Taliesin Associated Architects projects in Iran : architectural drawings and records, 1968-1980
Collection context
- Creator:
- Peters, William Wesley, Amery, Nezam , 1926-2016, Brierly, Cornelia, Wright, Olgivanna Lloyd, Taliesin Associated Architects, and Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
- Abstract:
- This collection is composed primarily of the projects (built or unbuilt) that Taliesin Associated Architects (TAA) conducted in Iran in collaboration with Nezam Amery and his office NAKK spanning from 1965 to 1979. The collection includes final and working project drawings, correspondences, contracts, estimates, calculation, photographs, and additional papers. It also includes records of litigation after 1979 in the United States Courts. While the time of the projects overlaps, the series are arranged chronologically based on the dates each contract was signed.
- Extent:
- 8 document boxes, 32 rolls, 59 oversize folders, 1 print box, and 1 manuscript box
- Language:
- English .
- Scope and content:
-
This collection is composed primarily of the projects (built or unbuilt) that Taliesin Associated Architects (TAA) conducted in Iran in collaboration with Nezam Amery and his office NAKK spanning from 1965 to 1979. The collection includes final and working project drawings, correspondences, contracts, estimates, calculation, photographs, and additional papers. It also includes records of litigation after 1979 in the United States Courts. While the time of the projects overlaps, the series are arranged chronologically based on the dates each contract was signed.
- Biographical / historical:
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This collection is created mainly by the Taliesin Associated Architects of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. A number of Taliesin Fellowship and TAA members also actively participated in designing and constructing of the projects in Iran, nevertheless, the official drawings are signed by and carry the name of William Wesley Peters as the chief architect. The name of Nezam Amery, a former apprentice of Mr. Wright who coordinated the bureaucratic matters and the construction phase in Iran also appears below the drawings as the Iranian associated architect. Introducing the creators of this collection requires a brief history of Frank Lloyd Foundation.
THE FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT FOUNDATION
When Frank and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright established the Taliesin Fellowship in 1932 in Spring Green, WI, they envisaged it as an apprenticeship program "to provide a total learning environment integrating all aspects of the apprentices' lives with the intent of educating responsible, creative and cultured human beings." Established amidst the hardships of the Great Depression, during the time that Wright was receiving few commissions, the Taliesin Fellowship required thirty accepted apprentices to pay $1100 tuition to be able to study with the master. Beyond merely learning architecture, the apprentices were expected to engage and master other activities like molding and casting, music, dance and drama, painting and sculpting as well as cooking, gardening, farming and developing the estate by doing construction works. In 1937 Wright added a winter home and school in Scottsdale, AZ—Taliesin West— to the fellowship. Wright and the fellowship then established a migration pattern between Spring Green and Scottsdale. In 1940 the Wrights and Wes Peters incorporated the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation to maintain and propagate Wright's legacy and administer Taliesin and Taliesin West.
TALIESIN ASSOCIATED ARCHITECTS
Frank Lloyd Wright died in 1959 but with Olgivanna Lloyd Wright as the leader, the fellowship program continued its work under the umbrella of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation supported by Taliesin Associated Architects. The senior members of the Fellowship formed TAA as a division of the Foundation (a non-profit corporation) to fund and support other entities. In June of 1965, the Foundation—originally incorporated as a Wisconsin corporation—was reorganized and incorporated in Arizona still as a non-profit corporation for which Olgivanna Lloyd Wright was appointed as president and William Wesley Peters as Vice President. In its Articles of Incorporation, the Foundation includes an architectural school and an architectural business. The Foundation aimed primarily to administer and support the school of architecture with emphasis on the teachings of the late Frank Lloyd Wright and his "organic architecture" both as an architectural philosophy and a trademark. TAA was made up of the senior members who had a lifetime experience of living in the fellowship community and working with Wright. They were also the faculty of the architecture school and instructors of the new apprentices. William Wesley Peters, Frank Lloyd Wright's son-in-law and protégé was both a Trustee of the Foundation and the chief architect of both the school and TAA at the time when their projects in Iran were being conducted.
