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William Wesley Peters at Taliesin West - Image courtesy the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
William Wesley Peters' (1912-1991) role as right-hand man and collaborator with Frank Lloyd Wright was key to the success of the prodigious last 25 years of Wright's career. After Wright's death, he became chief architect of Taliesin Architects, designing over 120 buildings worldwide, many of them for prominent clients and with complex programs. In his most characteristic work, Mr. Peters bridges between structure and ornament with bold invention and surprising sculptural forms. He interprets Wright's principles of architecture, but also interprets the spirit of his own time.
Mr. Peters' unwavering leadership and support of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation after Wright's death was a vital contribution to the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture. A scholarship fund was established in his name at his death and continues to support promising young architects.
External links:
> William Wesley Peters Wikipedia Entry
> New York Times Obituary
> Price Tower Art Center, Bartlesville, OK
> Marin County Civic Center, Marin, CA
> Kaden Tower (Lincoln Income Life Insurance Bldg), Lexington, KY
> Ascension Lutheran Church, Scottsdale, AZ
Excerpts from an address by William Wesley Peters at Yale University
March 6, 1963
On Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, and the Taliesin Fellowship
It was my opportunity and honor somewhat more than thirty years ago to come as a young man under the hand and leadership of Frank Lloyd Wright. It has been my great privilege to follow and participate for these intervening years in the architectural thought which proceeded from and surrounded that great force. It has been my great good fortune to share with Mr. and Mrs. Wright their effort to establish at Taliesin and at Taliesin West an educational environment which in concept and effort is unique in the world today.
I have come here to tall you something of this achievement—architectural and educational—but more particularly to inform you as to how the principles established and proclaimed at Taliesin are developing in the world today. For above all, the life work of Frank Lloyd Wright was dedicated to the search for Principle. In this context Principle is seen not merely as an intellectual or even philosophical statement, but as the veritable essence or essential nature of a specific material, form, problem, or even of life itself.
For though [Mr. Wright's] buildings are a living manifestation of the Principles behind them, and as such are deserving of the same awe, wonder and respect as are evoked by a perfect flower, a bird in flight, or to a human birth ; yet nevertheless I am sure that their creator would have been sad were these mere forms to be perpetuated and the great underlying principles, the inner nature which their author recognized, repeated and sought, be forgotten or misunderstood. In short, the buildings themselves are the living evidence of an inner reality. To copy these outward forms without perception of this inner reality would be violation and negation. This type of negation is only too common in our world today. The greatest accomplishment of a great Architect is to recognize and use such inner Principles or Essential Nature, and to successfully transmit them to others. In these two achievements, Frank Lloyd Wright remains supreme in the history of the world. Not only did he leave nearly a thousand great buildings as testimony to the vitality of the inner Nature he knew, but he gathered about him a group of dedicated followers, whom he was able to inspire with his vision and to whom he was able to impart his respect for and knowledge of the Essential Nature of men and things which he spoke of as “Principle.”
This discernment of Principle or of Inner Nature, and its demonstrated creative application, remains the great heritage of Frank Lloyd Wright to our world. This heritage has influenced the course of architectural thought and practice more than any other single force in history and is today actively at work on many different fronts, in the creation of that nobler environment for human life which constitutes in itself the highest reach of Architecture.
It was to further and develop this higher concept of Architecture-in-action that the Taliesin Fellowship was founded in 1932. Taliesin in Wisconsin for many years previously had been the Architect's home and workshop, but in that year for the first time, Mr. and Mrs. Wright gathered together a group of some twenty student apprentices to form the raw beginning out of which has grown what I believe is the most important force in education today. Later, in 1938, the scope of activity was broadened by the beginning of the winter headquarters at Taliesin West in Arizona.
