Learning to walk in Ephesus

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THE THRIFT FAMILY AT THE GREAT THEATRE OF EPHESUS, BELOW PANAYIR DAĞI, TURKEY

The summer of '67 — thinking about getting out of the stroller and walking, at the Great Theatre of Ephesus. Carved into the slope of Panayır Dağı (Mount Pion), it could seat 25,000 people after the Roman expansion, and it is famous as the site mentioned in the Book of Acts, where a riot broke out against the Apostle Paul over the silversmiths' trade in idols of Artemis. I don't personally remember any of it. But the stonework has left a lifelong impression on me, and I reintroduce it whenever a project asks for it.

Five days at Taliesin

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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT’S RED SIGNATURE TILE EMBEDDED IN THE FIELDSTONE AT TALIESIN FRONT ENTRY

June fulfilled an architectural pilgrimage for me this year: five days at Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio built into a hillside outside Spring Green, Wisconsin, starting in 1911. Wright sited it on the "brow" of the hill, not the summit — a summit belonged to the sky, not a house — and built it from fieldstone quarried on the property with plaster tinted to match the sand around it, so the building reads more like an outcropping than an object. He kept reworking it for the rest of his life, using it to test the cantilevers, the compressed-to-expansive room sequences, and the ribbon clerestories he'd later carry into Fallingwater and the Guggenheim, and in 1932 he founded the Taliesin Fellowship there, training apprentices by having them live in the building and rebuild it alongside him rather than sit in a classroom. I've cited this place for years in conversations about regionalism without ever standing on that hillside myself. I won't pretend five days changed my hand at the drafting table, but it did put a harder edge on an idea I already believed: that a house should earn its place on a piece of land instead of just occupying it.