Fallingwater

Frank Lloyd Wright is America’s most famous architect.  His life spanned 90 years, and, in that time, he created an American style in architecture that even influenced the best  European builders of the 20^th century. Wright was good, and he knew it—he was renowned for his ego, and his feisty temperament. But no one could fault the beauty and drama of his buildings, especially his masterpiece, Fallingwater, created in 1936, at Bear Run, Pennsylvania.

We might expect such a spectacular building to be designed by a young man, but it wasn’t.  Wright designed Fallingwater when he was almost 70.  Fallingwater showcased Wright’s skills and ushered in the most productive and original phase of his career. In 1938, Fallingwater even made the cover of Time Magazine.

Wright’s work fits into no known style. Instead, he created his own style, which he named ORGANIC architecture.  Wright was a romantic advocate of architecture that was natural and that echoed the landscape.  For Wright, organic architecture should incorporate: 

• designs based on nature
• natural building materials
• And, architectural plans that integrate buildings with nature 

A classic example of organic architecture, Fallingwater is both integrated into the landscape and designed to echo the shapes of the landscape where it is nestled.  This dynamic building is suspended over a falls, which pours down from underneath one of Wright’s bold projecting terraces.  The building seems to grow out of the landscape.  And, in fact, it actually does. Wright allows a boulder from the site to penetrate the floor of the house, so that the natural rock foundation actually merges with the interior of the house.  This boulder forms the living room fireplace. With this design element, Wright blends rock, fire and water.  

Wright embeds his building supports into solid rock and even manages to build around nature, totally integrating his structure into the natural landscape. For instance, Wright actually built around a tree, incorporating the tree into the design of his building. 

As part of his creed of organic architecture, Wright also used natural materials to build  Fallingwater. He opened a quarry directly at the site, so that the stone used in the house is local. Both inside and outside, Wright's’ materials are native to the area. This does not mean he shunned modern building materials or engineering, however—seen as he incorporates bold, projecting terraces into his design. These echo the rocky landscape, but are made of reinforced concrete. The concrete terraces are reinforced with steel beans, allowing Wright to make two of them cantilevers, a term that refers to an architectural projection supported only on one end. The development of cantilevers was one of Wright’s major contributions to modern architecture.  

Fallingwater was built for Edgar Kaufman, a rich Pittsburgh department store owner who could afford Wright’s plans.  The boldness of Wright’s design and the forceful projection of his proposed 18-foot cantilevered terraces, however, made Kaufman nervous.  He sent Wright’s plans to an engineer, who was convinced Wright’s design would not support the house. When Wright found out that Kaufman had contacted an outside engineer, Wright angrily demanded his plans back—he told Kaufman that he did not deserve this house!  Giving in to Wright, Kaufman told his contractor and engineer to go ahead with Wright’s design. It is even said that Kaufman buried the engineer’s report under one of the stones in the walls of Fallingwater. Still, the contractor did not trust the reinforced concrete cantilevers, so he added extra steel to the cantilevered terraces, which caused them to sag from the extraneous weight. Nevertheless, today Wright’s cantilevered terraces hover in space like the rock ledges that support them from below, achieving a total integration of the building with its landscape setting. 

Wright also integrates Fallingwater into the natural environment around the building by creating a flowing integration of internal and external space. His massive terraces, lunging into space like rocky outcroppings, open up into the environment and provide a living area without a roof. Kaufman’s family could go on the terraces and be both outside and inside at the same time. Wright had done the impossible: He created a human shelter that was one with nature. 

The extreme union of human habitat and natural world is visible in the stairs that are suspended directly over the falls.  These stairs go nowhere—they simply allow people to experience the falls and be in direct contact with nature.  Kaufman didn’t really want these stairs, because they were costly to add to the house. As you can see, Mr. Wright got his stairs.  That is not to say that Wright couldn’t accommodate the needs of his clients, if he found those needs reasonable—and if they did not compromise his design. For example, Kaufman remarked that the desk Wright had designed for him was too small—too small even to write a check on, he complained (and it did seem Kaufman was in need of writing a lot of checks to his architect).  So, Wright extended the desk, but cut into it to allow for the adjacent window to open.  This allowed Wright to eliminate the corner of the room by filling it with glass, which eased the feeling of being locked into a box, a shape which Wright objected to in many traditional home designs. It was possible to make changes in Wright’s plans, then, if the changes were part of Wright’s overall vision, allowing for a union of humans and the natural world, experienced through organic architecture. 

Today, Fallingwater is open to the public.  You can visit this American monument yourself and understand what Wright’s vision was all about.  To arrange a visit, go online and click on the official site for Fallingwater at  http://www.wpconline.org/fallingwaterhome.htm.

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