FALLINGWATER

The house hanging over a waterfa ll

FR ANK LLOYD WRIGHT, 1963-66

There is a story told that when Frank Lloyd Wright was given the Wright’s architectural idea, expressed in words, was to mark
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commission for Fallingwater by Edgar Kaufmann he drew nothing a place for a fire on the rocks beside a waterfall and to let a house,
for nine months (see McCarter, 2002). Then he invited the client to composed of rectangular horizontal planes, grow from that hearth
see the design for his new weekend house, and proceeded to over the water. This idea was the basis for a negotiation, played out
complete sketch design drawings, from which the built house hardly on the paper on Wright’s drawing board, between the conditions
deviated, in the two hours while Kaufmann was driving to see him. presented by the site and the desires associated with a place to live.
If this is true, it is evidence that Wright had a clear architectural idea This is what an architect does: comes up with an idea by which the
for how the house should be composed, and that what he did, while desires contained in a design brief might be reconciled with their
his client was driving to see him, was apply that idea as a mediator conditions, physical and otherwise. The idea emerges neither from
between the site and the brief for a weekend house. the brief nor from the site but from the architect’s imagination.

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 TWENTY BUILDINGS every architect should understand

rocky outcrop
roadway
boulder
old dry stone wall
entrance
boulder
oak tree
rock ledge
Bear Run

bridge
waterfall

another rock ledge

1 site

Identification of place; using things that are there rocky outcrop with an old dry stone wall between it and the rock
ledge; on and immediately to the west of the rock ledge there are
In architecture, the first decision is to choose a site. Sometimes large boulders; the sun shines into this clearing surrounded by
while wandering through the countryside one encounters places – a trees on the sloping sides of the river valley. One of the boulders
clearing in the woods, a ledge of rock alongside a stream, a recess in stands like an altar near the centre of gravity of the rock ledge.
a cliff face with a view of the sea – that seem to invite one to set-tle, Two trees stand as sentinels marking an entrance onto the rock
if only for a moment. Whereas most parts of the countryside ledge from the roadway. On the opposite bank of the river there
– pathways, open moors, beaches – tend to keep one moving, such is another rock ledge – a place from which to admire the
settling places seem to invite one to stop. Maybe they do this because waterfall with the site of Fallingwater as its backdrop. Not only
they offer a sense of protection, enclosure, a refuge; maybe they are is this site like a Japanese garden, it is a theatre too, with a stage
light, warmed by the sunshine; maybe they offer a viewpoint, from – the rock ledge – ready for a performance.
which to enjoy a prospect. Recognising and inter-relating with such Wright began his architectural performance with a camp fire on
places is a fundamental act of architecture. Identification of place is the the top of the ‘altar’ boulder, making it into a hearth (2). This was the
conceptual seed from which architecture grows. germ of the seed from which the rest of the house grew in this particular
The site on which Fallingwater was built (1) must have place. The boulder provided the foundation for the focus of the house
seemed such a place to Frank Lloyd Wright. In the sense that one and for the chimney stack that would be its structural support and
can make sense of it as a place to be, untouched except by the mind, symbolic centre. Around this hearth Wright constructed artificial
it is a work of architecture in itself. (Architecture as identification of versions of the natural rock ledge – adding strata to the geol-ogy of the
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place does not necessarily entail building.) With its bridge, water, site – concrete slabs cantilevered out over the river. These slabs provide
trees and rocks it is also reminiscent of a Japanese garden. the horizontal surfaces for the living accommodation and the outdoor
(Throughout his career Wright was interested in and influenced by terraces of the house. From the main living floor a suspended stair
Japanese architecture and garden design. See Nute, 2002.) descends to a small platform just above the level of the water. Wright
This place in the woods of south-west Pennsylvania has some key retained the two sentinel trees; the entrance into the house is between
elements: first there is an almost horizontal slab of rock (labelled ‘rock them. The old dry stone wall at the back of the site is replaced with a
ledge’ in 1); across this slab of rock flows the river – Bear Run series of fragmented but parallel walls. The last of these, rising the slope
– which falls from its edge as a waterfall; the river flows from under of the roadway, butts up against a boulder. In these ways the house is
a bridge that leads onto an old roadway; the roadway runs along a tied into its site.

