Taliesin West (/ˌtæliːˈɛsɪn/ tal-ee-ESS-in[3][4]) is a studio and home developed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in Scottsdale, Arizona, United States.

Wright and his Taliesin Fellowship (later the School of Architecture) began making wintertime pilgrimages from Wisconsin to Arizona in 1935, and he bought a site in the McDowell Mountains two years later.

[42][43] Wright also attempted to buy land in Arizona during that trip,[44] visiting a 640-acre (260 ha) site southeast of Chandler, which was owned by a farmer named Dewey Keith.

[39][48] During that trip, Wright attempted to buy some federal land near the San Tan Mountains, but he needed another parcel from Keith to obtain a site of sufficient size.

[68][69] In designing the complex, Wright wanted to blur the distinction between the buildings and the ground, giving the impression that the structures grew from the desert floor.

"[66] The early plans called for a collection of buildings surrounding a courtyard, accessed from the west[74] and rotated 30 degrees clockwise from due south.

[89] The writer Neil Levine states that Taliesin West "assumed the role of defining Wright's architecture and persona to the outside world", supplanting the original studio in some respects,[101] while The New York Times characterized the structures as a "countercultural colony".

[102] Wright designed numerous structures while at Taliesin West, such as the Price Tower, Monona Terrace, Gammage Memorial Auditorium, and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

[82][95] Following the United States' entry into World War II in 1941, some of Wright's fellows were drafted into the U.S. military, while others were imprisoned after refusing to be conscripted.

[62] Following World War II, Wright began experimenting with alternate materials, adding glass and replacing some of the canvas and wood in the buildings.

[192][194] The foundation planned to raise $5 million for an archive building at Taliesin West by selling off some of Wright's original drawings, though these sales were controversial.

[4] In the early 1990s, the consulting firm Coopers and Lybrand conducted a feasibility study, which predicted that Taliesin West could increase its annual visitation to 250,000 if the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation built a visitor center and a model of an Usonian house.

According to Taliesin West's vice president Arnold Roy, the initial design, based on an unexecuted plan for a house in California, "was too institutional".

[114][229][230] It cost the foundation millions of dollars to maintain Taliesin West,[230] which needed a new roof and had outdated mechanical systems and water damage.

[114][229] After conducting an 18-month study of the estate, Harboe announced a master plan in October 2015,[230][231] which called for restoring the original buildings and repairing damaged infrastructure.

[114] The writer Neil Levine classifies the structures into two types: "pavilions", with masonry columns and wood-and-canvas roofs, and "caverns", which were comparatively more tightly enclosed.

[248] The buildings were heavily inspired by the natural forms of the desert,[75][249] and Wright wanted the structures on the site to be "sharp, clean and savage", similarly to the surroundings.

[250] In addition to local rocks, Wright used wood from trees in northern Arizona, and he made the fabric out of cotton grown in the state.

[63][254] Olgivanna picked out Taliesin West's color palette, which included 57 hues of pink,[57] in addition to shades of yellow and green.

[79][126][246] The walls also include decorations, such as Chinese ceramic panels salvaged from the second Imperial Hotel in Tokyo,[57] as well as redwood cubes embedded into the fascia boards.

[225] Taliesin West formerly hosted the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation's archives, which were inaccessible to the general public[308] and were very difficult for researchers to access.

[315] A Chicago Tribune writer said in 1949 that the materials, including glass walls and canvas roofs, "bring the outdoors in...with startling and exciting results".

[156] A Boston Globe writer stated that the building "is impossible to photograph satisfactorily" because its sharp-edged appearance meant that there were no front or side facades.

[158] A writer for The Arizona Republic, in 1981, characterized the structures as "innovative variations on parallelograms and trapezoids",[180] and the Associated Press wrote of the Wrights' living area: "There is an opulence in the long expanse of dining-living room combination.

[63] In 2001, an Associated Press writer described the complex as imitating the desert environment,[318] while the Los Angeles Daily News wrote that Taliesin West was a monument to Wright and to organic architecture.

[319] The architect Philip Johnson described Taliesin West as "the essence of architecture"[82] but also said that, to people unfamiliar with Wright's work, the structures appeared as "a meaningless group of buildings".

[103] Conversely, several critics wrote that the buildings' organic, transient nature had become diluted due to modifications such as air conditioning, glass ceilings, and steel beams.

[327] Taliesin West received the American Institute of Architects' Twenty-five Year Award in 1973[328] and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

[332] In 2008, the National Park Service submitted ten Frank Lloyd Wright properties, including Taliesin West, to a tentative World Heritage list.

[334][335] Ultimately, Taliesin West and seven other properties were added to the World Heritage List under the title "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" in July 2019.