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[Fallingwater main house from low angle near waterfall]
View from a low angle, near the main waterfall, from southwest.
Right above the waterfall is the south end of the living room. The cantilevered levels and terraces as well as the stone walls echo the ledges below, giving an impression of the house being an organic part of the rock formations and that the house "fits" in its natural setting. The soaring vertical tower (center-left in the photo) rises more than three stories, windows stretching from floor to ceiling, creating a continuous column of glass, broken only by narrow steel support beams, painted an earthy brick-red. The tower serves as a visual and literal anchor for the cantilevered floors and the terraces that extend them further. While the vertical and horizontal lines demarcate the geometry of the house and its boundaries, there is at the same time an interpenetration of vertical and horizontal, and of inside and outside. There are many examples, but several are at least partly visible in the picture. Above the far terrace extending out from the living room is a trellis with large rectangular openings (visible in the far right of the photo). It extends out horizontally from the living room ceiling, but is vertically open to the sky. It seems to be paired with the stairs leading down to the stream from the living room through a hatchway; see the view from the east side of the living room. For other examples of harmonization of vertical and horizontal, and of inside and outside, see the explanation under the photo showing the beautiful fall photo of Fallingwater.
      The stream flows in front of the house, from right to left in the photo (and under part of the cantilevered living room and terraces), but breaks at an angle away from the house at the upper falls, creating the illusion of water flowing out from the house itself.
Photo by Figuura (GNU License)
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Without drawing on tradition, without relying on precedent, Fallingwater was created by Frank Lloyd Wright as a declaration that in nature man finds his spiritual as well as his physical energies, that a harmonious response to nature yields the poetry and joy that nourish human living.

- Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Fallingwater: A Frank Lloyd Wright Country House, p. 65.



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