bardzo proszę pomóżcie mi w przetłumaczeniu tekstu ponieważ nigdy nie miałam angielskiego a muszę zrobić do szkoły prace kontrolną. Informacje na teram mojego tematu znajdują się tylko na stronach angielskich dlatego pisze tutaj. pomocy!!!!!!! tego niestety jest bardzo dużo ale prosze pomóżcie mi!!!!! oto ten tekst:
Wright's Systems and Mutation
Wright, as described earlier, found freedom of construction and planning in cantilevered forms, especially those made of reinforced concrete. In this material steel rods join with cement and gravel, hardening into an amalgam of great strength, if properly fabricated. The cantilevered, horizontal elements of Fallingwater were cast in reinforced concrete and finished with a coat of matte, sandy, warm-tinted paint. Where necessary, the slabs were cast with extra rods and concrete, forming integral beams. The slabs may be considered in two ways, as floor and as ceilings.
Floors are level, with upturned edges (parapets) that give extra rigidity to the horizontal planes, just as the sides of a cardboard box make it stronger than a flat sheet would be. Lifted above the floor slabs by thin ribs of concrete lies a layer of redwood covered with roofing paper and loose sand to receive rippled flagstone quarried on the property, as is all the stone used. Air space between slab and redwood acts as insulation. Ceilings are also cast in reinforced concrete, strengthened by folding, which gives a stepped appearance. Naturally, some slabs act as both ceilings (below) and floors (above). Reinforced concrete that permits cantilevering is the primary material of Fallingwater.
The next most important material is stone. Stone walls serve to space concrete slabs the proper distance apart, and prevent them from twisting. The native stone is laid up in distinct layers, irregularly projecting on all sides. On one occasion the rough stone indoors led a lady visitor to ask my mother, after due compliments, "Tell me, Mrs. Kaufmann, how will you get the wallpaper to stick on these walls?" Stone walls are left untreated, but within the house the stone flooring is waxed for cleanliness, becoming shiny. Yet stone walls and floors unite in contrast to the cement, inside and out.
The structure arising from the union of the two materials creates spaces for living but does not shield them from the weather. That duty is assigned to a vertical membrane of glass held in a framework of steel, painted earth red. These frames were made to order from stock sections by Hope's, a wellknown firm. Glass panels that open for passage or ventilation join with fixed glass in a continuous glazing membrane. This is the third element of the house; nothing more is required for shelter.
Wright used only a few elements throughout the house, so that a sense of familiarity soon reassures whoever visits or inhabits it. However, Wright was never content with consistency; he structured the whole western tower block using mutations of his themes. Supported on three sides by stone walls, the floor slabs of this portion of the house do not have parapets. On the contrary they are beveled to meet, but not pierce, the glazing membrane that here - and only here at Fallingwater - becomes a vertical curtain three stories high. This sheer expanse of glass and steel is not treated as a flat fa‡ade, but is stepped forward in accord with the angled character of the house. Extending westward from this block is a cantilevered terrace not level with the floor slabs to the east, making clear that the tower interrupts the continuity of the reinforced slab system. The special treatment of the west end of the house is balanced to the east by another mutation: the concrete slabs repeatedly slotted to form the trellis areas over the driveway and the living room. Wright's play of systems and mutations enlivening the architecture of Fallingwater is sometimes less emphatic than in the east-west features. For instance, as the house is set back floor by floor in accord with the sloping terrain, the glazing membrane is skillfully varied. Around the living room the membrane is extended continously on three sides with no vertical posts delineating corners. Four seperate elements augment it: the glass entrance door, a fixed glass panel next to the chimney, a clearstory light over the buffet adjoining the dining table, and the glazed panels of the overhead trellis. At the main bedroom level the same system is set around the master bedroom and bath and small guest room, but the whole expanse is reduces and simplified. At the top there is a clear run of glass, half of floor to ceiling.