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Unwin, S 2010, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, Taylor & Francis Group, Florence. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [5 February 2024].
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 FALLINGWATER

entrance
hearth

platform

Geometry; temples and cottages identified by a precise location that can be defined by means of
numbers (see Analysing Architecture, pages 154-155). The grid
As is generally the case in Wright’s designs, the composition of is a device for making sense of space and irregularity.
Fallingwater in plan is governed by a regular grid, in this case 5 In architecture a grid has more powers. It helps an architect
foot by 5 foot. Wright takes the orientation of the grid from that make decisions about the location of elements. By its regularity it
of the bridge, which is approximately 15 degrees west of north lends design a graphic integrity (maybe comparable to the rhythmic
(3). As part of the project the original wooden bridge was integrity lent to a piece of music by its beat). On a site like this one
reconstructed 15 feet wide. by Bear Run it imposes an orthogonal layer that is abstract and
A grid is powerful in mathematics and geography because quintessentially human (intellectual) upon the irregular (natural)
points may be plotted on it and given coordinates – X and Y – i.e. topography. It measures the world for the architect. It begins the

hearth
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Unwin, S 2010, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, Taylor & Francis Group, Florence. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [5 February 2024].
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 TWENTY BUILDINGS every architect should understand

kitchen

front door
hearth

process of adding a different kind of architecture to that which a to come on a half grid line. The stairs down to the water platform
mind recognises as already present in the natural layout of a site. It occupy one square’s width. The kitchen is three squares wide, and
adds a geometry that can be attuned to both the geometry of making its doorway is positioned with its centre on a grid line.
and to the ideal geometry of squares and rectangles proportioned Another aspect of the way in which Wright uses the grid in this
according to simple and special ratios. If the ruler, or scale rule, is instance is that although it imposes discipline, he allows that discipline
the architect’s equivalent of a magician’s wand (because both the to interact with (rather than ignore) the topography. Hence the grid
rule and wand are instruments of power) then the grid is a prime begins with the altar boulder and accommodates the hearth
agent of the rule; it helps an architect perform magic.
There are many, perhaps infinite, ways in which a grid might be
used in laying out a plan. When great tracts of the flat lands of North
America were laid out as real estate they were merely divided into
simple rectangles (until the curvature of the earth disrupted this simple
strategy). The Greek architect and city planner Hippodamus, when he
laid out the city of Miletus (2, on the west coast of modern Turkey),
imposed a regular grid on the irregular topography of a promontory,
with the result that straight alleys pass up and down the hilly terrain.
Something similar happens in Manhattan, New York. Wright however
plays a different game. At Fallingwater the grid is there only as a ghost.
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Wright uses it selectively, to give his design discipline. You can see
from the drawing above (1) that the hearth on its boulder occupies two
of the squares in width but, according to the published drawings, not
quite a full square in its depth. Some of the walls have one face on a grid
line, others have the other; yet others are centred on a grid line. The
entrance sequence occupies a zone two squares wide and the front door
of the house, with its three steps down, is one square wide. The extent of
the terraces on this level are determined by grid lines, except the western
most end seems 2