From the start, both Taliesins were laboratory workshops where new materials, methods and concepts were tried, compared and evaluated. Even more important, they were, and are, laboratories where young men and women could participate in such creative processes, could observe the methods and the end result attained, and themselves form essential parts of a developing, creating organism. Buildings, furniture, even silverware, ceramics and fabrics were designed by the Master and executed at Taliesin with the participation of these apprentice architects. The results of these continuing experiments often became the prototypes for components of great buildings throughout the country. As an educational process this method demanded as perquisite the eager enthusiasm of open, youthful minds. The apprentices shared in the hardships as well as in all the amenities of the life which they were helping to shape. They received to the limits of their own individual capacity to absorb. One basic precept prevailed: any work approached and accomplished as “drudgery” remains a loss to the individual doing it. Any work, however lowly, done with insight and understanding of its significance, is a source of growth to the one undertaking it.
Active work on the construction of both Taliesins has never ceased. Since they were first begun they have expanded and spread out into the beautiful but entirely different landscapes in which they exist. Always they have been surrounded by the materials and sounds of construction, the evidences of growth and creative activity. This process has continued at an increasing rate in recent years and at Taliesin West two new wings have been recently completed, a separate girls dormitory is now under construction and extensive new dining rooms and kitchen facilities are on the way. Recent buildings include a residence “East Wing” and the beautiful “Atrium,” a gathering place for festivities, dances and parties.
There are two parallel organizations which conduct the related programs at Taliesin. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, headed by Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright as President, directs the educational program. The architectural practice is conducted by Taliesin Associated Architects of which I have the honor of being President and Chief Architect. The two groups have a common staff consisting of twenty-one persons (including some twelve registered qualified architects) and a common student apprentice group of sixty-five persons. The student apprentices, as part of their training, actually participate in work on the architectural commissions in the offices of the Taliesin Associated Architects.
In addition to their participation in all phases of actual architectural practice, in the design and construction of buildings and their appurtenances, in all the phases of work connected with producing and maintaining a beautifully designed environment, the apprentices at Taliesin receive a planned program of classroom work, including lecture and study courses in Structural Engineering, Specifications and Architectural Practice, the Techniques of Organic Architecture, the Art and Philosophy of Frank Lloyd Wright, and weekly lectures by the President of the Foundation on the thought and philosophy underlying the daily work.
Twice a year thesis design projects are prepared by individual students, enclosed in a special Box designed and made by one of them, and submitted for discussion and constructive criticism by the officers of the staff.
Over a period of time a considerable number of students have come to live and work at Taliesin. Some, unwilling to accept the rigors that accompanied the early days at the start of the Taliesin Fellowship, left soon. Many others stayed on for years and have since gone out to successful practice throughout the country. Another considerable portion stayed to form the staff of our present organization. This latter group includes many of the most gifted, devoted, and accomplished persons who have come to Taliesin, some of the best architects in the world today.
Students at Taliesin have included graduates of all the great universities of the world, as well as some determined students who have come directly with no other educational background than that provided by the high schools of this country.
In recent years we have had a considerable waiting list of prospective student apprentices, since we have been unwilling to expand the size of the group to the point where individual human contacts are lost and the overall flexibility of the unit is destroyed. We now have many fine individuals composing our student group. They are united in purpose but free to develop latent individual capacities. Exposed to the possibilities for individual development in a planned environment, free from the limitations of commercialism, they have in man y cases made advances in personal development unthinkable in any other educational system.
In recent years educators have visited and seen this system at work. They have commented on the unusual effectiveness of the present educational program and have been amazed at the achievements of its students. The efficiency of the technical side of its architectural training has been recognized by registration boards in many states and graduates of Taliesin are registered in all states of the Union.
When Frank Lloyd Wright died in April 1959 he left much architectural work in the design and construction stages but most fortunately he left an active and effective group of people whom he had gathered together and trained under his hand and direction for many years and who had matured with action in the principles which he proclaimed.
Thus, throughout his life he had objected to the idea of “organization” as stultifying to the creative imagination (and as distinguished from the simpler more significant word “organic”), yet Mr. Wright had actually assembled about himself a highly trained, talented, and efficient “organization.” Although he had long decried the “professional” attitude as static and as opposed to the less fixed and freer approach of the true “amateur,” nevertheless, as the result of the wisdom and quality of his leadership, upon his death he left a well-knit group of distinguished individuals qualified and able to provide architecture service in the highest and best professional sense.
Text provided courtesy the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
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