In memory of Lois Davidson Gottlieb

We have received a notice from one of our member, Inge Horton, that architect Lois Davidson Gottlieb passed away.

Lois Davidson Gottlieb was a residential designer based in San Francisco, California. She was born on November 13,1926 in San Francisco and attended Stanford University from 1944 to 1947, where she studied art and engineering and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. She served as an apprentice to famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright from 1948 to 1949 as part of the Taliesin Fellowship in Spring Green, Wisconsin and Scottsdale, Arizona. She did her graduate work at Harvard University's School of Design from 1949 to 1950.

Wright started the Fellowship in 1932 during the depression era when he had little or no work and thought it a worthwhile idea to train young architects. The apprentices came from all sorts of backgrounds and many different countries. Some of them joined the Fellowship because they had seen Wright's work, others because they had read his autobiography. All of them wanted to be involved with his new architecture and to emulate his approach, which was to make all aspects of living more beautiful and compatible with the environment. Taliesin was Wright's home and farm and Taliesin West in Arizona was his escape from the severe Wisconsin winters. Taliesin was operated as a self-contained working community where the apprentices became self-sufficient while continuing their architectural education.

A Way of Life is an extraordinary record of that eighteen months.