Day 19 - Driftless + Milwalkee

The Wisconsin Countryside is beautiful!

We departed from Minneapolis early to hit the road for a little town called Viriqouia in Wisconsin to visit our buddy Meghan's friend Jacob who runs Driftless Folk School. Driftless and Transition Studio have many similarities and hopefully will be able to do some instructor cross-over one day. After an insightful visit and short interview, we hit the road again for more adventures.

We then headed to Spring Green, Wisconsin to see Taliesen (FLW's home and studio). Kim went on an informative tour of the Hillside building, the FLW architecture school, and the students performance theatre. It was great to finally be in the midst of a place I've thought so much about over the past decade of my journey through the practice of architecture. It was a humbling experience to see the operations of the school from the beginning and also very inspiring to see the spaces.

The theatre where the architecture students performed for Wright and his guests and still have entertainment in the space today a few times throughout the school year. I wasn't actually allowed to take this photo inside, but couldn't resist when the opportunity opened up. The curtain was once a sketch in FLW's sketchbook and symbolizes the mountainside where Taliesin is located on the right and the mass of the school. As a surprise for his 80th birthday the students constructed it as a surprise to him and he was delighted. [Of course, in true Wright fashion, he had to make some cuts on the gift himself and have the final stamp of creative license.]

Then we drove by some of the other local projects he did... this one is a set of farm infrastructure. Barns, storage, stable, etc.

And this is a stained glass embellishment he designed to be by his headstone in the family cemetery of the family chapel he designed. [All in pure Wright fashion!...always in control of everything.]

While Kim was touring Andrew was enjoying a couple hours of downtime on the internet. After the tour, we headed to Milwaukee, WI to see GROWING POWER, a non-profit organization that works with inner city, lower income children to build gardens and grow fresh produce for children and families that typically do not have access to it.

Milwaukee was a little rough around the edges and after the experience in San Fran, we decided to pass on staying the night in the city as originally planned. We saw another AMAZING sunset!!!

and a beautiful greek orthodox church!

We drove into Chicago and got a last minute reservation at a Hilton hotel by the airport to get a good nights rest. It was a beautiful hotel and we were excited to sleep!