Uphill, the guest wing, set on leveled ground, echoes many of the themes introduced in the main house. The bravura of the glass curtain wall of the west tower is matched by a curved, repeatedly stepped (i.e., folded) canopy over the walk. The canopy rises from the rear of the main house and circles around a big oak tree untill it meets the upper structure. This bold canopy is supported by steel posts on only one side; on the other, the tension created by a ring beam with additional reinforcing rods prevent the slab from sinking - a true tour de force. The canopy continues straight eastward along the front of the guest wing to form a trellis echoing those below; this trellis includes the longest cantilever of the whole house, very quietly presented. The glazing membrane is still further diminished at this level, continuing the sequence observed on the lower floors.
The long front wall of the quest wing has embedded in it a number of steel posts covered with lath and cement plaster painted to merge with the concrete. Typically, Wright was not concerned to express the skeletal structure but rather to build expediently, achieving a harmonious whole that was understandable but not explicit. Similar plaster walls (without steel posts) enclose bathrooms at the rear of the main house and define the master bedroom and bath and the small guestroom and its bath within the interior. Surprisingly, plaster covers portions of the stone walls next to fireplaces in the main bedroom and in the big living room. These are not true mutations but small deviations from Wright's systematic approach. In the very area of the living room, the metal framework of the glazing membrane is extended far beyond the glass; the horizontal bars mutate into shelves that wrap around the interior corner and curve out to meet a stone wall. This play of horizontals distracts attention from the anomalous wall treatment and strongly ties the corner elements together.
The Faults of Fallingwater
Mistakes have plagued Fallingwater, yet the extraordinary beauty of the house and the delight it brought to the life of its inhabitants form the context in which its construction should be evaluated. Life at Fallingwater did include flaws and the efforts to overcome them. Before the family moved in, there were doubts about the structure, aroused by written reports from the engineers my father employed to check Wright's working drawings. The building would break apart and fall into the run these reports implied. When father submitted them to Wright there was an outraged response, and father had the good sense to believe his architect. Eventually he interred the reports behind a stone in one of the walls. But uncertainty had been aroused, and when cracks appeared in the east and west parapets of the terrace of the main bedroom it was necessary for Wright to reassure his client that the building was settling, not fracturing. Did they discuss what seems obvious today, fifty years later? Overloading the beams of the main floor with extra heavy reinforcing rods caused the slab to sag more than should have been expected, and since the two floors were tied together - especially by T irons in the window framing of the south front - the upper terrace was bound to follow. Moreover, this upper floor, extending six feet farther than the living room, had been stacked with heavy bags of cement during construction despite objections from Wright's representative. There is no proof that this extra load augmented the damage, yet it was foolhardy. Further cracks developed but the first two were the worst; they kept worrying my father throughout his life. They may have been a burden to the architect as well, if a report is accurate that shortly after construction Wright, in a high fever from pneumonia, was heard to mutter "too heavy." Evidently he was envisaging Fallingwater. Those two cracks require cosmetic patching even today, but there is no evidence of structural failure.
Structural failure is mistakenly deduced from the way horizontal edges of the house dip downward. This is due to an oversight in setting up wood forms into which the concrete was poured; they were built level, not sloped upward to allow for settlement when the forms were removed. It is hard to understand how this came about.Wright had considerable familiarity with reinforced concrete, and he was assisted by experienced structural engineers. My father had his own advisers, engineers, and job supervisor. None of these men warned the contractor, who proceeded in sheer ignorance. Considering the various facts it is not surprising that the contractor was frightened to strike out the supports of the forms when the time came. But at Wright's command the posts were struck, and no disaster followed. Much later two subordinate overhangs did fail: the roof over the eastern terrace because of incorrectly placed reinforcing rods, and the trellis over the southerly corner of the living room because a heavy tree branch fell on it during a storm. Both have been satisfactorily rebuilt.
