The desert that surrounds Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter home and studio, is no stranger to camping. Which is perhaps why it is the perfect place to unveil the Airstream Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Limited Edition Travel Trailer, a new collaboration between the architect’s eponymous foundation and the American travel trailer brand.When Wright arrived in the Sonoran Desert in December of 1937, he made two purchases. First, 600 acres of land, on which Taliesin West would eventually sit. Then, shortly after, a handful of tents for his apprentices to sleep in while they helped build the new property. Even once construction finished, it became a tradition that his disciples would build temporary shelters among the cacti, bushes, and sandy soil. “This was a camp, and Wright was moved by the way canvas from the tents diffused light. That’s what inspired the canvas roofs on Taliesin West today,” Sally Russel, the director of licensing at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, said at a press briefing at Taliesin West about the trailer.You might also like: What Was It Like Living at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West?The trailer door features a pattern called the Gordon Leaf motif, which was created by Taliesin apprentice Eugene Masselink. Photo: Andrew PielageCoincidentally, Airstream’s founder, Wally Byam, began designing trailers for people who didn’t like sleeping on the ground in tents—a sect his first wife belonged to. Nearly 100 years later, the Usonian trailer lets owners enjoy the desert (or any part of the world) Wright-style, while still taking advantage of modern comforts like a bed, shower, and kitchen. “I’ve been dropping the idea of a Frank Lloyd Wright trailer into the thought mill at Airstream for about 20 years,” Bob Wheeler, the president and CEO of Airstream, said at the briefing.The kitchen includes under cabinet lighting and warm, wood-toned cabinets. Photo: Andrew PielageInside the Frank Lloyd Wright AirstreamAt just over 28 feet long, the trailer is among the larger of Airstream’s offerings, which range from 16 to 33 feet. From the outside, the company’s instantly recognizable aluminum shell offers little evidence of the idiosyncrasy that’s on full display inside. But from the moment the door opens—which is printed with a leaf motif designed by a Taliesin apprentice—Wright’s influence is all encompassing.You might also like: 7 Stylish Mobile Homes Owned by Celebrities

Like a good pair of Basquiat Crocs, there are innumerable bad ways to license an artist’s work. So when Airstream looked to partner up on a project with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the aluminum-clad trailer brand could have just printed one of the architect’s famous patterns on a limited run of its vehicles and called it a day. It probably would have even sold well. But that is decidedly what Bob Wheeler, Airstream’s president and CEO, did not want to do.  “We said, ‘All right, let’s make sure that everything has a purpose and a function—that way it’s not just a pastiche, or some kind of lame attempt to mimic something,’” Wheeler recalls. “We didn’t want it to seem overdone or kitschy.” Instead, the brand embarked on a multiyear collaboration with the experts at Wright’s Taliesin West home and studio in Scottsdale, Arizona, and today the two are rolling out the 28-foot Airstream Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian Limited Edition Travel Trailer. With just 200 numbered vehicles that retail for $184,900 on offer, you—like me—might not be able to afford one at the moment, but they just might also restore your faith in the art of the artist collab at large.  [Photo: Airstream] BETTER LATE THAN NEVER Wheeler has a passion for midcentury design (as you might expect of Airstream’s CEO), so it tracks that he’d be a natural fan of Wright’s organic architecture. “Honestly, this has been a dream of mine for the last 20 years, which is about as long as I’ve been president of Airstream,” he says. “Why are Wright’s designs so celebrated today? It’s because they’re timeless. I think there are values there that incentivize someone to buy an Airstream that overlap in some meaningful ways.” Though Wright and Airstream founder Wally Byam were active at the same time and likely shared some of the same design fan base, there’s no record of them ever meeting. But a collaboration between the two ultimately proved inevitable when Wheeler reached out to Wright’s foundation in 2022. Foundation historian Sally Russell says her team wasn’t initially sure how robust a joint project could be. They eventually toured the Airstream factory in Ohio where the trailers are handmade using 3,000 rivets over the course of 350 hours, and saw how much customization was truly possible. Then she realized that it could be a great showcase of Wright’s work.  