Chandler’s Organic Architecture + Design Archives saves the works of Frank Lloyd Wright and his protégés.

The Chandler storefront is unremarkable, presenting a blank face within a generic strip mall. But step inside, and it’s a veritable Ali Baba’s cave of architecture and design treasures—there’s the 1960s pulpit and altar from architect William Wesley Peter’s now-demolished Ascension Lutheran Church in Paradise Valley, a 19th-century ceiling medallion designed by Chicago architect Louis Sullivan, an original sketch by Frank Lloyd Wright, a decorative screen by Wright’s secretary and artist Gene Masselink, a ceramic bell crafted by Paolo Soleri and architectural renderings by avant-garde architect Bruce Goff. 

It’s all part of the Organic Architecture + Design Archives (OAD), which has become a repository of more than 300,000 items, including everything from architectural drawings and models to furniture, photographs, books and even jewelry made by scores of architects, designers and artists influenced by Wright’s philosophy that design should reflect the natural environment. “Without OAD, a lot of these items would have gone into a dumpster,” says co-founder and architectural historian William Blair Scott, Jr. “This design history would have been lost forever.”

How this major architectural resource wound up in Chandler is a bit of a twisting tale. For years, Scott, who’s based in Kentucky, along with Chicago graphic designer Eric O’Malley and North Carolina architect Randy Henning, had each been separately collecting organic design ephemera as a hobby via eBay, private dealers and other sources. “You could safely say this became an addiction for all three of us,” says Scott, who became acquainted with O’Malley and Henning via Wright and online organic architecture groups. Says O’Malley, “For me, I learned organic design was an ideology in which your life is designed around beauty and utility. We all went down the rabbit hole in our collecting.”

But the trio’s geeky architecture obsession became a mission after Frank Lloyd Wright’s archives were moved from the original location at Taliesin West—Wright’s Scottsdale architectural compound—to Columbia University’s Avery Library in 2013. The university took only Wright materials, leaving behind the work by his protégés, who continued his architectural practice as Taliesin Architects, which ceased operations in 2003. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, which oversees all things Wright, wanted to unload the Taliesin Architects materials. “The foundation had so much stuff,” recalls O’Malley. “Where does that land? If we didn’t do something, who would? Those archives would have been broken up, sold and out of the public realm.”

In response, the three formed nonprofit OAD, initially to accept the Taliesin Architects archives. Then, they needed a place to put those nearly 60,000 drawings and models. Chandler architect Michael Rust—an alumnus of both the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture and the architecture firm—found a storefront in downtown Chandler and, with the help of a band of volunteers, accepted the archives in 2021. “Chandler made sense for those archives,” O’Malley says. “It keeps things in Arizona, where there is a big diaspora of Taliesin alumni. And, historically, Wright first came to Chandler in the 1920s before he founded Taliesin West, staying at a camp he called Ocatilla to work on a resort for Dr. Alexander Chandler, the town’s founder.” 

OAD outgrew its first location, and a second facility was added down the road in 2024. While Henning has stepped back and now serves as an advisor, O’Malley and Scott are still involved and have donated their personal archives to the organization. With the help of some six volunteers, Rust is hands-on with the Chandler facilities and serves as the group’s treasurer. 

But while the OAD archives have grown over the years, the mission has always been to share the design treasures with the public. “The archives would be pointless if they gather dust or just sit in a drawer,” says Scott. “We want people to enjoy the items.” 

To engage the public, OAD offers memberships and publishes a journal that spotlights the collections. Both Chandler locations are open to the public by appointment. For the last three years, OAD has also collaborated with the Chandler Museum, which has hosted OAD’s public symposiums and design exhibits. This year, OAD will be curating “Ocatilla: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Desert Masterpiece,” which opens at the museum Oct. 27 and runs through February, showcasing Wright’s Chandler connection. The show will include a full-scale reproduction of Wright’s 1920s wood and canvas office cabin built at the camp. (The misspelling of the desert plant was Wright’s, and he stuck to it.) 

In the future, OAD’s supporters hope to find a spot large enough to house not only the archives, but its own museum that could feature changing exhibits. “We are still in the hardscrabble phase of OAD, but we have high hopes,” says O’Malley.  “For all of us involved, this is pure passion. I don’t want to imagine a world in which all these materials and ideas are gone.”

Organic Architecture + Design Archives, Chandler, oadarchives.org