Water and cantilevers

Yesterday the road led to Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s marvel of cantilevered terraces in Pennsylvania. The road was just narrow and meandering enough that, for a few minutes, I thought maybe the GPS was playing games with me. Before I tell you about the house though, I need to tell you that the fine print on the admission ticket says that I can’t post pictures on ANY website. So look quickly, as I expect to be told to take this down shortly.

In such carefully controlled tours, the quality of the docent can really make or break the visit. I’m happy to say that I got a good one, and a small group too. I will summarize the key points she shared: it was built in the ‘30s as a summer home for the Kaufmann family. Back then, a 3 bedroom house in Pittsburgh went for about $5K (!), and so the budget for this one was set at $30K. Three years and $150K later, it was realized. In today’s money, that would be about $2 million – which might get you a sweet custom home with a chunk of land big enough to not hear the neighbor’s kid practice violin, but certainly not this.

The building is a cascading stack of terraces and levels built around a stone core. The cantilevered terraces began to sag almost immediately, and were recently retrofitted with tension cables to keep it all together. I had the misperception that the water side of the project, the Bear Run stream, went through the house rather than around and under it. The structure was intended to really be part of and respond to the natural surroundings. The Kaufmanns thought they were going to get a view of the stream out of a window. Instead they got the water flowing under the living room and a 270 degree view of the forest and stream from each terrace.

The walls of the terraces were slung low enough to make one of my tour-mates remark upon the safety aspect. Yes, the walls were low, but not that low. Rather than worry about the potential for a fall, I found it delightful to be looking at the results of aesthetic judgment that had not been spoiled with the raised fencing and warning signage usually demanded by the legal department.

The inside of the building was made to make you want to go outside. Every room has a terrace of its own (even the servants’ quarters), and the low slung ceilings were designed to push you outside. There are no window coverings. The personal spaces are small and cozy, the master suite just big enough for the bed and a chair. The communal spaces are expansive, yet designed to foster intimate groupings through changes in ceiling height and placement of furniture. FLW designed most of the interiors too, and so there are sofas, desks and shelves that cantilever from the walls to mimic the terraces. While I’m grateful that it is being conserved and is available for visits from mere mortals like me, the fact that it no longer is truly lived in leaves me feeling a little bittersweet.

FLW designed this in his sixties, and went on to see two hundred more of his designs built before his death. Nice career.

(Image made on iPhone4 with Pano app)