Fallingwater: A Building That Bonds with Nature and Dances with Time | Hacker News Reader

Fallingwater: A Building That Bonds with Nature and Dances with Time

nautil.us

51 pointsdnetesn20 comments

> But to say that Fallingwater is simply a meditation on nature would miss the point—which, sadly, I did. I walked away from Fallingwater thinking that the house was a beautiful representation of the juncture where nature and architecture meet and nothing more. Then I emailed Neil Levine, a professor of history and architecture at Harvard University, to ask for an interview.

> Levine replied promptly, but to my dismay, he told me he was too busy to talk. Furthermore he mentioned that I would do better not to engage with jargon like “organic architecture.” I was slighted, yes, but also intrigued.

> In 2011 Levine published an essay titled “The Temporal Dimension of Fallingwater,” where he argues that time—and not just nature—is crucial to Wright’s design. This temporal element was a direct consequence of the natural setting. The stream, including the waterfall, isn’t only a place where the horizontal meets the vertical, but also where the motionless meets the turbulent, the silent meets the thundering, and the finite meets the infinite. The stream is some combination of both sides. By placing the house above the falls, Wright furthers this juxtaposition.

It's worth understanding here that just because Levine has a Ph.D. doesn't mean he's right or the author of the article is wrong. Levine's imperative as a research scholar is to come up with different and novel ideas about the architecture he studies, and as such, when looking at a long-studied work like Fallingwater, it's no surprise he might try to come up with a new opinion.

But ultimately, it's just an opinion, and the barrier of evidence for such opinion is pretty low. It's not math where there are proofs, it's hypothesizing about the meaning of something which is experienced subjectively. One could make persuasive statements about the intentions of Wright, or about the experiences of people experiencing Wright's work, but to talk about a building as if it's objectively a temporal work is just wankery. And if Levine wants to argue that point as if it were objective truth rather than an interesting way to view Fallingwater, that makes him a wanker.

It also leaked and sagged until a major restoration in 2002. Wright designed beautiful buildings, but the structural designs on some of them had problems.

Wright's most grandiose building is the Marin Civic Center, sometimes called the Martian Embassy.[1] It's very '50s futuristic, and several SF films were made there.

[1] http://inhabitat.com/frank-lloyd-wright-designed-marin-civic...

Wow, I saw this from the air recently and had no idea what it was. I forgot to look it up until it popped up here; thanks!

Of course at the time it was necessary for modern architecture to use new/different construction techniques. Although now the former is loved and the latter is loathed for leaking and sagging at the time you basically couldnt have one without the other.

Its like someone today complaining that ruby on rails (or whatever popular software you like really) was monolithic and buggy when first written. Sure - but that misses the entire achievement of it. Its impossible to do something so radically new perfect for all future needs the first time.

To be completely fair, the design wasn't flawed so much as the execution. The steel reinforcing rods in the reinforced concrete cantilevers were placed on the bottom, as if they were beams, instead of the top. The current cable reinforcements are like miniature "suspension bridges" to compensate for this mistake.

The Marin County Civic Center is Wright's last building, although very good definitely not the most grandiose. That honor probably goes to the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo that unfortunately was demolished. For still extant buildings, the Johnson Wax headquarters in Racine would also rank as more "grandiose".

As another poster mentioned, the structural issues on Fallingwater were a combination of contractor error and doing something that had never been done before. The contractor was so convinced that the house would fall down that he refused to remove the scaffolding. Wright ended up personally knocking out the last temporary support because no one else dared. He used the incredible weight of the building on the backspan to increase the length of the cantilever. In all respects, Falling Water is truly a masterpiece in 3 dimensional integration of all aspects of the building, aesthetics, systems, etc.

Reminds me of the performing arts center Frank Gehry designed for Bard College [1]. When it was first built, snow and ice would slide off the roof with such velocity that they coned off the area.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Fisher_Center_for_th...

Wow I didn't know two Gehry buildings had serious problems. The Stata Center leaked and cracked when it first opened [1]. Weirdly, that Tech article says the arts center at Bard was alright at the time: Bard President Leon Botstein told the Chronicle that the building “came in on budget and has worked beautifully.” Perhaps there's a story behind every Gehry.

[1] http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N53/lawsuit.html

He's also been sued for a building which, in the mid-afternoon, would focus the sun's rays into the eyes of incoming motorists on a nearby highway.

Gehry buildings are striking and inspiring, but he does have a history of surprising practical harms.

Just want to add that despite the amusing anecdote, it's a lovely building with wonderful acoustics.

That's the least of the problems: there's a reason this "building" ended up open to the public. It was supposed to be a house, a private place for people to live in. But no one ever could, because a crashing waterfall 30 feet from the bedroom turned out to be fundamentally incompatible with human physiology.

The family it was built for used it as a weekend house for 25 years. Where did you get the idea no one could live in it?

Talking to architects. That must be folklore; sorry.

Fallingwater is the most beautiful and serene place I have ever visited around the world. It is a really inspiring place to me.

I wish it was more accessible (thought I suppose that was the point) but it really is worth the trip out to Pittsburgh and then two hours into the woods.

Also my favorite architectural series Lego kit: http://shop.lego.com/en-US/Fallingwater-21005

Video of someone showing off the kit assembled. https://youtu.be/S6h-ytGJ50A

Well, it may look beautiful from the outside, but if you've ever been inside, most of the rooms are way too cramped, and the ceilings are low. Not as bad as his Price Tower in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, though; I don't have claustrophobia, and I still wanted to run screaming from the freakish no-right-angles-anywhere offices. (The locals say that Phillips Petroleum bought it to be their headquarters, but never moved in because it was so anti-functional.)

It is said that Wright built to his own size, which is to say a trifle shorter than the average American adult male. He said that had he been three inches taller, his designs might have been different.

Well, Yahoo search says his height was 5' 9" (1.75m), which is more than an inch taller than I am...

There is a nice documentary about it on Netflix (sorry it is in DVD format now only).

http://dvd.netflix.com/Movie/Frank-Lloyd-Wright-s-Fallingwat...

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