Beyond an Airstream’s signature aluminum exterior, Wheeler says the trailer is essentially a blank canvas. “And that’s where we can really flex some design muscle and allow others to do so.”  Russell says the foundation first explored whether to make the trailer feel like an adaptation of a specific Frank Lloyd Wright home. “The answer to that was no,” she says. “We didn’t want to try to re-create the Rosenbaum House and shove it into the size of a trailer. It didn’t make sense, because Frank Lloyd Wright certainly designed for each of his individual projects—he created something new, something that expressed the individual forms of the project, the needs of the client. So there was a great awareness of wanting to continue that legacy through the work that we did on the trailer.” The two teams ultimately homed in on the concept of Usonian design, a style that aimed to democratize design via small, affordable homes with a focus on efficient floor plans, functionality, and modularity.  In other words: an ideal fit for an Airstream. [Photo: Airstream] COLLAPSIBLE CHAIRS AND CLERESTORY WINDOWS When you approach the trailer, the connection to Wright is immediate on the custom front door featuring the Gordon leaf pattern, which the architect commissioned his apprentice Eugene Masselink to design in 1956. It’s a tip of the hat to nature, presumably an Airstreamer’s destination, and can be found subtly throughout the trailer in elements like sconces and cabinet pulls—but not too much, per the design mission at the outset. (“At one point we had a lot more of that Gordon leaf in there,” Wheeler notes. “We dialed that way back.”) With the push of a button, the bench seating converts into a king-size bed—one of Wheeler’s favorite elements. It is the largest bed in any Airstream, and is a first for the company, he says.  [Photo: Airstream] Another convertible element, in line with that focus on modularity, is the living space at the front of the trailer. Here, a dining table, desk, and seating inspired by the slant-back chairs that Wright used throughout his career collapse into a wall cabinet. Wheeler says Airstream used to deploy clever features like this in the midcentury era, before modern preferences trended toward built-in furniture. “So in some ways, this is a bit of a flashback to an earlier design in the ’50s, which is appropriate.” The teams also honored Wright’s focus on natural light, relocating Airstream’s usual overhead storage in favor of clerestory windows, which are prominent in Usonian homes. Meanwhile, the overall color palette comes from a 1955 Wright-curated Martin-Senour paint line. Russell says the team selected it for its harmonious blend with the natural settings where the trailer is likely headed, featuring ocher, red, and turquoise.  Ultimately, “It’s like a Frank Lloyd Wright home, where you walk into it, and it’s a completely different experience from any other building,” Russell says. “I hope that he would be very happy to see that design legacy continue, because he certainly did that with his own fellowship and the apprentices that he worked with.” [Photo: Airstream] USONIAN LIFE Starting today, the limited-edition, numbered trailers will be available for order at Airstream dealerships. Wheeler says the company was originally going to release just 100 of them, but got so much positive feedback from dealers and others that they doubled the run.  On the whole, the collaboration comes in the wake of a boom time for Airstream, which is owned by Thor Industries. Airstream experienced a surge during the pandemic, resulting in a 22% jump in sales in 2021 as people embraced remote work or realigned their relationship to the world.  “We’ve come back to earth now, and now we’re much more tied to actual market retail rates, which is what we know,” Wheeler says. In its third-quarter financials, Thor reported $2.89 billion in revenue (up 3.3% from previous year). While the company declined to provide Airstream-specific numbers, its overall North American towable RV division is up 9.1% from the same period in 2024. But there’s a problem afoot: The current administration’s tariffs, which Wheeler says made settling on the price for the Frank Lloyd Wright collaboration tricky. He adds that the company is struggling with shortages caused by the disruption in the supply chain, and high interest rates are also a problem.  [Photo: Airstream] “Look, we’re 94 years old,” he says. “We’ve been through more of these cycles than we can count, so we’re fine, and we’ll continue to trade on authenticity, quality, great service and support, a great dealer network, and a brand that really has become part of the fabric of the U.S. traveling adventure.”

