Told you I was going to get thematic. So today is all about Frank Lloyd Wright. Because even though it's difficult to imagine that you could distill the entire history and every instance of the American house into one building, it's true in the case of Falling Water. In my opinion it has to considered as the very definition of the American house.
But why?
While modern European architecture had been putting houses on stilts and pedestals, Wright was locking it into the landscape. Architecture wasn't an abstraction lifted above nature. But rather a system of integration within it. It's a theme which plays out in Wright's utopian green cities which are self sustaining, and which are further historically indicative of Jefferson's grid. Which rather than seeking to dominate nature, sought to organize it for efficiency. In general it's this integration with nature and it's metaphoric relationship to the notion of an agrarian nation which I think is so powerful and so American in Wright's work, and in this house in particular.
Stylistically the horizon is the obvious theme. His obsession with the horizontal to me always more broadly implied the westward expansion. Not surprising where he ended up. You could say he's draping the horizon over the landscape here or that he's shattering it. And as such representing it more completely in a cubist sense. The finish materials inside are well, the landscape itself. There's almost no inside and outside definition. Interior staircases lead to outside water. Which essentially runs through the middle of the house. Corners are negated in glass, and the prior existing site boulders beneath the house are allowed to pop through the floor on the inside. But what I always forget before looking at it again are the furnishings. Again they are locked into the house architecture. Built in. And thus transitively to the outside as well. But they are also distinctly American in style. Always the autumn colors. It's difficult to imagine them anywhere else in the world. But I also love them, because I could see taking inspiration from them today. They basically look in style now.
Now, if you haven't been I highly recommend going to visit it. I can't stress that enough. You will be impressed. It's just outside of Pittsburgh, and it's one of those buildings that is about a thousand times more powerful in person.
Thomas-Michael
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