Taliesin West and the Cosanti Foundation Travel Guide

Whatever its general appearance may suggest, Phoenix has managed to attract some visionary designers. Notable among them is Frank Lloyd Wright , who came to the city to work on the Biltmore Hotel , and stayed for most of the 25 years before his death in 1959. His winter studio, Taliesin West - located at 114th Street and Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, at Scottsdale's northeastern edge - is now an architecture school and a working design studio, with regular multimedia exhibits of the man's life and work (Sept-June daily 9am-4pm; July & Aug daily except Tues & Wed 9am-4pm; tel 480/860-2700). Three different guided tours operate according to complicated seasonal schedules: hour-long "Panorama" tours ($16), 1hr 30min "Insights" ($22), and less frequent 3hr "Behind The Scenes" tours ($35).

Less well known, but in many ways more compelling, is the Cosanti Foundation , four miles west of Taliesin at 6433 Doubletree Rd (daily 9am-5pm; $1 donation). The buildings, designed by Paolo Soleri , an Italian-born ex-student of Wright, and constructed out of rammed earth and concrete, have a much more organic feel than Taliesin. Crafts workshops make bells and cast bronzes, and a small museum shows drawings and models of Soleri's life's work: Arcosanti , a space-age, environmentally sensitive project designed to be (someday) an entirely self-sufficient community of five thousand people, which emerges from the desert just an hour's drive north, a mile east of I-17 at Cordes Junction. Three-hour guided tours are given throughout the day ($8 donation; tel 520/632-6217, ), and an airy and spacious café serves healthy and tasty meals.