Taliesin West students built protective desert shelters using mostly local materials

Little Shelters by Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin West

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The project was initially conceived as individual exercises where Daniel Chapman, Mark-Thomas Cordova, Jaime Inostroza, Dylan Kessler, Pablo Moncayo, Natasha Vemulkonda, and Pierre Verbruggen were to design and build their own temporary shelters. The plan changed due to harsh desertconditions, and the students, guided by their instructor David Tapias, ended up designing a collective shelter.

Taliesin – Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Little Shelters, Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright school, temporary shelter, temporary shelter, green architecture, Taliesin West, local materials

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Students from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin West have designed and built a small shelter using mostly materials that could be found on-site in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The rest of the material for the project, called "Little Shelters", was purchased with a $2,000 budget.

Little Shelters by Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin West

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The project was initially conceived as individual exercises where Daniel Chapman, Mark-Thomas Cordova, Jaime Inostroza, Dylan Kessler, Pablo Moncayo, Natasha Vemulkonda, and Pierre Verbruggen were to design and build their own temporary shelters.

Little Shelters by Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin West

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The plan changed due to harsh desert conditions, and the students, guided by their instructor David Tapias, ended up designing a collective shelter.

Little Shelters by Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin West

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The students took only 12 weeks to complete the structure, which comprises two shelters and a gathering space, using materials found on-site and inexpensive materials from warehouses.

Little Shelters by Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Taliesin West

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Future students will use the shelters during their time at Taliesin and transform and document them on the little maps website.