[Fallingwater: fall photo]
View from lookout, downstream. Frank Lloyd Wright planned the house with this particular view in mind.
Notice that the warm glow from the interior lighting resonates with the autumn colors in this fall photo. Dramatic cantilevered terraces reflect the similar structure of the rock ledges below. Roomy terraces on either side of the living room on the main level, as well as the large terrace above it, create strong horizontal lines balanced by the almost unbroken vertical lines in the tower on the left (which in addition to stone columns over 10 meters tall, has 3 stories of floor-to-ceiling windows). These and many other clear horizontal and vertical lines in the house may be compared with the formation of the rock, with the horizontal and vertical of ground and trees, and with the water moving horizontally in the stream (Bear run) and vertically as "falling water" in the form of waterfalls (visible in the photo and downstream just out of view in this photo). The falls visible in the photo break at an angle, creating an illusion of water flowing out from beneath the middle of the house. The sound of the flowing water fills the house continuously.
      There is no grand front entrance, if that means big double doors flanked by decorations and symbolizing the barrier between outside and inside. Rather, the continuity of inside and outside is emphasized, in keeping with the theme of a harmonious and natural relationship to the setting. Other examples of this, besides everything mentioned above, include windows wrapping all the way around 3 sides of the huge living room, and at the corners where two window panes meet - here and at other places in the house such as the west tower (as well as in other Frank Lloyd Wright houses) - there are no bulky vertical support beams.

Why does a house designed by an architectural individualist for the special purposes of a special client appeal so much to the public in general? And what does it contribute to the art of architecture if its character is so circumscribed? One part of the answer is that Fallingwater is a happy flowering of Frank Lloyd Wright's genius, a great work of art. Yet underneath the effects of great art - however masterly and ingenious - there lies a consistency of the whole. To understand this quality one must consider those principles that guided the artist. In Wright's statements his principles are denoted by words embodying deep intuitions: organic, democratic, plasticity, continuity. During careful study of his texts and his architecture, I have come to believe that these terms present different aspects of one central insight. To Wright, architecture was a great inclusive agency through which humankind adapted the environment to human needs and, reciprocally, attuned human life to its cosmos; amid continual changes architecture could keep human life more natural and nature more humane. This idea pervades Fallingwater in accord with the aims of both architect and client, and gives it not only basic meaning but also powerful subliminal appeal.

- Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Fallingwater: A Frank Lloyd Wright Country House, p. 31.



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