Taliesin West was architect Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and studio in the desert from 1937 until his death in 1959 at the age of 91. Today it is the headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. Open to the public for tours, Taliesin West is located on Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard in Scottsdale, Arizona. The complex drew its name from Wright's home, Taliesin, in Spring Green, Wisconsin. History Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship began to "migrate" to Arizona each winter in 1935 to escape the harsh Wisconsin winters for Wright's health on his doctor's advice. In 1937 Wright purchased the plot of desert land that would soon become Taliesin West. He paid "$3.50 an acre on a southern slope of the McDowell Range overlooking Paradise Valley outside Scottsdale." Wright believed this to be the perfect spot for such a building: a place of residence, a place of business and a place to learn. Wright described it like this, "Finally I learned of a site twenty-six miles from Phoenix, across the desert of the vast Paradise Valley. On up to a great mesa in the mountains. On the mesa just below McDowell Peak we stopped, turned, and looked around. The top of the world." An investment of over $10,000 was needed to dig a well deep enough to provide sufficient water for the campus. In the initial winters Wright and his students lived in tents while they built the first structures, mainly by hand using as much local material as possible (rocks, stone and sand). The design of the buildings complemented the natural Sonoran Desert landscape of the site. When Wright and his family arrived they found Native American petroglyphs among the rocks. One of them, seen at the beginning of the guided tour, shows what may be hands clasping. Wright stylized the figures into interconnected lines, which became the symbol of Taliesin West. Design Wright felt very strongly about the connection to the desert. He said: The structure's walls are made of local desert rocks, stacked within wood forms, filled with concrete - colloquially referred to as "desert masonry". Wright always favored using the materials readily available rather than those that must be transported to the site. In Wright's own words: "There were simple characteristic silhouettes to go by, tremendous drifts and heaps of sunburned desert rocks were nearby to be used. We got it all together with the