Taliesin West - Back To The Future?

Posted from the US

I just finished touring one of Frank Lloyd Wright's great works - Taliesin West (thank you to my architect uncle who recommended that I stop there after COFES).

The best way to describe it is one of the places you should see in your life, in order to better understand what life is.

I have never been a fan of what I call Ego Architecture - giant tall buildings, massive arenas, Roman Coliseums. Ego Architecture is mostly about how people are displaying their ability to dominate, show-off lots of money, subjugate - the philosophy behind it is bankrupt.

 I have also really not liked what I call Crap Architecture - pretty much most buildings you see in developments, malls, Taco Bells - just generic, bland, numbing, crap. These structures, which most of us live in or are subject to daily, do not even have a bankrupt philosophy - they have no philosophy.

It is very much like music - you sift through lots of garbage and then you happen upon the White Album - and then everything is different.

As I was walking through, I became convinced that Frank Lloyd Wright was with the Tao. In the music hall I find this:

 

Lao Tse is known as the founder/early philosopher of Taoism, which in modern terms, makes him basically Yoda. 

Frank Lloyd Wright was less of an architect and more of a Tao Master - a Jedi. Taliesin is an embodiment of this philosophy, and it has not been very well understood or replicated. People try to copy his style and end up at a loss. Taliesin is an example of people living in the Way, and it is a good way for us to be in the future: sustainable, humble, local but expansive in thought, built for humans, built for what life is meant to be. The energy expended by the collective set of humans, under the right philosophy, could let us all live this way.

Having been at the top of the mountain (literally, at Davos) and now having been at the side of the mountain (at Taliesin), the side is much better. We are meant to be at the side, co-existing, blending in seamlessly. If we want a future, and we want future generations to respect what we did, we need to start thinking this way.

We could, and we should.

-R

Comments

[Joe Gotz]

I had a similar epiphany at Taliesin West. Bought and read his autobiography and will read it again. No simple mind this FLW.