Over the past few months I’ve been participating with friends in Canmore in a weekly, photography exercise. We work with a new theme each week, take 5-6 photographs and then share them for the purpose of critiquing. This is an excellent learning experience and a great antidote to the constraints imposed by the Covid-19 lockdowns.
One of our recent topics was architecture. This re-kindled my interest in this genre of photography and I’ve taken the opportunity to create this blog, focused on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America’s foremost architects. He’s an obvious choice having wintered in Scottsdale from 1937 until his death in 1959. There are many of his works to be found in the Phoenix area.
Today, I’ll share my photographs portraying some of those works. I begin with the First Christian Church, located in central Phoenix.
Originally commissioned in 1949 by the Southwest Christian Seminary in Phoenix, Frank Lloyd Wright was to design a Classical University. Complete with chapel and other structures, the campus would occupy eighty acres. His drawings were finished and made public in 1950. The Seminary however, ceased its operations and the university was never built. Permission was obtained from Wright’s widow to use the plans for a new First Christian Church; construction began in 1971 and the church was completed in 1973.
It’s broad expanse and the height of its spires make this church complex a challenge to capture in a single image. I chose the perspective above as the one I thought best captured its most notable features. Most of my pictures, like the one below, concentrate on architectural detail to help convey the essence of his style, which he termed organic architecture. This picture illustrates an interesting bit of detail of the church’s design, the intersection of rooflines. Sadly, the building is showing its age as it approaches its 50th anniversary.
In 1959, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a curvilinear, two-story, single-family house for Norman and Aimee Lykes in Phoenix’s Palm Canyon. Shortly after, the architect died and the house was completed by architect John Rattenbury, an apprentice of Wright, in 1967. Now, the 3,095-square-foot house, along with its original, custom-built furniture, has been listed for $3.25 million.
This is another angle on the Lykes house. I chose this location to include the impressive Saguaro cactus situated on the property.
Located in Tempe, on the Arizona State University campus is the Gammage Auditorium, a multi-purpose performing arts centre. In 1957, ASU past-President Grady Gammage had a vision to create a distinct university auditorium on the campus of Arizona State University (ASU). He called on close friend, Frank Lloyd Wright to assist with the project. As luck would have it, Wright had a design prepared for an opera house in Baghdad, Iraq that did not come to fruition. He decided to use it for this theatre. This photograph is a view of the main entrance.
Not unlike the First Christian Church, the entirety of this building is not easily captured in a single image. It’s possible by shooting from a distance, at the cost of losing good detail. Wright’s genius lies in the detail, so I chose to forgo the grand view in favour of the fascinating detail visible from different angles and closer distance. This is my favourite view of the Gammage Auditorium.
My last photograph today features the Arizona Biltmore Hotel, a Waldorf Astoria Resort in Phoenix. It’s been termed “Jewel of the Desert” since it’s completion in 1929. The Biltmore was actually designed by Albert Chase McArthur, a Harvard graduate, who had studied under Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was hired as a consulting architect for a brief period of time and left his mark. The Biltmore was erected entirely of “Biltmore Block,” a variation on a textile block first used by Wright to construct private homes. The pre-cast blocks were made from desert sand on-site and created in 34 different geometric patterns inspired by the trunk of a palm tree.
