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Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal drafting studio
Meet myTALIESIN, an online network dedicated to capturing and sharing the insights, stories, unique perspectives, and diverse voices of visitors united by the allure, nostalgia, and spirit of Frank Lloyd Wright’s enigmatic home and studio.
Whether you are a first-time visitor or an architectural historian, Taliesin Preservation and myTaliesin invite you to be a part of Taliesin’s evolving history.
myTALIESIN opens Frank Lloyd Wright’s Home and Studio in Wisconsin to the world, encouraging visitors to share their individual experiences, connect with others captivated by Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, and engage with an interactive digital animation of the Taliesin Estate as it was in 1911.
People see Taliesin in its many forms. Some see an amazing building, a beautiful setting, or a stage for stories about lives and mysteries embedded in its over 110-year-old history. We welcome you to share how your views of Wright, architecture, and the natural setting evolved after walking through Taliesin’s rooms and across its hills. We invite you to explore the ways Wright built what he described as the “abstract combination of stone and wood as they naturally met in the hills around and about;” and to discuss how Wright combined his architecture with art from China and Japan that he collected on his trips to Japan. Learning how America’s greatest architect lived and worked, how he designed a place that is both comfortable and stimulating, and how he embraced views of the lovely hills of Southern Wisconsin is made more meaningful when shared.
Taliesin is a unique architectural site because it records time. It combines designs and functions that changed over six decades of Wright’s residency and more than 60 years after his death in 1959. That evolution demonstrates how a building can maintain its character even as it adapts to change. Taliesin responds to its natural site and the life within it by accepting alterations and additions without compromising its initial concept. Taliesin is a place and a story of people who lived and worked here. We hope you join us in this community of appreciation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s premiere demonstration of organic architecture that provides a setting for extraordinary living experiences.
Digital model of Taliesin in 1911.
The myTALIESIN project began with the impressive digital animation of unbuilt projects by the American architect Bruce Goff presented at the University of Oklahoma. Seeing that amazing presentation, Skyline Ink was asked to construct a digital model of Taliesin when it was first built in 1911 to celebrate Taliesin’s Centennial in 2011. Subsequently, design agency Faucethead inquired if they could engage people’s responses to Taliesin on the internet. Together, these two brilliant design teams built the myTALIESIN website to bring people together through their experiences at Taliesin and their response to visiting Taliesin online.
Following is a sampling of stories from the myTALIESIN website. Feel free to share your own story, too!
“I saw Taliesin first in 1962 with my father on my way to college. I had written a fictional account of going there that appeared in the high school literary magazine after reading Wright’s Autobiography. My interest in Wright was stimulated by my architect-father’s library. Taliesin is about time; how a building can be constantly changing and continually itself. The poise expected of great architecture is in service to the evolution of life lived within Taliesin. The magic of a flexible coherence is achieved by means of a limited palette of materials combined in various disciplined patterns. The architectural flexibility is perfectly attuned to the variations in its natural setting; the architecture parallels nature, but it does not imitate it. Taliesin is beautiful; it is not drowsy, but stimulating.” —Sidney Robinson
“By the time I first visited Taliesin in Spring Green, I had all but discounted Frank Lloyd Wright as a cliché, THE cliché, of American architecture. By the time I left from that visit, I was humbled by the architecture and reminded why Wright, after all these years, is still the measure of American architecture and architects.” —Todd Stevens
“Although much of Taliesin was in a deep slumber when I made my entry, I was greeted by the stunning Hillside studio. I could not believe that I was actually inside this picture-perfect structure that I had only seen in pictures! I remember vividly that sleepless first night at the “shining brow.” I had mixed emotions. I was excited about what the next day would bring. At the same time, I was concerned with what I could make of it.” —Lira Louis
