Because if they were always looking at the falls, he explained, it would become commonplace. His plan would help retain that sense of destination. They had picnicked there and watched the falls. A terrific salesman, Frank Lloyd Wright reminded the Kaufmanns that the waterfall had always been a destination point for them on the site. Which might explain the surprise the Kaufmanns felt when they realized that Frank Lloyd Wright’s final plans did to not include a view of the site’s natural wonder, which they loved and clearly expected to see from the house. But because Frank Lloyd Wright had this incredible ability to design things in his head, I’m sure that during that nine-month gestation period he thought through the night, did a little sketch here and there, so that by the time Kaufmann arrived to see the preliminary sketches, he just drew it all out.” In an unpublished essay Kaufmann later wrote for an exhibition at Fallingwater, he confessed to not fully seeing the house at this stage. “They said all they could do was sharpen pencils. On the day Kaufmann was to arrive, “Frank Lloyd Wright finished breakfast and went into the drafting room with his apprentices around him,” relays Lynda Waggoner, director of Fallingwater since 1996, who knew each apprentice. Kaufmann, in an effort to get something out of Frank Lloyd Wright, made a series of calls to Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home in Wisconsin, telling the architect he was en route to see the plans. But three of his apprentices-witnesses to the following events-told it somewhat differently. Myth often has it that Frank Lloyd Wright conjured the design for Fallingwater almost from thin air. They showed Frank Lloyd Wright the site, then waited. They also shared the architect’s love of nature and appreciated his honest expression of materials and form. His wife was a woman of great taste and an exceptional eye she was devoted to beauty and ran a specialty shop with an international selection of haute couture on the 11th floor of the Kaufmanns’ department store. Kaufmann was a larger-than-life character who loved big ideas and interesting people. Prosperous department store owners, they were a good match for Frank Lloyd Wright in every way, both worldly, with operations in Pittsburgh and an office in Paris. Not Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann, however, who commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design for them a weekend home on a wooded site in the mountains of western Pennsylvania. Many wondered if Louis Sullivan’s protégé, who helped pioneer the Prairie School and designed both the Unity Temple and the Robie House, was all washed up. ![]() ![]() The commission, he knew, had the potential to reignite his career, one that he began when America still turned to horses for transport.Īnd here it was, 1934, the Great Depression, with Frank Lloyd Wright in the wilderness of his professional life, having completed just a handful of commissions in the last 10 years. A vision that only a true visionary possibly could.īut Frank Lloyd Wright, well into his sixties at the time, produced nothing tangible for nine months thereafter. The elevations, the geometry, the complexities, he saw it all. He looked at the site and saw it: a house emerging from the hillside, its peninsular planes seemingly suspended and staggered downward to emulate the stony cliff over which rushes a surge of mountain stream. The consummate example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic architecture, Fallingwater is the architect’s masterwork-and the full expression of his nature
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |