Tours in Arizona often focus on the beauty of nature: amazing rock formations, cactus, mountains and big views. While you’re enjoying your time at Bluegreen’s Cibola Vista Resort and Spa, however, don’t miss the opportunity to immerse yourself in another world. Sign up to tour the winter home of Frank Lloyd Wright, the famed American architect.

Taliesin West, Wright’s desert masterpiece, was completed in 1937 and served as his winter home, studio and campus for students of architecture. Situated at the foothills of the McDowell Mountains in the Sonoran Desert and what is now northeastern Scottsdale, Taliesin West is named after Wright’s summer home Taliesin, in Wisconsin. His most famous design is probably "Fallingwater," the cantilevered home outside Pittsburgh.

During his career, Frank Lloyd Wright designed over 1100 projects, over which 532 were actually constructed. Most of those still stand today, and with each passing year, his visionary examples are more appreciated. Wright was a master at integrating indoor and outdoor spaces, knowing instinctively that man is most comfortable in nature. His buildings blend seamlessly into their sites, taking full advantage of the main benefits each has to offer.

"Wrights buildings are long, lean, and close to the ground," says architect Joyce Owens, who has visited Taliesin West. "He used a lot of angled walls there, and that’s kind of reflective of the mountains in the background. He also incorporated low sloping roofs, and angles in the stonework. It’s a beautiful project."

"This project was similar to his low-slung properties, in that it hugs the earth," says Owens, "but Taliesin West is very sculptural, very organic." Owens explains that Wright began using more organic shapes – those found in nature – in the later years of his career. "But he always integrated his design into the landscape," she says, "and Taliesin West if a great example of that, how he integrated everything into the site."

Owens points out that by diminishing the lines between indoors and out, Wright made his design "of" the land, instead of merely "on" the land. "His vast use of glass in the Taliesin West buildings helps it reach out into the landscape."

Wright’s other talent was truly understanding human scale, and intuitively designing in a way that created comfort zones. He is said to have glorified the sense of shelter, and is quoted as saying, "A building is not just a place to be. It is a way to be."

The Taliesin West compound beautifully exemplifies this, and amazingly, every single thing on the property was custom designed, from the floor coverings to the light switches to the fireplace to the light fixtures. Wright left no detail to compromise, and directed the architecture students who helped to build the project. Today, the property still houses an architectural school and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

During the journey through one of Arizona’s best tours, you’ll discover that Wright did not confine himself to architecture as a form of creative expression. He also designed fabrics, glass, art, furniture, lamps, silver, dinnerware and linens. Over one-third of Wright-designed buildings are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or are in a National Historic District.

Yet it is the site which is most important in each case, and the Frank Lloyd Wright home at Taliesin West is no exception. Wright said, "Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you."