Search
Close this search box.

Fallingwater – most famous US architect of 20th century, weekend residence of elegant simplicity

Fallingwater, weekend residence near Mill Run, southwestern Pennsylvania in the Unites States – designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright for the Kaufmann family in 1935 and completed in 1937, is possibly the most famous U.S. architect of the 20th century.

The Prairie style of building features long, low structures in natural materials with roofs seeming to float unsupported above the walls.

By the time he designed what may be his most famous work, Fallingwater, his style was beginning to evolve.

In 1935 Edgar J. Kaufmann, a Pittsburgh department-store owner, hired Wright to design a vacation house for his family near Mill Run, in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania.

The Kaufmanns loved a wooded area where a stream turns into a waterfall, and they wanted their house to reflect the beauty of the site. They were unprepared, however, for Wright’s suggestion that the house be built over the waterfall itself, allowing its inhabitants to live within the scenery rather than simply to observe it.

Turning this idea into reality was a formidable feat of engineering. Anchored by limestone verticals and a huge stone chimney at the rear, horizontal concrete planes cantilever out over the water, mirroring the shapes of the rocks 30 feet (9 m) below. Walls of glass emphasize the lack of boundaries between interior and forest.

Fallingwater, completed in 1939, is a house of new ideas, with significant risks taken to achieve a unique and timeless piece of architecture.

Wright created a building of elegant simplicity, ideally suited to the serenity of its setting, and one that fully embodied his client’s empathy with the landscape it occupies.

Source: Azerbaijan State News Agency