Fallingwater

Part of a series of technically informative monographs embracing a broad spectrum of internationally renowned buildings, this work deals with Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, and includes a comprehensive set of technical drawings and working details. Fallingwater is one of the most inventive houses of Wright's long career and one of 20th-century architecture's most celebrated landmarks. It is the building that revived Wright's reputation in the mid-1930s after years of critical neglect following his financial and domestic crises during the previous decade. Designed when Wright was in his 70s, it shows him to be an architect of immense resourcefulness and daring. Fallingwater was built for the Pittsburgh businessman Edgar J. Kaufman, whose Wright-designed office is preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum. The house was placed strategically above a waterfall in a deep ravine known as Bear Run. Its horizontal cantilevered floors and terraces soar free of apparent support above the cascades and pools of the stream. Walls are avoided almost entirely, the sense of shelter being provided by the overhangs and by screen-like windows detailed to enhance the building's vertical and horizontal rhythms. Within the house, the effects of dappled light, surrounding foliage and tumbling water exemplify Wright's attitudes towards integrating architecture and nature. Other work by the author includes "Building Machines" and "Frank Lloyd Wright: A Primer on Architectural Principles".