The architecture school founded by Frank Lloyd Wright is closing after almost 90 years.
The School of Architecture at Taliesin, which has campuses in Wisconsin and Arizona, said it would shutter operations after the school’s board failed to reach an agreement with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, according to Archinect.
“The School of Architecture at Taliesin will cease operations after this semester, after a gut-wrenching decision by its governing board on Saturday,” the school board wrote in a statement. “The School of Architecture at Taliesin was not able to reach an agreement with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to keep the school open.”
The late architect’s eponymous foundation issued a separate statement that said the school board had indicated the school “did not have a sustainable business model that would allow it to maintain its operation as an accredited program.”
After further negotiations to try and keep the school open until 2021, the parties could not come to an agreement. The school, which currently has about 30 students, was named after Wright before changing its name in 2017, marking a formal separation between Wright’s foundation and the school.
Wright, who died in 1959, designed some of the most well-known buildings in the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. In July, eight Wright-designed buildings joined were added onto the United Nations’ World Heritage List.
His school, which was founded in 1932, has graduated over 1,000 students. In July, the two campuses were included among eight Wright-designed structures in the UNESCO World Heritage list. [Archinect] — David Jeans