After 88 years, Frank Lloyd Wright’s School of Architecture at Taliesin is closing. The Governing Board of the school was not able to reach an agreement with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to keep it open, thereby forcing them to cease all operations after the Spring 2020 semester. Established in 1932, Taliesin consists of two separate Wright retreats: Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Here, generations of architecture students had a chance to immerse themselves in creative experimentation, often designing and living in their own residences on the campuses.

It’s a loss for Wright’s legacy, for the school’s 30 current students, and for the world of architecture, particularly considering how interesting Taliesin student creations tend to be. Incorporating key elements like sustainability, natural materials, and harmony with the surrounding landscape, these temporary structures — particularly those in the Sonoran Desert at Taliesin West — are anything but typical. Here are a few of the students’ standout structures.
Simon de Aguero created this unusual wide-open desert home almost entirely from found scraps and local materials, with a core structure built out of rammed earth. The core design is an abstracted tribute to the way boulders jut out of the earth in the desert, with a stretched vinyl shade hovering like clouds overhead. And since the climate in question precludes the need for ...