ARIZONA

1It was a wonderful sunny day in the warm Arizona winter.

I was walking through the camp like a child discovering the world, beginning to learn the buildings’ location and understanding their function and spatiality.

The famous living room with its labyrinth entryway, called Garden Room for its opening into a secret garden, the large drafting room enlightened by translucent roof panels, the kitchen, dining room, theatre, and Wright’s office, all connected by a series of pergolas, terraces, stairways, and walkways shaded or heated by the scorching desert sun, and then courtyards, gardens, pools, and fountains cooling the air, placed between water and bell towers.

Large stones engraved with Indian petroglyphs together with Chinese ceramic theatres embedded in masonry and concrete sculptures built by Alfonso Iannelli for the Midway Gardens project were punctuating the camp’s crucial points, marking a sort of ideal procession with continuous changes of direction and walking sequences throughout the campus.34

A couple of weeks after my arrival, on a visit to Taliesin West, LaVan Martineau, the Indian adopted cryptanalyst explained to us the meaning of the petroglyphs Wright had placed in the camp’s strategic points. After having studied the engravings on the stones with him, we walked at the base of the Maricopa Hill behind, where they were originally found and carried from by the first apprentices, and climbed afterward up the mountain to examine a few of them pointing west.35

The area on which Taliesin West was founded had been inhabited since prehistoric times by the Hohokam Indian tribes, followed by the Hopi and the Apache, who used the land for hunting and for ritual and ceremonial purposes, as indicated by the rock carvings found by Wright on site. The same existence of these ancient settlements at the base of the mountain had convinced Wright of the presence of water. Despite opposite indications by the State Land Office, a well of hot volcanic water was later discovered at a depth of 486 feet below ground.36

Wright arrived in Arizona in the spring of 1937 to establish there the Fellowship’s winter venue. After making different attempts looking for the best location, he finally purchased 600 acres of desert land at the base of ocotillos with their scarlet red flowers, the staghorn and the dangerous jumping chollas, sticking to your legs due to desert static electricity, were just a few of my newest adventure companions. They were joined by the coyotes that I could hear howling at night, rabbits and wild javelinas running around in herds, lizards and small desert rodents, some random scorpion, and the countless quails gathering in the morning around the tent. The mild winter weather was interrupted by occasional sandstorms and tornadoes, occurring in the form of desert devils with the approaching of the warm season. There were also a few sporadic thunderstorms, during which the shallow dry washes, running through the desert surface around Taliesin West, were filled with water, performing their essential drainage function. Unforgettable was the sharp smell of the desert after the rain and the enchanting view of its sudden blooming, transforming the arid landscape into an ephemeral garden for just a few days. I would watch the desert sunsets every day from my privileged location, sitting below the Indian rock by the drafting room or on the prow of the triangular terrace, while the mountains around, the sky, the buildings, and the same people’s faces were colored by an infinity of shades, from red to orange to pink and purple.

48. Taliesin West, desert sunset, 1989.

49. Francesco Santoro, Taliesin West, desert shelter, side view, fall 1989.

50. Francesco Santoro, drawing of a desert stone, 1989.

51. Francesco Santoro, project of a desert shelter, 1989.

I remember that at night after dinner, at the end of the workday, I was hurrying back to my tent to write or read in the candlelight, leaving the canvas open or lighting a fire and lying down outside in the sleeping bag to look at the stars, under the flag-waving slowly in the desert breeze. The other apprentices’ tents around me, glowing with the light of their candles, looked like lanterns in the night, in that surviving plateau overlooking the valley below, lit by the myriad of lights shining over the endless spread of houses. I was starting to realize how these sensations would never leave me and that it would no longer be possible to return to a normal life, unlearning civilization and regaining the primitive sense of life, possibly losing contact with reality but achieving something unique forever.69