Taliesin was built and rebuilt three times from 1910 to 1959. And for Frank Lloyd Wright, it was his experimental laboratory.

Taliesin hugs the hillside over a peaceful valley near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Through its horizontal windows, you can glimpse the rolling landscape, the Wisconsin River, and the mid-western sky. Because Taliesin was Wright’s laboratory, many elements are not finished. In fact, the crudeness of some of it is quite shocking.

I visited Taliesin in early March 2011. The hill was covered in snow and icicles hung from the eaves. Although the home and studio were empty, I sensed the incredible vigor of Frank Lloyd Wright, the extraordinary energy he possessed to create and maintain so far-reaching an endeavor on a lonely mid-western hillside.

The spaces inside the building are like no other. Wright located cave-like hearths beneath billowing tents of roof forms. Spaces merge into adjacent spaces in a progression that you simply don’t want to come to an end.

Wright often talked about his architecture as though it was a type of weaving, and at Taliesin you see stone, wood plaster and glass woven together and washed in sunlight. He loved Beethoven more than any artist and there is music in Wright’s architecture.

I saw the Wisconsin hills through his living room window and realized that the living room roof soaring above me was the exact twin of the hills beyond.

Years ago, one of Wright’s clients, Stanley Rosenbaum, told me that visiting Taliesin was like going into a dream world. Standing in the studio overlooking the river, I understood his description: This was Wright’s ideal world, and he was the magician who brought it into being.

To learn more about Taliesin Preservation, Inc., visit http://www.taliensinpreservation.org/.

For more on Frank Harmon, go to http://www.frankharmon.com/

“It’s on less than an acre, and we placed it parallel to Peace Street,” Harmon said. “It’s a long, thin building with a porch on the south side. You’ll find that all over the South – at Mount Vernon, for example – so we knew that was a good pattern to follow.”

Harmon’s firm won the commission out of 60 entries in a 2008 competition. “We had a compelling site plan,” he said. “It was a design suited to the needs of the AIA.”

Parking has been placed at grade level, with the potential to share space with open-air exhibits, a farmers’ market, sculptures and film showings. “You could even build a Habitat for Humanity house there, and ship it off to Haiti,” he said.

The 12,000 square-foot building will serve as home to the NC AIA staff of five, with potential to grow over time. A coffee shop and architecture/art gallery will grace the Peace Street entrance, with the top floor’s 3,900 square feet reserved for tenants.

Harmon’s primary challenge – in a classic David vs. Goliath struggle – lay with a boisterous and clumsy quintet of neighbors sprawling southwest of the site, around the state’s legislative plaza. The Archdale building in particular swaggers monolithically above that section of the city. But in a deft, and inherently polite and gracious gesture, Harmon ignored them all.

“Ours is a horizontal statement,” he said quietly. “The real face of the building is to the south, looking toward the state capitol.” The new building will commence twelve feet above grade, assuring a clear view down Wilmington Street to the 1840 neoclassical dome of the Ithiel Town, Alexander Jackson Davis and David Paton building.

North Carolina fields one of the strongest AIA chapters in the nation, and enjoys a legacy of excellent design because of the influence of NC State’s College of Design, as well as the A-Schools at UNCC and North Carolina A & T. The AIA Center should be, the group’s web site notes, an architectural example for the entire state. Importantly, it’s only a stone’s throw away from those who make decisions about the state’s built environment.

“It’s a one-stop shop for legislators,” Harmon said. “The building itself is a role model for design that’s inspiring, and that belongs to the community.”

For more information on AIANC, visit www.aianc.org. For more on Frank Harmon, visit www.frankharmon.com. For more information on Bluelime Studio Architectural Renderings and Animation, go to www.bluelime.com. [[Show as slideshow]]