The summer home of the Taliesin Fellowship in Wisconsin was usually snowed up in the winter so in 1938, Frank Lloyd Wright purchased eight hundred acres of land called Paradise Valley in the Arizona desert. He and his young apprentices set about constructing their own winter haven of rocks, concrete, redwood and canvas. It was a permanent camp admirably suited to the desert winter and one of Wright's most personal and original creations. It continued to change and grow for over twenty years.

Taliesin West rose out of the desert scrub landscape against a backdrop of raw stone hills. It was founded on a solid base of red, purple and orange volcanic rocks cast in canted bastions of concrete. The buildings erected on this rugged platform were built primarily of wood and canvas with occasionally massive stone walls and a typically generous stone hearth at the center.

Taliesin West continued to grow from its original heart of drafting room, kitchen and dining room, surrounded by terraces, pergolas and desert gardens. It grew and prospered like a living entity. Frank Lloyd Wright died there in 1959.

Situated on 600 acres of rugged Sonoran desert at the foothills of the McDowell Mountains in Scottsdale, AZ. Taliesin West is the international headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which owns the two National Historic Landmark Properties: "Taliesin West" in Scottsdale and "Taliesin" in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Both Taliesins served as Frank Lloyd Wright's private homes, studio, and campuses for his architectural school. The foundation operates the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.