A Masterpiece in Pennsylvania: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater

At first glance Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece in Bear Run, Pennsylvania, had an overpowering presence of aesthetically unpleasant concrete. Before I saw the house, I had wondered how well this man made material would blend with nature. Concrete, for me, belongs to the city and construction of tall buildings and parking garages. I found Wright’s choice to use this material in his organic architecture very peculiar. My expectation for the behavior of cement that loosens up overtime and falls in patches was met as well. Falling Water showed its structural weaknesses right after the Kaufmann family moved into it, and since then it had been under constant repair and strengthening. Then what makes this house one of the architectural masterpieces of the 20^th century?

The design and its experimental innovations are responsible for the success of this building that incorporated nature and the understanding of human spirit into it. The knowledge of how space effects human reaction guides the visitor through the house. From the outside the concrete terraces’ multiple layers of horizontal lines are balanced with the strong vertical of the center mass, made of local stone, ensuring the flow between nature and the house. This vertical line guides our sights up to the trees and further up into the sky. The curiously low railings of the terraces are careful not to come between nature and the inhabitants of the house.  Wright did not want people to view nature, with his designs he wanted them to blend with it.

 

Today when visiting Fallingwater it is very hard to look at it as a family house.  Through the years it assumed the feel of a museum with a visitor center, docents and guiding histories. Just like the Hermitage in St. Petersburg or the Louvre in Paris, Fallingwater was transformed from once being a dwelling of a family into rooms that showcase something extraordinary that once was the personal object of the Kauffmann’s and today is called art. like in museums, at Fallingwater the rooms are embellished with precious objects. Two Picassos, two Diego Riveras, six Japanese prints, gift of Frank Lloyd Wright to the Kaufmann family, Buddhist and Hindi sculptures and built in furniture complements the rooms, without crowding the space. A portrait painting of the owner, Edgar G. Kaufman, and few family photos attempt to take the visitor back in time to picture the lively atmosphere of the house filled with distinguished guests like Einstein, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Still, the group tour ruins the real experience of the house that graciously flows into a waterfall. 

As you enter the house stone becomes the dominant material, conveying strength and sturdiness.  The bare, uneven stone walls make you feel like you are in a temple, fort or an old sacred place. The narrow corridors involuntarily hurry you up to get from one room to the other, which was exactly what Wright intended. The ceilings of the rooms are strangely low, especially in the private rooms; they almost make the visitor feel claustrophobic. By keeping the ceiling low and using the same stone for the inside and outside floors, Wright wanted to direct the eyes to nature, his favorite subject, and invite the people of the house out to the balconies.  He designed his and her room with separate bathrooms but with very similar features.  All rooms have fire places, simple modernly streamlined furniture and shelving that veneered with dark walnut throughout the house. The repetition of design elements and materials Wright used throughout the three floors of the main building, the guest house and also the servants’ quarter provide a flow from room to room, floor to floor, building to building, tying them meticulously together.

Wright not only designed the house but also the tables, the cabinets, the settees, the lamps and thus created an architectural fluency between the house and its fixtures. The wrap around windows, open space of the living room and dining room with its colorful, ocher, cream and orange Japanese like seating arrangement (most likely influenced by Wright’s long stay in Japan while building the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo) and clean cut desks, tables and cabinets are strikingly futuristic to be made in the late 1930s. Fallingwater could easily be a residency of a 21^st century family who would appreciate a stroll amongst the rhododendrons and the sounds of falling water while having a drink on the terraces as much as the Kaufmanns did 70 years ago.