Whatever its general appearance may suggest, Phoenix has managed to attract some visionary designers. Notable among them is Frank Lloyd Wright , who came to the city to work on the Biltmore Hotel , and stayed for most of the 25 years before his death in 1959. His winter studio, Taliesin West located at 114th Street and Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, at Scottsdale's northeastern edge is now an architecture school and a working design studio, with regular multimedia exhibits of the man's life and work (SeptJune daily 9am4pm; July & Aug daily except Tues & Wed 9am4pm; tel 480/860-2700). Three different guided tours operate according to complicated seasonal schedules: hour-long "Panorama" tours ($16), 1hr 30min "Insights" ($22), and less frequent 3hr "Behind The Scenes" tours ($35).
Less well known, but in many ways more compelling, is the Cosanti Foundation , four miles west of Taliesin at 6433 Doubletree Rd (daily 9am5pm; $1 donation). The buildings, designed by Paolo Soleri , an Italian-born ex-student of Wright, and constructed out of rammed earth and concrete, have a much more organic feel than Taliesin. Crafts workshops make bells and cast bronzes, and a small museum shows drawings and models of Soleri's life's work: Arcosanti , a space-age, environmentally sensitive project designed to be (someday) an entirely self-sufficient community of five thousand people, which emerges from the desert just an hour's drive north, a mile east of I-17 at Cordes Junction. Three-hour guided tours are given throughout the day ($8 donation; tel 520/632-6217, www.arcosanti.org ), and an airy and spacious caf serves healthy and tasty meals.