Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

[Guest Kien]

I finally saw Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater over the Labor Day break.

Even (or especially) under the heavy rain from the after effects of Francis, the House sprang into life in ways unexpected from any photos or written analysis by others. The sound of the rain and the visuals of the roof's water spouts in full motion added an extra dimension to an already extraordinary House. Water as theme was in play.

From the outside, the verticality of the stone chimney looked like a massive spike that claim the site not at any random spot but directly in front of a large boulder that the client had used for sunbathing and now as a hearth for the fireplace.

The natural rock as hearth along with the man-made fireplace took center stage of the living room and became the metaphysical essence of the House. (with due credit to Ayn Rand's ITOE in my application to architectural essences.)

The interiors must be experienced for its amazing details of the materials, framed views of the landscape and the compression/expansion of the spatial experience.

The waxed stone floorings in the living room were meant to look wet as a thematic effect and on that rainy day the living room floor seemed to extend itself continously to the exterior terraces where the stone were actually wet!

At one point down stream, I blocked with my hands the House from view just to see the site in its original state and felt in me only a cold and wet hiker on a trail looking at a couple of mediocre waterfalls. Nature in this case was greatly enhanced by a work of Man.

I'm still digesting what I experienced and plan to visit again at different seasons to get my fill of the House. I've travelled all over the world and have taken many such architectural "pilgrimages" but this House is the most integrated and mind opening of them all.

There in one instant and one spot I saw everything: the site with the waterfalls over specific rocks, a specific architect, a specific client ...all converged in one time and place to produce a House that make an architectural experience worthwhile and whatever it took for the House to exist was worthwhile as well.

Kien

[JRoberts]

I have often admired the house from what few pictures I have found available. You wouldn't happen to have any pictures of it would you? You made the house sound all-the-more tempting .

[Yes]

I finally saw Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater over the Labor Day break.

........There in one instant and one spot I saw everything: the site with the waterfalls over specific rocks, a specific architect, a specific client ...all converged in one time and place to produce a House that make an architectural experience worthwhile and whatever it took for the House to exist was worthwhile as well.

Kien

Sadly, the house has fallen into a state of disrepair. I read that it needs major structural repairs to the cantilevers, and some estimates run into the millions of dollars.

I recently saw Robie House in Chicago. It, too, was undergoing repairs. Nonetheless, one could still appreciate the genius that ws Frank Lloyd Wright.

[Guest Kien]

I have often admired the house from what few pictures I have found available.  You wouldn't happen to have any pictures of it would you?  You made the house sound all-the-more tempting .

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I took some exterior pictures but I think you will have more fun with these:

A photo tour with sight and sound!

For a 3D view of the exterior if you have the 3D glasses, which can be home-made with red cellophane for the left eye and green for the right eye.

[Guest Kien]

Sadly, the house has fallen into a state of disrepair.  I read that it needs major structural repairs to the cantilevers, and some estimates run into the millions of dollars.

I recently saw Robie House in Chicago.  It, too, was undergoing repairs.  Nonetheless, one could still appreciate the genius that ws Frank Lloyd Wright.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The multi-million dollars restoration work was completed 2 years ago. The NYC engineering firm Silman Associates, who is fixing up 6 of Wright's other buildings, added the post-tensioning cables to the beams under the terraces and everything is fine now.

He did wonders with the available technology to arrive at his vision. Fallingwater was really a net result of the hundreds of Prarie homes he did prior to 1932. When Kaufmann called to ask about the design progress, Wright told him to come on over even though he had not drawn a single line. In the 2 hours it took the client to drive to his studio he cranked out a whole set of preliminary plans and elevations just in time to say at Kaufmann's arrival: "I was waiting for you". The final house was very close to the prelims.

This was a man at 65 starting a second phase of his career and rendered Gropious speechless when he first saw the house. Philip Johnson, who had taunted him as being a 19th C. architect finally conceeded that Wright did the International Style better than anyone else, which of course is a mis-interpretation of Fallingwater. Visiting the House Johnson complained that the noise of the waterfall exited his bladder, according to Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.

[Charlotte Corday]

When Kaufmann  called to ask about the design progress, Wright told him to come on over even though he had not drawn a single line. In the 2 hours it took the client to drive to his studio he cranked out a whole set of preliminary plans and elevations just in time to say at Kaufmann's arrival: "I was waiting for you". The final house was very close to the prelims.

