The School of Architecture

The School of Architecture is a private architecture school in Paradise Valley, Arizona. It was founded in 1986 as an accredited school by surviving members of the Taliesin Fellowship. The school offers a Master of Architecture program focusing on the organic architecture design philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright. The school is the smallest accredited graduate architecture program in the United States and emphasizes hands-on learning, architectural immersion, experimentation, and a design-build program that grew out of the Taliesin Fellowships’ tradition of building shelters in the Arizona desert. The school is not ranked by any ranking publications.

It is located on two historic campuses: Cosanti in Paradise Valley and Arcosanti near Mayer, Arizona. It was located at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona and Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, but in 2020, announced a move to Cosanti and Arcosanti.

Founding of the Taliesin Fellowship
In 1931, Frank Lloyd Wright and his wife, Olgivanna, circulated a prospectus to an international group of distinguished scholars, artists, and friends, announcing their plan to form a school at Taliesin in Spring Green where students would “Learn by Doing.”  Education at Taliesin emphasized painting, sculpture, music, drama, and dance “in their places as divisions of architecture.” Each of these elements of the fine arts, as the Wrights conceived them, would lead to broader learning.

The ambitious plan for an endowed school exceeded the Wrights’ capacity to attract funds in the second full year of the Great Depression, so the school was founded as an apprenticeship program in 1932 instead. Wright also expressed his disdain for conventional architecture schools, cautioning "Beware of architectural schools except as the exponent of engineering." In 1939, Wright advised the Royal Institute of British Architects that "I do not want you to have the idea that Taliesin is a school, or a community. It happens to be our home and where we work, and these young people are my comrade apprentices: no scholars. They come to help, and if they can learn-well, we are very happy."

During the years of the Taliesin Fellowship, Wright's apprentices worked on important Wright projects including the Johnson Wax Headquarters, Fallingwater, and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The apprenticeship program continued after the school gained formal accreditation in 1986, and the apprentices would be engaged in the design and operational activities of Taliesin Associated Architects on projects like Monona Terrace, until the Wright's legacy firm disbanded in 2003.

Accreditation as The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture
The apprenticeship program, the Taliesin Fellowship, evolved into the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, which was established in response to changing licensing requirements for architects, particularly the requirement to graduate from an accredited institution prior to sitting for the Architect Registration Examination. Rather than allow the school to become obsolete, the school acquired the necessary accreditation to continue although some may question the decision to create an accredited architecture school from Wright's apprenticeship program, given his antipathy for architecture schools--"Beware of architectural schools except as the exponent of engineering." Despite this internal discord, the school pressed on, and under the leadership of Dean Tom Casey, became a fully accredited program in 1986.

In 2014, the school's accreditation was challenged by the Higher Learning Commission based on new regulations that required it to have independent budgeting and governance from its parent organization, The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. This was resolved by 2017, when the school separated legally from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and changed its name to The School of Architecture at Taliesin. However, the school remained on its historic campuses of Taliesin and Taliesin West.

The school maintained its accreditation through 2020 following the closure announcement by establishing itself as an independent entity and moving to a new historic campus.

Becoming The School of Architecture
Despite an announcement on January 28, 2020, that the school would cease operations on both campuses and close by June 2020, the school remains open and continues to educate Master of Architecture students. According to this announcement, the school's governing board determined that "the School did not have a sustainable business model that would allow it to maintain its operation as an accredited program." This announcement followed the failure of discussions between the board and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation about the creation of new, non-accredited educational programs. At the time of the announcement, the school indicated they were negotiating an agreement for the 30 currently enrolled students to transfer to The Design School at ASU's Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

It was reported that prior to the closure announcement, the school and the foundation were in talks to develop alternative educational programming that did not require accreditation. According to the foundation, the proposals that emerged from these discussions were not approved by the school's board.

Six weeks after announcing the pending closure, the school's board of directors reversed course and announced that the school had received new funding and was financially viable. However, the agreement between the Foundation and School expired by its own terms on July 31, 2020. As of March 11, 2020, the school board expressed its intention to continue school operations and reopened admissions, despite no resolution with the Foundation being reached at that time.

In 2020, the school moved to the historic campuses of Cosanti and Arcosanti and changed its name to The School of Architecture.

Academics
The school offers a three-year, project-based Master of Architecture degree, with a focus on organic architecture. The school is accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board and the Higher Learning Commission. The school offers a unique hand-on design build program that encourages design exploration and experimentation. It also offers courses that preserve Wright's legacy of teaching architecture holistically.

Student life
Students become part of a community of thinkers and creators, each doing their fair share to guide the School's traditions into the future. In a place that consists of great architecture and infused by all the arts, students are encouraged to engage in the discourse of architecture amongst each other, as well as with the professors who serve as creative mentors throughout the immersive experience. Because most of the members of the community live, eat, and work onsite, students will feel intertwined and involved with their work, their surroundings, and themselves.

The student's body is governed by its own elected student government which is elected on an annual basis by simple majority vote. The students operate their own website, social media, and magazine, known as WASH.

Awards
The school has been awarded numerous grants from the Graham Foundation for its student publications.