have found a way to comment on global contemporary architectural issues such as the anthropocene, post-digital, and radical reuse.

Branch speculates that architecture in the anthropocene should take a lead role in de-centering the human inhabitant from their surroundings. Designed and built by Conor Denison, the dwelling has holes but not a door and frames with no particular view. The project treats the interior and exterior as two competing objects, expressing the simple boolean with a material tenderness which masks its technological achievements. Fun fact, it may well be the heaviest final model in the history of architecture school as it is constructed out of 45 tons of rammed earth.

Dwelling 17 considers architecture’s main stylistic role in contemporary culture as one of estrangement. Objects and their meanings are swallowed up into a singular form which begin to show bits and pieces of history through surface. Nelson Schlieff’s estranged objects provide clues to our current situation — that the cycle of our own history is constantly regurgitated through style and the ill-conceived notion of the possibility of ever truly throwing something away.

The Loft stakes its claim on architecture as an inherently fluid medium, planning for its own future adaptation and reuse. It radically aestheticizes this opportunity so that the space is imminently considered malleable. Taylor Bode believes in adapting the very notion of practice and design-build in order for architecture to radically transform the built environment.

Site 168 performs a wicked act of critical architecture. Richard Quittenton set up a fake glamping profile on Instagram and used a public internet fundraiser to ask for help in creating a desert escape from our image-based world. However, it completely relied on the overt aestheticization of escape. 

Upon arrival on the site itself, one realizes they are allowed the image of a tent but not the experience of one. The experience reverses the anticipated material effects of the tent through printed polycarbonate panels which allow light to transfer through rocks and keep the canvas top opaque. This allows the visitor to question the intention behind their desire for escape; is it possible to actually escape or is our aspiration only to produce an image of escape?

Creative moments, in architecture especially, take years to recognize. This work, and other ongoing projects, represents the beginning of a new era for the School of Architecture at Taliesin. Many challenges lay ahead, but one thing is certain: it's an education unlike any other. I am looking forward to the ensuing outcomes.