(continued)

Students complained that a "look" representative of Postmodern or Deconstructionist design was more important to success in many design studios than nonconforming creative design, ecological design, or technological innovation.

After documenting the complaints, I started the new school in San Francisco with a basic list of 30 primary problems and goals in design education.

For example, one goal was to get students to better appreciate their own creative potential, liberate their imaginations, and apply far-reaching creativity to very practical problems.

We've found that students had often spent a lifetime keeping their most important ideas under wraps for fear of criticism and ridicule.

So part of our job as educators was to find ways to allow students to be fully exploratory. We've had to allow that early, experimental work will be unfinished or amateurish and not penalize people as they work through this formative process.

That's the opposite of most schools where students have to choose between trying a risky experiment or going for a grade by imitating what they know their instructors will find acceptable. In our San Francisco facility, we quickly proved that students thrive in a free environment.

Then we wanted to extend the idea by creating an alternative environment that was both exceptionally stimulating and disengaged from the distractions and demands of day-to-day life.

Working at Taliesin

So I arranged with friends at Taliesin Architects and the Frank Lloyd Wright School to use facilities for a two-week workshop in the desert facility in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Students would camp out in the desert, do a lot of nature study and architectural tours, sketch and practice creative visualization exercises, learn alternative design methods from guest speakers, and generally free up their imaginations while working on design projects and ideas of their choosing.

Early on we discovered that students from other schools hadn't the slightest idea of the many design methods used by Frank Lloyd Wright. Apparently they had heard Wright jokes or anecdotes, but few actually knew how he went about designing buildings or had any notion of what "organic" or nature-based architecture was all about.

Often repeated myths about Wright — "all his roofs leaked," "he designed low ceilings because he was short," "he was arrogant toward his clients," "he ran off with client's wives" — besides being groundless, prove to be a barrier to understanding who he really was and how he did his work.

The fact is that Wright invented numerous innovations not only in building design and technology, but in the design process itself. His techniques are especially applicable to today's concerns with ecological design.

So, what better place to document his concepts of design — going beyond the simplistic "bring the outdoors indoors" — than the beautiful desert compound of Taliesin West? This was Wright's winter home and workshop built almost entirely by his students.

Here, the best aspects of site-sensitive design, creative construction technology, and modular organizing principles are not just seen but fully experienced as part of daily life. One student said last year: "I can't get over it. The more you look at these buildings, the more you see. It doesn't seem to end."

Learning from the Desert

After adjusting to the exotic environment, the heat, and the realization that what used to be wilderness is now surrounded by tract housing development, the students get to work:

First they're introduced to the internal structures and geometries of the desert geology and botany. The desert has endless architectural lessons in climatic adaptation, water conservation, and economical structural systems.

Students hike, sketch from desert wildlife, take photos, make collages and abstract compositions. And they get deeply into the visual aspects of their surroundings. Students learn the methods of Frank Lloyd Wright, mind-mapping, "viz-think," 3D visualization, and the history of nature-based architecture around the world. They learn the basics of on-site solar and micro climate analysis.

After the students take in all the data and visual stimulation, fresh architectural ideas literally pour out: Innovative building designs, ideas for new structural systems, new ideas for solar design, eco-engineering, and alternative construction systems.

Students who had never experienced an uninhibited creative design process before find out the barriers were self imposed. It turns out creative design is as natural as breathing or walking, once students drop the fear that some schools impose and start applying their own liberated, independent judgment.

Fred A. Stitt is the director of the San Francisco Institute of Architecture, 800-634-7779. The next Taliesin workshop will run June 1-10, 2001. There are no enrollment requirements except a sincere interest in Frank Lloyd Wright and ecological design. The $500 fee covers events, meals, and campsite. For details or to enroll, call 510-665-7921.

Beginning of a nature study hike at Taliesin West. Photo: San Francisco Institute of Architecture The desert landscape of Taliesin West. Photo: San Francisco Institute of Architecture "Living shelter," student design. Image: San Francisco Institute of Architecture Desert abstraction, student drawing. Image: San Francisco Institute of Architecture Solar oriented "wave house," student design. Image: San Francisco Institute of Architecture Student sketch of a desert house. Image: San Francisco Institute of Architecture Student Don Meza's model for an Ecological Study and Conference Center. Photo: San Francisco Institute of Architecture Inside Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West. Great Buildings Photo © Donald Corner and Jenny Young   Click on thumbnail images to view full-size pictures.