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Frank Lloyd Wright: The Houses | $59.98 | Buy on Amazon |
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Frank Lloyd Wright. 45th Ed. (45th Edition) | $29.18 | Buy on Amazon |
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Frank Lloyd Wright (multilingual Edition) | $65.18 | Buy on Amazon |
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Frank Lloyd Wright: American Master | $28.28 | Buy on Amazon |
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Mudpuppy - My First Shapes With Frank Lloyd Wright Board Book for Kids | $9.99 | Buy on Amazon |
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Circular Sun House is the Norman Lykes House, a residence on a Phoenix hillside shaped around intersecting circular forms and the contours of its desert site. Wright designed it in 1959; after his death that year, his apprentice John Rattenbury supervised its completion in 1967.
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The Circular Sun House is another name for the Norman Lykes House, at 6836 N 36th Street, Phoenix, Arizona 85018. Wright designed the home for Norman and Aimee Lykes in 1959. The house’s website calls it Wright’s last residential design; Architectural Digest says it is often considered his final design, a status best understood as a qualified description rather than an uncontested title. The house’s website and Architectural Digest give those accounts.
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How did the design respond to its hillside setting?
Rather than relying on a rectilinear plan, the house is organized around intersecting circular elements and curved walls. Architectural Digest describes the circles as fitted to the land’s contours. U.S. Modernist’s property sheet says the design worked around rock outcroppings and mountain forms, and reports that concrete blocks were carried by hand to reduce disturbance to the desert site. These descriptions connect the building’s geometry to its specific hillside setting, rather than treating the curves as decoration alone. Architectural Digest; U.S. Modernist property sheet.
Curves carried into the rooms
The house’s website describes rounded walls and windows alongside custom built-in furniture. Those details extend the circular vocabulary into the interior, where built-ins follow the architecture instead of sitting apart from it. The property site also describes a crescent-shaped pool and a living room oriented toward a view over Phoenix. Norman Lykes House.
The site attributes this description to Anne Stupp, identified there as a Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation Board of Trustees member: “This circular home with rounded windows and walls, custom built-in furniture, and a crescent shaped pool is perched on a mountain overlooking Phoenix with a 180-degree view from the living room.” Norman Lykes House.
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Wright created the design in 1959, but he did not live to see the house completed. He died that year. Construction concluded in 1967 under the supervision of John Rattenbury, Wright’s apprentice. The distinction matters: the design is Wright’s, while Rattenbury oversaw the work that brought it to completion after Wright’s death. Norman Lykes House; Architectural Digest.
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Can you visit or stay at the Circular Sun House?
The house’s website advertises short-term stays through Airbnb and Vrbo, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy also lists it as an overnight stay. These listings describe lodging, not ordinary public museum access. They do not establish current availability, so check the booking listings for dates and terms before making plans. Norman Lykes House; Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy.
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