Architecture

Here's What It Was Like to Work for Frank Lloyd Wright

One of the master architect’s last living students talks about life at Taliesin West
nine men standing overlooking frank lloyd wright
Frank Lloyd Wright (seated) with his students standing around him.Photo: Courtesy of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation

When Vern Swaback talks about his teacher, his voice changes. The storied Arizona architect excitedly recalls years spent in the desert, digging ditches and moving bricks, only to change into a tuxedo hours later for black-tie dinners held with actors, foreign dignitaries, and journalists. Such was a typical day in the life for your average apprentice at Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Scottsdale, Arizona, compound, which served as the architect’s residence, studio, and training ground.

At just 17, Swaback was Frank Lloyd Wright’s youngest apprentice when he arrived at Taliesin West from Illinois in 1957. “I promised to leave after one year,” says Swaback. “I didn't leave for another 21 years.”

Now in his late 70s, Swaback is one of just six living apprentices (now called Fellows) to work with the founder of the Prairie School of architecture. And while all apprentices lived on-site at one point (Swaback no longer does), three living fellows still do to this day. A list of Wright’s original apprentices, compiled by author John W. Geiger, counts 625 students who worked and studied under Wright at Taliesin West until his death in 1959. (The site is still home to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the School of Architecture at Taliesin.)

Life for the apprentices under Wright was a community affair. “Provisions and spaces for work, exercise, study, exhibitions, performances, entertainment, central food preparation, and dining areas were the most shared, while the personal spaces for sleeping, dressing, and hygiene, small kitchens and dining areas, were as individual as the imaginations and desires of its citizens,” Swaback explained to Metropolis Magazine. “There were far fewer cars than the number of residents, all made both possible and economical by the shared use of a stable of vehicles.”

Communal meals, often black-tie, included visitors to the site ranging from guitarist Jimi Hendrix to Henry Luce, the founder and publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines.

Apprentices slept outdoors at Taliesin West, in self-designed desert shelters, a tradition that continues today. Many are simple, consisting of a mere platform for sleeping and a fire pit, while some are more luxurious. In his early years at Taliesin West, Swaback spent most of his time making site additions and changes. “[Wright] probably approved them just to give me something to do,” Swaback said with a laugh.

“I don't think he would have ever considered himself to be a teacher,” Swaback explains. “He says, ‘You're here to help me and if you get anything out of it, that's kind of up to you.'" Swaback paid between $1,000 and $1,500 per year for the experience, including room and board. Now, a year at the School of Architecture at Taliesin costs more than $40,000. (Even adjusted for inflation, that’s still just over $13,000.) “At Taliesin, I never worried about having enough money,” says Swaback. “It was something that worked very well within its own circumstances.”

But when Swaback left Taliesin West in 1978, he was broke. “I rented a little pool cabana. I was a one-person firm,” he says. “There was no secretary, nothing. A month earlier, I was part of this global dynamic architectural firm, and now I was in a little pool cabana.” Now, however, Swaback’s firm consists of 40 architectural planners and 11 interior designers, responsible for the design of some of the Southwest’s landmark projects, including the master-planned Arizona Biltmore estates.

The Fellows who remain at Taliesin West have primarily stepped back from practicing architecture to enjoy a somewhat traditional retirement from their craft, but are still involved in site maintenance and assisting the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation staff, who draw upon the remaining Fellows’ experiences to inform their work.

“I remember eating in the Fellowship Dining Room in my first year, as the sun was setting, and the mountain on the property began to glow a stunning shade of red,” explained Jeff Goodman, the Foundation’s director of marketing and communication. “Heloise Crista, one of Wright’s apprentices, pointed to the mountain and then referenced the red beams on the ceiling, and says, ‘Mr. Wright told us that the color of the mountain in this light is where he got the idea for this red.’ Learning these kinds of details from people who were there is an experience I could never have imagined but has informed my approach to this work, and changed the way I look at Taliesin West.”

Crista, who passed away in March at age 92, lived at Taliesin West until her death. Her sculptures, including a bust of Wright, are dotted throughout the property. Luckily for visitors and devotees of Wright, Swaback believes that Taliesin West and its legacy will continue even once the Fellows are gone, but he still feels the impact of Wright and his legendary Arizona campus in his work each day. “Whatever I am and whatever I've accomplished, or whatever direction I've taken, it's all because of Frank Lloyd Wright,” says Swaback. “To begin to see the world through the eyes of a genius, you almost can't remember who you used to be.”