WILLIAM WESLEY PETERS
Known to his friends and associates as Wes, William Wesley Peters was born on June 12, 1912 in Terre Haute, IN. Peters studied at Evansville College in Indiana and then graduated from M.I.T. He came from a wealthy family and by paying the tuition in advance, after speaking with Wright, became the first apprentice of the Fellowship in 1932. Except for two years in private practice, he never left the fellowship and remained Wright's "right arm" in different capacities, significantly among them as structural engineer and project manager on many of Wright's signature buildings and most acclaimed projects including Fallingwater in 1936 in Mill Run, PA, Johnson's Wax administration building and its adjacent research tower built in Racine, WI. (1936-44), and the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan completed in 1959.
In 1935 Peters married Svetlana Hinzenburg, Wright's adopted daughter from Olgivanna's previous marriage. The couple had two sons, Daniel and Brandoch. Svetlana who was pregnant and Daniel who was two years old were killed in an automobile accident in 1946. Peters gained fame in the eye of the general public and outside his profession for his brief marriage to Svetlana Alliluyeva, the daughter of Stalin. This marriage which was coordinated by Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright, as she was liked to be called, in 1972 (twenty days after Svetlana's arrival to the Taliesin) lasted only for 20 months. Chafing the regimented and communal way of life at Taliesin West, Alliluyeva left Peters and took their daughter Olga with her. They were divorced in 1973.
After Wright died in 1956, Peters succeeded him as the chairman of TAA and the Vice President of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and in 1985, after Olgivanna's death, he became the chairman of the Foundation too. Peters was a registered architect in 50 states and personally designed more than 100 projects and a variety of structures including churches, schools, hotels, banks, shops and residences, libraries and performing art centers including the projects in this collection.
Peters died in St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, WI. of the effects of a stroke in July 1991 at the age of 79.
TAA and Peters connection to Iran and the Pahlavi family (as the direct client of three projects and indirect client of two others of this collection) was through the only Iranian apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship, Nezamedin Khazal Kabi Amery, a.k.a Nezam Amery.
NEZAM AMERY
Nezam Amery was born in Tehran in 1926. A year prior to his birth, Reza Shah (King of Iran at the time) defeated and ousted his father Sheikh Khazal who was the ruler of Mohammerah (now Khoramshahr in Southwestern Iran) and detained him under home arrest. He later was killed by Shah's order in the same home in which Nezam was born. During his early years Nezam was not allowed to leave the town either and only after the WWII when Allies overthrew Reza Shah, he could travel outside the country to study. He finished Highschool in Tehran and then went to England. After a short stay in England, Nezam moved to the U.S to go to college. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture from Kent State University in Ohio. Upon graduation, because of his fascination with the drawings and the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, he went to study with him. In 1952, after an interview with Wright he was accepted into the Fellowship and for two years studied and worked both in Arizona and Wisconsin. He then returned to Iran and started to work as an architect in architectural offices (in an interview he mentions working for Gendarmery and designing barracks), he opened his own office in Tehran in 1956. But in 1957 after receiving Wright's invitation, he traveled to Baghdad, Iraq, and was delegated as Wright's representative in the Middle East and the supervisor of the Baghdad projects. Nezam, as he remembers, spent two more years in Taliesin working on the Baghdad Opera House and Post and Telegram Building and then returned to Baghdad to proceed the construction work. However, with the breakout of the Iraqi Revolution in July 1958 the projects were foiled and his mission in Iraq was curtailed. He went back to Tehran and in 1963 he eventually established his office "Nezam-Ameri, Kamooneh, Khosravi," (a.k.a NAKK) associating with two of his former employees Kamal Kamooneh and Hormozdyar Khosravi. His office was very active and designed and built a variety of projects in different scales including hospitals, Universities, various offices for Government Ministries such as Agriculture, Education, Health, Tourism and Justice among others, Banks, Housing Projects, Hotels, University Buildings and Corporate headquarters until the 1979 Iran Revolution. After the revolution the office was closed, the assets were qualified for settling the accounts and the partners left Iran for good. Nezam moved to London where his wife Shenda and his children had been living for several years. Nezam died in 2016 in London.
Access and use
- Restrictions:
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This collection is available for use by appointment in the Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. For further information, please email avery-drawings@library.columbia.edu.
- Location of this collection:
- Before you visit:
- Researchers are encouraged to request materials at least one month in advance. You will receive an email from the department within 2-3 business days confirming your request and currently available appointment times. Requests are limited to 8 boxes per day (or equivalent), with a maximum of 5 boxes for off-site materials, 5 folders of drawings, or 5 rolls or tube boxes.
- Contact:
- avery-drawings@columbia.edu