To our modern standards there is such austerity to the interior at face value yet in the space every single detail, every texture, every material feels so harmonious to the greater context of the building and the landscape. Everything from the materials, to the custom designed built-in joinery (Wright’s method for mitigating a furniture fit out by his clients!) to the paint colours create a unified, rigourously yet entirely organic composition. It is only natural that we find ourselves captivated by the interiors of the house. The bathrooms and bedrooms are modest in scale and decoration yet meticulously detailed for moments of sheer joy such as a half arc cut out in a timber desk which allows a window to swing open (see below), to fireplaces seemingly organically carved up and out of the slate floor as if it was found that way. The spines of locally quarried stacked stone are built as a stylised replication of the striations of the large natural rock shelves behind the house. Brass window hardware glints in the sun like the stream which runs underneath the building. The colour palette is that of the landscape injected with the modernism of Wright’s signature Cherokee red for the steel work. It’s raw and it’s rugged, it’s pitching a tent in a storm, it’s seeking shade on a dangerously hot day – it’s the unmistakable sense of adventure that makes this house so truly unforgettable. The landscape of the whole Laurel Highlands is reflected, is celebrated in the house – the sinuous raw winter branches, the buttery yellow of the wheat fields, the orange of the leaves in the fall, the charcoal grey of the rolling hills late afternoon, the intense snowfalls and the long hot summers. Despite its assertively modern conception by Wright, it is so beautifully executed as the icon of Wright’s principles of ‘organic architecture’. What perhaps is most enchanting about this house is its synonymous relationship with the environment in which it is found. To date (despite conservation works), everything inside the house remains as it was in 1963 despite receiving over 4.5 million visitors. Commissioned by the Kaufmann family from Pittsburgh, the house was built between 19 and was owned and used by the Kaufmann family until 1963, when it was entrusted by Edgar Kaufmann, jr., to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Over Christmas, our designer Dominique visited the house for an in-depth tour (which allowed photos to be taken inside the house!) and today we bring to you a small snippet of her own treasured goose-bumpy moments at Fallingwater.įallingwater is a house like no other, built over a waterfall in Bear Run in southwest Pennsylvania’s Laurel Highlands. In writing a list of places to visit in a lifetime, Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright could be singled out as potentially the most iconic house. No one forgets those treasured moments spent in buildings and spaces all around the world that enliven the senses, that move and inspire us to travel more, read, eat, dance and take a moment to just take it all in and breath. Iconic architecture makes your heart sing in a way like no other.
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