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Unwin, S 2010, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, Taylor & Francis Group, Florence. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [5 February 2024].
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 FALLINGWATER

structural rhythm

dining
table

with its chimney stack. The staggered walls of the house along the shadows under the lowest slab there are some buttresses helping to
roadway, whilst obeying the orthogonal grid, also relate to the line support its outrageous cantilever (5). These buttresses are spaced at two
of the old dry stone wall. The lines of the external walls step in right and a half grid squares apart, i.e. 12 foot 6 inches. One centre line comes
angles linking the house to its bridge, formalising the natural line of under the hearth (3), treating the ‘altar’ boulder as a structural support
the river bank. The cantilevered terraces stretch out to the very brink for the chimney stack; the next is under the open space of the living area
of the waterfall. The stairs descend to the middle of the river. This is coinciding with that of the built-in dining table; a third lines up with the
intellectual sense and discipline in interplay with natural features. top of the stairs down to the water; and a fourth with the wall alongside
The architect is responding to opportunities at the same time as the entrance. This structural rhythm, to continue the musical analogy,
imposing order. The result is a plan in which human-determined counterpoints that of the spatial grid of 5 foot squares. The result is a
walls and natural features are in complex harmony (3); neither one complex interplay of ideal geometry and natural topography. In the Villa
nor the other prevails. The person – the inhabitant of this house – Rotonda for example (see Analysing Architecture, pages 160-161) the
lives and moves within and around this subtle frame. ideal geometry of the building is, apart from its orientation, independent
The south elevation of Fallingwater (4) shows that the house of the setting. In Stoneywell Cottage (Analysing Architecture, page 72)
has another rhythm to it, that of the structure. Hidden in the the building’s
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buttress

4 elevation 5 section

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Unwin, S 2010, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, Taylor & Francis Group, Florence. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [5 February 2024].
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 TWENTY BUILDINGS every architect should understand

path up to guest house (built later)

bed

master
bed bed

1 upper floor

form is strongly influenced by its setting, though there is an on the middle level, and the study on the top level; the rooms on
interplay between the irregular topography and the building’s all levels open to the south and sun; all have external terraces;
geometry of making. These two buildings represent the ‘temple’ and all are screened from the roadway by the staggered and
the ‘cottage’ type in terms of the different attitudes to setting they fragmented parallel walls. Otherwise, within these rules, the
manifest. The distinction is not so easy to decide in the case of form of the house varies at each level like a formalised,
Fallingwater; it is both ‘temple’ and ‘cottage’, or neither. geometrically regular, version of a geological rock formation.
The 5-foot square grid disciplines the upper floors too (1 and
2). Each floor plan is far from identical. Wright changes the layout Conclusion: some notes on influences
radically on each level, though he does follow some rules, in
addition to adhering to the discipline of the orthogonal grid. For If the composition of Fallingwater is simplified into its component
example: the chimney stack rises vertically through all floors, a planes (3) it is easy to see its relation to 1920s Neo-Plastic ideas as
datum and reference point for each; attached to the chimney stack is expressed, for example, in Theo van Doesburg’s spatial studies (see
a ‘tower’ containing the kitchen on the living level, a bedroom page 36) or Gerrit Rietveld’s Schröder House in Utrecht, Nether-

study
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2 top floor

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Unwin, S 2010, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, Taylor & Francis Group, Florence. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [5 February 2024].
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 FALLINGWATER

3 4

lands (4). Fallingwater is less abstract than van Doesburg’s studies. It is later house are more complex and site related. The idea of the
more tied into the world. Its planes to the south emphasise the horizontal central hearth has poetic connotations – emphasising the idea of
strata of the rocks and of human movement; they open to the sun. home. It also refers to traditional architecture, maybe even that
Fallingwater is also more thoroughly three-dimensional than the of Wales (6 ), from which Wright claimed ancestry.
Schröder House; in the latter the planes seem like scales attached to a But perhaps the most significant influences in Fallingwater are
box, whereas in Wright’s design the planes stretch right through the those Wright acquired from Japan. As Kevin Nute has shown (Nute,
building, vertically as well as horizontally, and out into the landscape. 1993) these influenced Wright’s architecture throughout his career; and
The Neo-Plasticists were influenced by the publication of a portfolio of Wright lived in Tokyo from 1916 to 1922. It is from Japan that Wright
Wright’s designs in Berlin in 1911 (available on the Internet at the acquired the idea of in-between space (discussed in the analysis of Mies
University of Utah’s Marriot Library – www.lib.utah. van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House) as exemplified in the terraces and
edu/portal/site/marriottlibrary/) which included his designs for the overhanging roofs of the Prairie Houses and of Fall-ingwater. It was in
Prairie Houses such as the Ward Willits House (1901, 5) so it could be Japan that Wright saw subtle interplay between the regularity of human
argued that in Fallingwater Wright was influenced by a European constructions and the irregularity of natural forms. This is evident in the
development of his own earlier architectural ideas. relationship between Fallingwater and its site, as discussed earlier in this
The projecting planes of Fallingwater are clearly a develop- analysis, and in the way that the irregular top of the ‘altar’ boulder,
ment from those of the Ward Willits House, though those of the which is the hearth of the living
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5 6