May 20, 20254 min readContributors to Scientific American’s June 2025 IssueWriters, artists, photographers and researchers share the stories behind the storiesBy Allison Parshall edited by Jen SchwartzJennifer N. R. Smith. Charles SmithJennifer N. R. SmithThe Social Lives of MitochondriaIn 2020, on a trip to Devon, England, Jennifer N. R. Smith (above) went swimming in the sea. Just as night fell, the water began to glow with light from bioluminescent algae. “It’s electric blue,” she recalls. “If you lift your arm up out of the water, it kind of sparkles all over your skin. It was the most magical experience I’ve ever had.” Smith, who had just finished a program in medical illustration, felt she had to draw this phenomenon immediately.Smith took inspiration from that experience to create her own style of illustration, which combines the traditional textures of collage and paper marbling with a technique called reverse stippling—pinpricks of light over a dark background. The technique evokes wonder in her for the natural world, with the dots representing more than just flecks of algae on her skin. “They could be the night sky or atoms, either the macro or the micro.”On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.For this issue’s feature story on the mysteries of mitochondria, by behavioral neuroscientist Martin Picard, Smith visualized the organelles’ zigzagging inner walls by using this illustration method to “turn the mitochondrion into a labyrinth.” Rather than explaining concepts to readers with her drawings, she tries to invite them in by inspiring a sense of awe. “If you can spark wonder within someone about a certain topic,” she says, “they will interact with it in a way that’s much more deep and authentic.”Alec LuhnRefreezing the ArcticIn February climate journalist Alec Luhn took four days and four planes to travel to Cambridge Bay in Canada’s Nunavut territory. It was his second trip to the Arctic Circle for Scientific American—in 2023 he went to Alaska to investigate why rivers in Kobuk Valley National Park were turning orange. This time, while reporting on efforts to refreeze parts of the melting Arctic to stall the worst effects of climate change, he was struck by just how fast the environment was changing.“This is the Northwest Passage—the holy grail of ocean exploration for 400 years,” Luhn says, referring to the famed sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Many colonial explorers died trying to navigate the ice-clogged sea lane, “but now that ice is melting to the degree that cruise ships go through the Northwest Passage every single summer,” and local Indigenous communities, he says, are struggling to maintain a way of life that depends heavily on sea ice for hunting, transportation, and more.As Luhn observed the efforts to refreeze the melting cap, he often thought about how this harsh environment has made a mockery of colonial expeditions’ efforts to bend it to their will. “And here we are now again, trying to bring our technology to bear on the forces of nature” to counteract the melting we continue to cause, he says. “Will we succeed this time?”Rowan JacobsenCan Sunlight Cure Disease?For the past few years science journalist Rowan Jacobsen has been fascinated by the effect of light on our bodies. “We tend to think of light as ephemeral,” he says, yet it is physical—we’re constantly bombarded by photons, little packets of energy. “There’s no way it couldn’t have a health impact, in a way,” he says. Indeed, research across fields of medicine has shown that people exposed to more light tend to have better health outcomes. In our cover story for this issue, Jacobsen explores new phototherapies for autoimmune conditions such as multiple sclerosis.Jacobsen has written several books, on topics including oysters, truffles and chocolate. Food, he says, is a “clandestine” way to get people interested in the natural world. For his next book, about how light affects health, he recently embarked on a “self-experiment.” Jacobsen rented a 1962 Airstream in southwestern Arizona and spent a month without artificial light at night. After sunset “there’s nothing to do [except] lie out and look at the stars,” he says.Jacobsen had returned to his home in Vermont just before we spoke for this interview, and he reported feeling refreshed. “My energy and my focus were awesome,” he says, attributing the improvement mainly to the early mornings. “Less [artificial] light at night was good, but I think the bright sunlight in the morning was equally important.”Jay BendtScience of HealthJay Bendt fell into her illustration career “sort of backward,” she says. She had planned to take the path of many members of her family and become a doctor. But during her first year of college, she expressed interest in drawing on an administrative form and was unwittingly sorted into an art-focused track. “Being very young, I was like, ‘You know what, that actually doesn’t sound like a bad idea,’ ” she recalls. Bendt had grown up drawing in the age of DeviantArt, an online art platform popular in the 2000s, and had been inspired by the “magical girl” aesthetic of Sailor Moon and other anime. After graduating with a painting degree, she learned to integrate these interests with formal, conceptual skills to become a freelance illustrator.Bendt illustrates Scientific American’s Science of Health column, written by Lydia Denworth. This issue’s column about the impact of exercise on gut bacteria was a particular challenge. “Anything that has bacteria in it is one I need to think on more” to make it original, she says; it’s too easy to fall back on drawing little anthropomorphic cells. For editorial illustrations, Bendt picks a style that matches the story, but her personal work is unfailingly whimsical. “I try to make work that, once you’ve caught a glimpse, you have to look at it.”