Fallingwater

Frank Lloyd Wright’s summer house for the Kaufmann family is built over a waterfall. Terraces of reinforced concrete cantilever out over the stream, anchored in a core of natural stone. The house combines the horizontal planes of modernism with Wright’s idea of an organic architecture in harmony with nature.

The department store owner Edgar Kaufmann and his family had a cabin by the Bear Run waterfall and expected a house with a view of the falls. Wright instead placed the house on top of them, so that the water can be heard throughout the house but seen only from the terraces. He designed the house in 1935, and it was built in 1936–1939.

The cantilevered terraces were technically daring, and the concrete soon began to sag. In 2002 it was reinforced with post-tensioning cables. Fallingwater became Wright’s best-known work and one of the most famous houses of the 20th century. It differs from European functionalism in its materials and its interplay with the landscape, but shares its open plan and its liberated, horizontal forms. It is a World Heritage Site together with other buildings by Wright.

• Functionalism
• Frank Lloyd Wright