13
5

Unwin, S 2010, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, Taylor & Francis Group, Florence. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [5 February 2024].
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 TWENTY BUILDINGS every architect should understand

1 2 ‘thin mist shelves’, similar to the way in which mist is

depicted in traditional Japanese painting

space, penetrates through the floor like an island through the surface
of water. This device is reminiscent of Japanese Zen rock gardens
and of the introduction of gnarled pieces of timber into otherwise
regular Japanese rooms (1, from Morse, 1886). Japanese designers
also played with compositions of horizontal planes, as in the so-
called usu kasumi dana or ‘thin mist shelves’ and small garden
bridges (2 and 3, also from Morse). Fallingwater is a bridge that
stretches across Bear Run but does not touch the other side. Perhaps 3
Wright also thought of it as early morning mist caught between the
sides of the narrow valley. Certainly he was striving to achieve the
sensitivity to human aesthetic sensibility and wit, and their relation
to nature, evident in traditional Japanese architecture (4).
Traditionally Japanese architects and garden designers were References and other relevant publications, websites, broadcasts:
interested in creating pleasing compositions that could be viewed
either through the rectangular openings of buildings or from par- There is a computer-generated video of Fallingwater at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CVKU3ErrGM
ticular viewpoints. At Fallingwater Wright had steps specially cut to
William J.R. Curtis – ‘The Architectural System of Frank Lloyd
provide a way down to the rock ledge on the other side of Bear Run. Wright’, in Modern Architecture Since 1900, Phaidon, Oxford, 1987.
The classic photographs of the house are taken from this point. It Grant Hildebrand – The Wright Space: Pattern and Meaning in Frank
Lloyd Wright’s Houses, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1991.
was as if Wright was standing back to admire his own work in its
Donald Hoffmann – Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture and Nature,
setting, and offering others an opportunity to do so too. Dover, New York, 1986.
Donald Hoffmann – Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: the House
and its History (1978), Dover, New York, 1993.
Donald Hoffmann – Understanding Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Architecture, Dover, New York, 1995.
Edgar Kaufmann and Ben Raeburn – Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings
and Buildings, Meridian, New York, 1960.
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Edgar Kaufmann – Fallingwater, Abbeville Press, New York, 1986.

Robert McCarter – Fallingwater: Frank Lloyd Wright,
Phaidon (Architecture in Detail Series), London, 2002.
Edward S. Morse – Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings
(1886), Dover, New York, 1961.
Kevin Nute – Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan, Routledge, London, 1993.
Frank Lloyd Wright – An Autobiography (The Frank Lloyd Wright
Foundation, 1932, 1943, 1977), Quartet Books, London, 1977.
Frank Lloyd Wright – The Future of Architecture (1953), Meridian, New
York, 1970.
Bruno Zevi – The Modern Language of Architecture, University of
4 Washington Press, Seattle, 1978.

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Unwin, S 2010, Twenty Buildings Every Architect Should Understand, Taylor & Francis Group, Florence. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central. [5 February 2024].
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