Some have taken this story to be evidence that Wright was lazy or undependable. In fact, I would suggest that Wright had not forgotten the project at all but was letting the idea gestate. The client's phone call was simply a cue to commit the plans to paper.

[Guest Kien]

Some have taken this story to be evidence that Wright was lazy or undependable.  In fact, I would suggest that Wright had not forgotten the project at all but was letting the idea gestate.  The client's phone call was simply a cue to commit the plans to paper.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You are right and it was more than that:

By 1934 he had done hundreds of houses, many foreshadowing Fallingwater in Form. It was a House looking for the correct site and found it at Bear Run. There was a definite progression of the Prarie Houses in plan and elevations that led to his magnum opus but also to his future works such as the Guggenheim Museum.

Wright had the heroic side of him that loved to tell the Kaufmann story in order to show the ease in which he "shook from his sleeves" numerous designs. Of course, it was from sheer practice of his talents that he, at 65 yrs old, was able to rotate the solutions in his mind, integrate them mentally for days before using paper and pencils in order to verify his thoughts and to communicate with others. Today,as belated research are comming out, we are able to understand his design process more than before. At the time, he did not care to reveal much much in this regard, prefering to project the mystical side of him to others. There was evidently a messianic side of him that came from the influences of reading 19th C. Romantic novels and transcendentalists such as Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman.

Recently, I was pleasantly surprised to read in a book on Wright's philosophy of design that Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris had a deep effect on Wright during his earlier years.

From"Frank Lloyd Wright" by Robert Mc Carter (1997):

" In the chapter that was to have such a profound effect on Wright, entiltled 'This Will Kill That', Hugo, speaking directly to the readers, says that up until the fifteenth century 'the material and intellectual forces of society all converged on that one point: architecture,' and that 'whoever was then born a poet became an architect,' because

architecture was the principal registered of mankind, that during that period all ideas of any complexity which arose in the world became a building. And why?Because every idea, be it religious or philosophical, is concerned to perpetuate itself, because the idea that has moved one generation wants to move others, and to leave some trace.

In the fifteenth century, Hugo states that everything changed: with the invention of the printing press ' the human mind discovered a means of perpetuating itself which was not only more lasting and resistant than architecture, but also simpler and easier...The book was to kill the building.' Yet this new means of perpetuating ideas did not possess the place-making qualities of the monument after which Hugo's story is named: ' In the days of architecture, thought had turned into a mountain and taken powerful hold of a century and of a place. Now it turned into a flock of birds and was scattered on the four winds occupying every point of air and space simultaneously.' Hugo goes on to tell what was to happen to architecture after this event:

And so you see how, starting with the discovery of printing, architecture gradually dried up, it atrophied, and was denuded...from the sixtheenth century on, architecture's malady became apparent; it was no longer the essential expression of society; it turned miserably into a classical art; once it had been Gallic, European, indigenous, now it became Greek and Roman; once it had been true and modern, now it became pseudo-antique. This was the decadence we call the Renaissance...It was the setting sun which we all take to be the dawn.

At this point in the narative all seem lost: 'Let there be no mistake, architecture is dead, dead beyond recall, killed by the printed book.' Yet in the very next paragraph, Hugo holds out a last hope with this strange prophesy: 'The great accident of an architect of genius might occur in the twentieth century just like that of Dante in the thirteenth'. In his paraphasing of this chapter in his 1901 lecture 'The Art and Craft of the Machine', Wright makes a revealing modification to Hugo's time table: 'if architecture rise again, reconstruct, as Hugo prophesies she may do in the latter days of the nineteenth century...' (author's emphasis). ......Did Wright, as is suggested by his change in Hugo's prophesy, to make it better fit his own biography, see himself as the 'architect of genius' who was to revive architecture? " (p.23,24,25)

I would say that with Fallingwater he was the heroic architect that revived the building. (His wonderful mother had alot to do with this heroic trait, but that is another story.)

I would also say that the revived building after Wright was short lived and is now in delirium.

Will it be the book that is going to revive the building this time?

Kien

[Charlotte Corday]

You are right and  it was  more than that:

By 1934 he had done hundreds of houses, many foreshadowing  Fallingwater in Form. It was a House looking for the correct site and found it at Bear Run. There was a definite progression of the Prarie Houses in plan and elevations  that led to his magnum opus but also to his future works such as the Guggenheim Museum. . .

Fascinating! Thanks for sharing these insights into an American original.

[softwareNerd]

For anyone interested: one can stay a night in some Wright homes. The post links to homes in Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Michigan.