Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater in 1935 for the Kaufmann family, owners of a Pittsburgh department store. The house occupies a wooded site at Mill Run in southwestern Pennsylvania. Its position above a waterfall makes the stream and the surrounding land part of the experience of the building, rather than a distant view.
Local craftsmen quarried sandstone and other building materials from the property. Construction of the main house, guest house and service wing was complete by 1939. The project gives a particularly direct expression to Wright’s organic architecture, in which a building and its setting are conceived together. The Kaufmanns used the ensemble as a vacation retreat.
In 1963, Edgar Kaufmann jr. gave the house and 469 acres to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Public tours began the following year. The preservation of the original furnishings, artwork and natural setting allows the domestic and architectural ideas to be read together. Fallingwater therefore offers a record of the family’s life as well as an example of Wright’s approach to landscape.
Eames House, Pacific Palisades
