Fallingwater House at Pennsylvania
“Widely considered Frank Llyod Wright’s greatest masterpiece, Fallingwater hangs over a waterfall and its cantilevered design echoes its surroundings. The house was built near the community of Ohiopyle for Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr. in 1932. It is now open to the public.”
-Quote from PENNSYLAVANIA by Whitecap Books Ltd pg 52
This is a spectacular place with waterfall, greens, forests, clean air…amazing. I really like this. Imagine this was built in 1932 and yet now in 2011 it is still timeless and the architecture is still very nice and modern looking. I stayed in a Temple in Thailand for a month. Our house was built over a river. So you hear the sound of calming water 24 hours a day. Very soothing. I really loved staying in that temple so much. This house reminds of that place. Tsem Rinpoche
A true master piece indeed, from a master of architecture.
Music has Bach, Mozart or Verdi; architecture has Frank Lloyd Wright.
It is said the man had a huge ego, but every single one of his project was about the project, not about his ego. I think he just knew what to do and used his personality, charisma and sometimes power to get his vision done without compromise. He did what had to be done and bruised a few egos on the way, so who had an ego problem there?? Uuuuhhh…..
Frank Lloyd Wright was an out-cast most his life, not accepted by the mainstream of architects, not recognized even. He transformed his office into a school (TALIESIN) where students would move in and live into the community, part of the curriculum of studying architecture was cleaning duties, cooking duties, and also music and singing. Those that graduated from this school found it sometimes hard to find a job, because most of the “established” architects dis-regarded FLW’s work and methods and tried to under-mine his work.
Regardless of the views from the “intelligentsia”, FLW was revered by numerous architects that would follow his footsteps and become famous on their own ground, such as Richard Neutra, Rudolf Schindler or John Lautner.
FLW published the drawings of many of his houses and they became the blue-prints for an incalculable number of houses throughout the USA. When we look at his early work we find nothing remarkable about it, because it was copied widely 20, 30 years later and even today! And so we got used to it. But some of the owners of his early houses had to face bad-mouth comments from their neighbors, some even moved out of houses that have now become landmarks…
This house was built as a week-end house for the parents of one of his students, and it was FLW would decided to install it ON the waterfall, and created something rather un-expected from the client. The client loved it nevertheless and never parted from it until it became a place for all to visit.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing this master-piece with us!
I have always loved this house from Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright is one of my favourite Architects of all time. I collect many of his books because I love looking at his houses, or houses in general.
Wright always said that, “Form follows function – that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.”
My other favourite quote from Wright, “Freedom is from within.”
Wright had always believed that architects should be poets and he was also philosophical.
Other than America, Wright’s architectural works can also be seen in Japan. Although many of the buildings are dwindling now. Wright had a great fascination with Japan.
Japan is the only nation outside of America in which Wright lived and worked, but his imprint there has been endangered by the loss of those with firsthand knowledge, and the casual destruction of historic buildings, documents and artifacts. In 2005, marking the centenary of Wright’s first visit to Japan in 1905, the nonprofit Wrightian Architectural Archives Japan (WAAJ) was founded to ensure that his legacy of innovative, organic design would live on.
Just to share that Angelina Jolie gave a birthday surprise gift for Brad Pitt last December by taking him to ‘experience’ the Fallingwater House. It is also Brad Pitt’s favourite house. There is a nice picture of the couple against the house in winter snow.
From http://www.paconserve.org/brad-angelina.htm -
Angelina Jolie Takes Brad Pitt to Fallingwater
for His Birthday
Just before 3 p.m. on December 7, Brad Pitt got his birthday gift from Angelina Jolie as the most famous couple in the world arrived in snowy Mill Run, Pa to tour Fallingwater.
“He’s so hard to buy for,” Jolie told Fallingwater’s staff members during their visit to Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterwork.
“Brad said he had wanted to experience Fallingwater ever since he took an architectural history course in college,” Fallingwater’s Curator of Education Cara Armstrong said. “He and I talked quite a bit about design and art. He was incredibly well informed about architecture.”
The couple took a two-hour private focused tour of Fallingwater, led by Armstrong, who described the couple as “very gracious and very engaged in the house. As we say in the midwest, you could tell their mothers raised them right.”
“Brad said he had a visual sense of Fallingwater but experiencing it in person, hearing the sound of the waterfall cascading under the house and smelling the wood from the fireplace, was better than anything he could have imagined,” Armstrong said. During their visit, both Pitt and Jolie commented on the beauty of the winter landscape of the Laurel Highlands, where Fallingwater is located.
Beautiful architecture, serene, fresh, soothing & refreshing (sounds of water cascading beneath), natural. A great home to relax, unwind, contemplate….