Who’s seen the Eiffel tower? At least in pictures? Most of us have. However, the people who haven’t don’t know the feeling of the wind breezing. Or the sounds of the car and actually smell the steel. So hearing about Taliesin and looking at photos is completely different from standing on the tallest hill and […]
Coming to Taliesin was scary for the fact that I felt a bit intimidated by the rest of the students. I knew for a fact that they had more work experience than I in the technical aspects of design, where I was doing a wretched job at figuring it out. But In the end it […]
This was our awesome team of design super heroes, all who have recently graduated from high school…except for our family baby, Diana…and we all worked tremendously hard to be a part of this journey through the Newhouse Competition. From that competition, we all won awards that showed the amount of endless work we put into our […]
Six super talented Chicago Public School students from diverse backgrounds. Two superstar Teaching Fellows. A rich architectural legacy that exudes experimentation and ‘doing’. Seven days and seventeen hours of relentless testing, building, experimentation, failure and play- challenging all assumptions about how learning and design occur. It’s a summer design camp on steroids- a ‘doing’ camp […]
I woke up with Michael Jackson blaring in my head this morning, a rare occurrence on a weekend morning that I can only attribute to a memorable moment on the second to last day of our design-build workshop and learning lab with my #teendesignheroes. Feverishly design-building our telephone booth porch with only a few hours […]
It is a difficult task finding sparks between varying personalities and wildly different skill sets, particularly for someone trying to allow peaceful coexistence among a static group and with a set goal that demands positive interactions and successful chemistry. For our team, with Alex and Katie being the ones in charge of setting everyone up […]
Spending sixteen to eighteen hours a day building things in rural Wisconsin with my #teendesignheroes from the Chicago Public School system leaves little time to share all of the amazing things that are happening with the outside world. This design-build workshop for teens is one of my most important laboratories for testing the limits of […]
Prepare yourself to build, tear down, build, tear down, and build again, so that finally, you can have what you may call your first draft. Sound tough? You’re telling me! Thankfully, while it is challenging, it’s also one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. During our third day at Taliesin, we were happily joined […]
‘Architects going into schools to talk about and teach architecture is like birth control for architects.’ -the president of a prominent architectural organization that focuses on design education At a recent summit on design education that pulled together an elite group of designers from across the country, I was struck by a deep, growing enthusiasm […]
Only five days until our favorite week of the year! Taliesin was Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural playground. An ever evolving place, he and his apprentices were constantly experimenting with the structure, space and building materials of existing buildings on the property- adjusting, tearing things down and starting anew. They did this to better meet the […]
Project: Design Build Workshop for the Chicago Architecture Foundation Location: Chicago Project Director: Alex Gilliam for the Chicago Architecture Foundation Year: Summer 2010 Forty seven mosquito bites on one person, in the span of an hour? Sleeping in Stalin’s daughter’s bedroom? Visiting dignitaries, torrential thunderstorms, lots of post-hole digging, hand sawing and a pretty incredible […]
This is the second year that Public Workshop has developed a unique week-long summer workshop at Taliesin (East) for six high school students from the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s excellent Newhouse Program (run by the likewise excellent Krisann Rehbein) and I quite frankly couldn’t be more excited by the results. Frankly, we (the students, Krisann, the […]
When I volunteered to post a blog that sums up this year’s trip to Taliesin, I didn’t realize it will be this difficult. It’s hard enough to accept that the best week of this summer is over, I have never been disappointed to be in Chicago until now.
Skyscrapers have replaced the hills. Endless businesses have replaced the prairies. The sirens and noisy cars have replaced the birds and crickets. There are no stars under this sky, and the breeze here isn’t sweet.
“Frank Lloyd Wright was a very persuasive man.” That really interested me when Sidney Robinson said that. The tour of Taliesin and the history of Frank Lloyd Wright really intrigued me. The house was so intricately decorated and had a lot of valuable artifacts. All the history that I learned about F.L.W. made me understand […]
Wednesday July 1, 2009. Rolling down hills, laughing until our stomachs hurt and 2 design projects. What a way to start this month! I was having so much fun I forgot to take pictures. [I’ll just steal Brenda’s] The 6 of us split into groups of 3 the day before and we decided to keep […]
Taliesin in its self is an amazing experience. Once the minor aches such as bugs and heat are over with, enjoyment really settles in. Walking and nature hiking is a must to get around the campus. Those of us who believe they’re not much walkers, you’ll be surprised. The picture you see at the head […]
In the dim alley of CAF (Chicago Architecture Foundation) the instructors Alex and Krisann meet the five out of the six Newhouse Scholars: Tamanna, Brenda, Sharika, Salman and myself Aldair. The sixth Newhouse Scholar, Andrea was soon picked up after and thus began our adventure to Madison, Wisconsin and Frank Lloyd Wright’s School of Architecture […]
July 9, 2011
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