The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture has reached another important milestone on its current path to becoming independent from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, having raised over $2 million in cash and pledges. As the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture is currently an operating division of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, it faces losing its accreditation, following new laws by the Higher Learning Commission (HLC) that require universities, colleges and other institutions to be financially and administratively independent from "larger institutions with multi-faceted missions."
In reaction to this, the FLW School of Architecture has worked to gain independence from the foundation, with Alumni beginning a petition for the preservation of the school. The FLW Foundation itself has invested $1.4 million in the school’s operating costs and growth over the next four years, as well as donating extensive use of the facilities at Taliesin and Taliesin West. This, combined with the over $2 million raised will support the school until 2019, and potentially longer.
“We are so thankful to the more than 317 individuals, foundations, and corporations who gave to our Campaign,” said the School’s Dean, Aaron Betsky. “We have been hard at work with the Foundation’s staff and Board to ensure the School’s future not just in financial and organizational terms, but also by improving its curriculum and by developing programs that continue Wright’s legacy in organic architecture and learning by doing in ways that answer to our needs for a more sustainable, open, and beautiful human-made environment.”
The Foundation is now working with the School Board and staff to establish a “Change of Control” of the School, with its application set to be reviewed by the HLC in June 2016. The full process is expected to be completed by 2017, with the School becoming "an autonomous, independently incorporated subsidiary of the Foundation."
