Feb 11, 2019
Architect Victor Sidy was Dean of the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin with campuses in Scottsdale, Arizona and Spring Green, Wisconsin. He was a vocal advocate for saving Frank Lloyd Wright houses and buildings and for walkable community development. In 2015 he returned to private practice but is still involved with one special Frank Lloyd Wright house in Phoenix, the David and Gladys Wright House, which father Frank designed for his son. The house has been on a rollercoaster in recent years, doomed one moment, saved the next, in limbo the next.
Historian Alison King is founder of Modern Phoenix and is Associate Professor of Design at The Art Institute of Phoenix. Since 2003 she has published Arizona's largest website for midcentury architecture, ModernPhoenix.net, and she hosts an annual home tour and the always interesting Modern Phoenix Week. Alison gave USModernist a wonderful tour last November of both residential and commercial modernist buildings, culminating in a trip to the David and Gladys Wright House.
Host George Smart interviewed Victor and Alison in the lobby of the Embassy Suites Hotel right off Central Avenue, just a few blocks up from Will Bruder’s Burton Barr Phoenix Central Library. By then it was happy hour, and of course we didn’t want to break protocol, so when in Phoenix, do as the Phoenicians do. Cheers!