Introduction

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?”