JG on Wright

If you have ever been to Taliesin West in Scottsdale Arizona, then you may have wondered how Wright constructed the concrete rock walls. After reading on John Geiger website a former apprentice to Wright, I had found the answer. The walls were formed up as though they were poured in place walls but the inside sheathing was 1x6 instead of plywood. The concrete mixture was all local sand with a small amount of cement and water. The work was all done by hand in stages as described in the excerpt below by John Geiger,

“We built a double faced wood form of 2x4s and 1x6 sheathing. There were no foundations. We just scooped out 6” or so from the desert floor and built our forms. The forms were retained at the base by discarded stones or what ever we could find, as well as wire ties and 2x4 spreaders that we pulled and discarded as the fill was increased in height. The concrete mix was so dry that you couldn’t pour it. We had to shovel it into place and dry pack it by foot in big walls or by the butt end of a 2x4 in smaller walls. The stones were placed against the forms and physically held in place until enough concrete had been placed behind it to retain it. Here again I want to stress the dryness of the concrete mixture. There was not enough water in the mixture to come to the surface to give that smooth look one associates with poured concrete. Nor was there enough water to run over the face of the stones. This was dry-pack. Where there was a gap between the top of the stone and the form there were two choices depending in the size of the gap. The first was to twist up the paper cement bags and stuff them into the gap. The second, for larger openings, was to fill the gap with 3 to 8 inch pebbles and dry-pack around them. These were also collected from the washes below Taliesin. They must have been from a completely different geological era from the stones usually associated with the desert concrete at Taliesin West.”

The technique that is described above seems in many ways very similar to the rammed earth technique also popularized in the dry lands of Arizona.


There are many informative articles on Geiger’s website unfortunately he passed away in early 2011 and will not be adding any further additions. For the full article on Desert Masonry and other articles go to J.G. on Wright website.

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