Although Scottsdale, Arizona, was once the famed winter home of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, until recently his house was the only piece of Wright architecture in the area. City planners, however, want to change that with the construction of a $1 million, 125-foot spire designed by Wright.
Lloyd originally designed the 75,000-pound spire to be placed atop an Arizona Capitol Building that he also designed. The building was never built, and the plans for the spire were found hidden in some of the archives in Scottsdale. Planners hope to make the spire a monument to Wright and a gateway to the city by placing it at a shopping and office complex at the southeastern side of town.
It took four months for Schuff Steel of Pheonix to build the intertwining spire. On Jan. 27 it was moved it to its new location in two separate pieces, raised by two cranes, and joined together.
Although most of the difficulty behind the project was joining the two upright pieces, the installation of translucent panels on the fa
