Arizona, the Grand Canyon State, boasts incredible natural
beauty. However, Arizona also is home to a marvel of modern architecture
designed by America’s most preeminent architect, Frank Lloyd Wright—Taliesin West.
In fact, the desert terrain informed the building site, inciting Frank Lloyd
Wright to integrate architecture and landscape, art and science, design and
math.
His organic architecture—so revolutionary at the time in the 20th Century—has become familiar to our 21st Century eyes because
contemporary architects have incorporated many of Wright’s signature principles.
Nevertheless, Wright’s legacy lives on in his work, providing a rich repository
of interdisciplinary ideas that still resonate today. In this way, elements of
his design can galvanize a new generation of students to nurture their
creativity and innovate a new blueprint for the future.
During Frank Lloyd Wright’s centennial celebration
in 1969 at Taliesin West, Wright’s widow Olgivanna Lloyd Wright announced: “One
hundred years from now, people will look at his ideas, his principles, his
forms, and see—with wonder and amazement—that those ideas are still fresh,
vibrant, applicable, and intensely prophetic.” My project aims to validate this
prediction.
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Taliesin West
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Welcome to my blog. My name is Lauren Appel. As a senior at BASIS Scottsdale High
School, I am conducting a Senior Research Project during my final trimester. Given
my interest in art and architecture, I feel very fortunate that I will
be interning at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Attending a summer camp in ceramics and pottery in 2012 at
Taliesin West not only enchanted me with the medium, the experience also
awakened my appreciation for architecture. Here, I created art in a work of
art, thereby realizing architecture’s potential to inspire.
In anticipation of the celebration of the 150th birthday of Frank
Lloyd Wright in 2017, this project aims to develop educational outreach and
programming for kindergarten through twelfth-grade students to integrate Frank
Lloyd Wright’s architecture into STEAM education. By investigating Frank Lloyd
Wright’s collection of ten buildings currently nominated for inscription as
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World
Heritage sites, including Taliesin West, I will select one or two signature elements of each
site for incorporation into lesson plans for grades K-12.
Consequently, my research will build awareness of Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy
as America’s greatest architect and of his continued influence on modern
architecture and culture. The real-life significance of my project will
further Taliesin West’s K-12 programming as it undergoes expansion at this
time.
The question that this project intends to answer is “In recognition
of Frank Lloyd Wright’s outstanding contribution to modern architecture through
his groundbreaking integration of form, materials, and setting, what elements
of Frank Lloyd Wright’s works remain relevant today for K-12 students? What
educational aspects of Wright’s organic architecture correspond to K-12
curricula? Specifically, what lesson plans best convey Wright’s design
philosophy to engage K-12 students in architecture?”
