FEATURE image: Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mill Run, Pennsylvania. March 2010. Author’s photograph.
Fallingwater was designed in 1935 as a weekend retreat for the Kaufmann family of Pittsburgh and completed in 1937. Fallingwater represents Frank Lloyd Wright’s most celebrated achievement in organic architecture, uniting modern design, engineering, and the natural landscape so completely that the house becomes part of the waterfall, forest, and rock ledge upon which it is built.
The video and photographs emphasize the drama of the cantilevered concrete terraces and their extraordinary relationship to the waterfall below.
Fallingwater is a house designed in 1935 by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959). It is in the Laurel Highlands of southwest Pennsylvania, about 70 miles away from downtown Pittsburgh.
The house was intended as a weekend retreat for the Edgar J. Kaufmann and family, owners of a Pittsburgh department store. The area of land had been a summer camp for the department store employees. Wright’s house, completed in 1937, is built partly over a waterfall on Bear Run, a tributary of the Youghiogheny River, in the Appalachians.
Rather than merely overlooking nature, the house is built directly over a waterfall on Bear Run in the Appalachian Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania.
Perched above Bear Run in rural Pennsylvania, Fallingwater transformed a private weekend retreat into the world’s most celebrated expression of Frank Lloyd Wright’s belief that architecture and nature should exist as one.
Bear Run is a tributary of the Youghiogheny River, in the Appalachians.
Fallingwater remained in the Kaufmann family until 1963. Inherited by Edgar Kaufmann Jr. in 1955 following his father’s death, he donated the home and its nearly 2,000 acres of surrounding natural habitat to a nonprofit trust called the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Since 1964, around 5 million visitors have made the pilgrimage to Fallingwater, one of America’s most famous modern homes. The house and grounds receive over 160,000 visitors each year.
The residence is a landmark of modern architecture and one of America’s most recognized houses.
Fallingwater is over 5000 square feet. The walls are constructed from local sandstone. The rocky landscape is incorporated into the home itself such as its main fireplace. Each bedroom has an individual terrace and there are a sea of windows that open outwards to nature. A glass hatch on the main level finds a short stairway that descends to Bear Run below.
Wright incorporated native stone, expansive terraces, abundant glazing, and natural rock formations into the design to blur the boundary between indoors and outdoors.
Wright designed Fallingwater’s furnishings, much of it built into the house. In 2002, Fallingwater’s foundation was reinforced to support the first floor’s concrete skeleton that began to sag. The 21st century reconstruction process prevented further collapse but the house had its first level’s original stone floor and built-in furniture taken out.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
