My wife, Lynne, and I visited
Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's winter home and studio in Scottsdale, in
early May 1988. We had married on April 23 and spent our two-week honeymoon
driving through the Four Corners states; Scottsdale came near the end. I took
the photograph above from across the lawn southwest of the main building. It
shows the long, low roof of the drafting studio: a band of pale, ribbed panels
between red beams, with the McDowell Mountains behind. I remember almost
nothing of the visit beyond the fact that we were there, and Lynne, I can
report, remembers even less.
I had planned to go back this
month. Then, on October 16, a visitor was killed there.
Brother Rogério Renato
Mateucci, 55, rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of
Paraná in Brazil, was on a walking tour that afternoon when the wind tore a
piece of roofing loose and it struck him. He died at the scene. Scottsdale police called it a weather-related accident and confirmed to The Arizona
Republic that a piece of acrylic struck him. The Frank Lloyd Wright
Foundation closed the site, inspected the roofing, added on-site weather
monitoring, and reopened on October 24.
My first reaction was
awkwardness about my own plans. I'm going to Scottsdale to visit close friends,
and a side trip to Taliesin West seemed a good way to spend some of our time
together. Is there a respectful length of time to wait before touring a place
where someone has just died? No number of days answers that. The calendar isn't
really the issue; the reason for going is. To visit in search of the spot, or
to photograph where it happened, would be ghoulish. To see the architecture
again, and this time to pay attention, seems to me something else. I have
decided to go.
Am I worried for my own
safety? Not really. The Foundation has inspected the roofing and introduced
weather monitoring, and the odds of a similar accident during my particular
hour on the grounds are small. November in Scottsdale is usually calm. That is
not what bothers me.
On the afternoon Brother
Mateucci died, the National Weather Service reported winds of 22 mph in the
area, with gusts to 32 mph. CNN later reported gusts of up to 38 mph at
Scottsdale Airport that day, also according to the National Weather Service (CNN, via CP24). Neither measurement was taken at Taliesin West itself. Wind is a design load, and the
City of Scottsdale's current building code specifies a minimum ultimate design wind speed of 105 mph for
Risk Category II buildings. That figure doesn't tell us what any particular
roof panel was designed to resist, nor what criteria governed the panels'
installation in the 1990s. I don't know whether the work was engineered and
permitted, or how the panels were fastened. I would like to know why one came
loose.
Two other things bear on that
question. A former employee, speaking anonymously to Arizona's Family, said he had seen two other pieces of roofing break loose. I can't
verify that and offer it only as his account. Last March, the Foundation's
director of preservation, Rebecca Barron, said in an interview on its own website that the acrylic roof system "is nearing
the end of its serviceable life". That statement doesn't establish the
condition of the panel that came loose, but it makes the question of
maintenance difficult to ignore.
I have written before about Wright's influence on me, and nothing here diminishes my
admiration for his work. I have no evidence of negligence. But calling the
death "weather-related" doesn't explain the failure. Monitoring the
weather governs when people may stand under the roof; it does nothing to the
roof itself. The Foundation says it inspected the roofing before reopening, but
as of this writing, I have seen nothing explaining whether it has refastened or
replaced the panels, or what it has concluded about the cause.
The roof I photographed in
1988 is not the roof there today. According to the Historic American Buildings Survey, Wright's canvas gave way to fiberglass in the
1960s, and the fiberglass to acrylic in the 1990s.(1) The panels in my photograph were almost certainly
fiberglass. Our guide surely explained the change from Wright's canvas, which
was too consequential to gloss over; I don't remember a word of it.
As visitors to a house museum,
we place complete and unexamined trust in the people who maintain it. We walk
where we're led, and it never occurs to us to ask how the roof is fastened. We
shouldn't have to. Lynne and I walked under that roof without a second thought,
as every visitor should be able to.
I'll be in Scottsdale next
week. I hope to find the spot on the lawn where I stood in 1988 and take the
same picture again, then look up at the roof more carefully than I did 38 years
ago. I doubt I'll be able to tell if anything has changed. I'll report back
anyway.
(1) The HABS record documents Wright's office specifically. Canvas gave Wright the diffused light he wanted but couldn't survive Arizona summers and needed frequent replacement. Other accounts date the first fiberglass to the late 1950s. The current acrylic panels sit over interior canvas.
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