Much has been made of the recent anniversary of legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s birthday, who would have turned 150 this June 8th. New York’s MOMA recently opened a retrospective exhibition of his work, but a more fitting tribute to Wright came in the form of the donation of one of his houses to an architecture school in Arizona. The architect built The David and Gladys Wright house in 1952 for his son. This year, it was announced that the home would be given to the School of Architecture at Taliesin, an educational facility that Wright himself established 85 years ago.

The house was commissioned by David Wright in 1950 and purchased in 2012 by Zach Rawling, a philanthropist who wanted to save the building from being demolished. The property developers in possession of the lot had planned to raze the site and construct a series of luxury homes over it, but the mobilization of local activists and preservation groups prevented the structure from being destroyed. Rawling bought the home for $2.4 million and chose to turn it over the school because ?This brings the house to life and gives a meaning to the place in the best way we could hope. It invites the local Phoenix community to experience the house as a living place, and see that Frank Lloyd Wright?s ideas are still alive and well.?
This is one of Wright?s later residential projects and can be aesthetically compared to New York’s renowned Guggenheim Museum, which he also designed. Both structu...