The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture has announced that it will change its name to the School of Architecture at Taliesin. The change comes as the school has worked to restructure and gain financial independence from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. The school’s new visual identity was created by Michael Bierut, a partner at New York–based graphic design firm Pentagram.
“Adopting this new name, the School of Architecture at Taliesin, helps us to secure our identity as an experimental, forward-looking architecture program that is deeply rooted in the Taliesin Fellowship,” says Aaron Betsky, dean of the School. “The process in which we developed our new relationship with the Foundation and our accreditors has been an opportunity to closely examine who we are as a school and how to best position ourselves to advance our mission and create quality educational experiences for our students.”
As the school gains its independence from the Foundation, a transition that is expected to be complete in August, the school will also undergo a leadership change. Dean Betsky will become the president of the school, and Chris Lasch, the current director of academic affairs, will take over the role of dean.
As the new name would imply, the school will continue to run out of Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. Both properties are owned by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and play an important role for both the school and the foundation. “We look at Taliesin and Taliesin West as living laboratories that continue to advance Wright’s principles,” said Foundation President & CEO Stuart Graff. “Seeing the next generation of great architects working and living in these settings is as important to their preservation as maintaining the walls that hold them up.”
As reported by The Architect’s Newspaper, the school recently passed an important milestone towards its continued accreditation. The Higher Learning Commission approved the Change of Control application needed for the school to become independent from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, a requirement of accreditation.
