Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water sketched by Frederick Clifford Gibson

Fallingwater: Edgar J. Kaufmann, Sr., Residence, Bear Run, Pennsylvania

"Fallingwater is a great blessing - one of the great blessings to be experienced here on earth. I think nothing yet ever equalled the coordination, sympathic expression of the great principle of repose where forest and stream and rock and all the elements of structure are combined so quietly that really you listen not to any noise whatsoever although the music of the stream is there. But you listen to Fallingwater the way you listen to the quiet of the country ...."
Frank Lloyd Wright

View of Main Entry

August 20, 1989

"Aside from his own Taliesin Fellowship Complex, Wright had seen only two of his projects constructed over a period of almost eight years, from 1928 to 1935. Then, when the architect was sixty-nine, came Fallingwater, the Johnson Administration Building, and the Usonian home concept all in one year, and Wingspread a year later. Fallingwater is perhaps the best-known private home for someone not of royal blood in the history of the world. Perched over a waterfall deep in the Pennsylvania highlands, it seems part of the rock formations to which it clings. Reinforced-concrete cantilever slabs project from the rock band to carry the house over the stream. From the square living room, one can step directly down a suspended stairway to the stream. Immediately above, on the third level, terraces open from sleeping quarters, emphasizing the horizontal nature of the structural forms; "the apotheosis of the horizontal" it has been called and is one of seventeen buildings designed by Wright that has been designated by the AIA to be retained as an example of his architectural contribution to American culture. Three years separated design of the main house and the guesthouse. The Western Pennsylvania Conservancy conducts guided tours during most of the year, except the cold winter months; reservations are advised." [TAFW]

Form Dynamics Study

1990

Form Dynamics Study Detail

1990

Falling Water Resources

All-Wright Site - FLlW Building Guide - Pennsylvania: Featuring

References

OED	Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press 1971
	ARCHITECTURE
AHA	A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals, Spiro Kostof, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford, 1985
FCG	Frederick Clifford Gibson, Architect
FWM1	Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1887-1901, vol. 1, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM2	Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1902-1906, vol. 2, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM3	Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1907-1913, vol. 3, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM4	Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1914-1923, vol. 4, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM5	Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1924-1936, vol. 5, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM6	Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1937-1941, vol. 6, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM7	Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1942-1950, vol. 7, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM8	Frank Lloyd Wright: Monograph 1951-1959, vol. 8, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM9	Frank Lloyd Wright: Preliminary Studies 1889-1916, vol. 9, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM10	Frank Lloyd Wright: Preliminary Studies 1917-1932, vol. 10, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM11	Frank Lloyd Wright: Preliminary Studies 1933-1959, vol. 11, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
FWM12	Frank Lloyd Wright: In His Renderings 1887-1959, vol. 12, Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, A.D.A. Edita, Tokyo Co., Ltd, 1985
MA	Modern Architecture since 1900, William J R Curtis, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs (Phaidon Press Ltd., Oxford), New Jersey, 1982
OTAB	On The Art of Building in Ten Books, Leon Battista Alberti, translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, Robert Tavernor, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1472.
PGA	Simon and Schuster's Pocket Guide to Architecture, Patrick Nuttgens, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1980.
SCEA	Santiago Calatrava, Engineering Architecture, Santiago Calatrava, Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel-Boston-Berlin, 1990.
SCCW	Santiago Calatrava: Complete Works, Sergio Polano, Electa, Milan, 1996
TAFW	The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright: A Complete Catalog, William Allin Storrer, The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA & London, England, 1982
TAI	The Autobiography of an Idea, Louis H. Sullivan, Dover Publications, Inc, New York, 1924.
TNH	The Natural House, Frank Llyod Wright, New American Library, New York, 1970.
VTBA	Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture, Vitruvius, Morris Hicky Morgan, PH.D., LL.D. trans., Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1914
	PHILOSOPHY
CWA	The Complete Works of Aristotle (in two volumes), by Aristotle (Ed. Jonathan Barnes), Princeton / Bollingen Serries LXXI, 1984
ABW	Basic Works of Aristotle, by Aristotle (Richard McKein), Random House, April 1941
A	Aristotle, by John Hermann Randall, Jr., Columbia University Press, New York, 1960.
AP	Aristotle: Poetics, with the Tracatus Coislinianus, reconstruction of Poetics II, and the fragments of the On Poets, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), Richard Janko trans., Hackett Publishing Company, Indianapolis / Cambridge, 1987
ACPR	Aristotle's Criticism of Plato's Republic, by Robert Mayhew, Rowman & Littlefield, 1997.
ECHU	An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, by John Locke (Roger Woolhouse), Penguin Classics, 1689 (1998 reprint)
CUI	Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966), Ayn Rand
FNI	For the New Intellectual (1961), Ayn Rand
GS	Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged (1957), Ayn Rand
ITOE	Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1979), Ayn Rand
OP	The Ominous Parallels (1982), Leonard Peikoff
OPAR	Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1991), Leonard Peikoff
PWNI	Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982), Ayn Rand
RM	The Romantic Manifesto (1975), Ayn Rand
VOS	The Virtue of Selfishness : A New Concept of Egoism (1964), Ayn Rand
	PHOTO CREDITS
MW	Michael Wilkinson

RESOURCES