Why do those two major parapet cracks reappear? The answer leads to wider issues. Over the years my father had his engineers reporting on deflections of the concrete; after a while it became obvious that the cantilevers fell and rose in response to temperature changes affecting the materials. Deflection was small in either direction, but the constant movement reopened cracks and strained flashing between roofs and walls, a delicate joint in any building. When the flashing opened up, even inconspicuously, water penetrated, then threaded through interstices, and issued far from the point of entry as distressing leaks. There were seventeen such areas when we first moved in. Roofing and terrace flooring where lifted, stray chunks of sodden lumber were extracted, and shopping sheets of insulation were replaced with dry ones; the house became presentable inside. Had the insulation been wet before it was sealed in? Not unlikely, but damaged flashing was more surely responsible. Some leakage still occurs, and now a concerted effort is under way to rework all flashing. To do this and yet maintain the neatness of the exterior will be a challenge.
Besides these troubles there has always been a question about the parapets: do they strengthen the great horizontal concrete slabs or merely weigh on them? Wright himself after much deliberation believed they helped to carry the load, but not so effectively as he had hoped. It seems to me that, amid a diversity of opinions, this is decisive. The reinforcing rods that run continuously from flat plane into upright parapet help to support and unify the structure. Do these faults impugn Wright's ability? Comparable situations indicate an answer, bearing in mind that the architect and his client knew the design of Fallingwater was an exploration beyond the limits of conventional practice. The small deflections (up and down) at Fallingwater were not foreseen; neither were those (from side to side) in early skyscrapers, yet these are now accepted as normal. Some of the great monuments of architecture have suffered structural troubles, precisely because they were striving beyond normal limitations. The dome of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the belfries of St. Peter's in Rome, the core of the Panth‚on in Paris, all threatened the stability of their structures and required drastic repairs, yet these buildings still stand and add glory to their countries and their art. My father was no monarch and his home was not conceived as a public monument, but Wright's genius justifies these references. No apologies are necessary for what he achieved at Fallingwater.
Living with Fallingwater
Fallingwater was one of those works by Wright that transformed the world's opinion of his art. From seeming a figure of earlier decades he leapt into view as a bold innovator. Increasing recognition flowed his way, and Fallingwater received its share. One portion of it changed my life: John McAndrew of the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a one-building exhibition of the house; not long after, I was asked to join the staff there. I moved from Pittsburgh; however, weekends were usually spent at Fallingwater. This was not difficult, for the journey from New York was convenient then. One boarded a sleeping car at the old Pennsylvania Station and after a comfortable night alit at Greensburg, from where it was a fourty-minute drive to the house. Fallingwater, enmeshed in established habits, soon became part of the family's weekend experience. The beauty that resulted cannot be verbalized any more than the elation this beauty elicited; life simply was raised to a new level. When people ask about this there often seems to be an explicit expectation: great architecture, changing the way people live, must change people. Art may arouse dormant sensibilities, and Fallingwater changed us in this way, I believe. Furthermore, it brought new, usually enjoyable associations.
Occasionally large groups were entertained at Fallingwater, and then cottages surviving from earlier days would be pressed into use for quests who could not be housed in the Wright building. More than ten bodies meant buffet meals on the living room terraces or inside; formality was never considered. One early Christmas season we welcomed a ten-day continual flow of visitors. The logistics must have been formidable, but my parents and the augmented help remained in the best of humors. Guests were either on the staff of the Museum of Modern Art - their interest aroused by the exhibition there - or else close to the Museum, particularly through the grand survey of the Bauhaus it presented, John McAndrew acted as our master of revels. Marcel Breuer, the Moholy-Nagys, the Alfred Barrs, and others drifted in, were merry, and departed in deep snow. About half an hour after the Moholys drove off, the butler came in to announce, "Mr. Mahogany is stuck in a ditch!"
Utterly different was a later gathering invited by my father who, with some associates, hoped to unite different sectors of American Jewry in dealing with the Federal government. Thus high-level advisers to the New Deal and prominent movers among the Jews met for free-ranging discussions, that, alas, produced no appreciable results. I listened, and noticed the meaningful silences of Albert Einstein.
On other occasions guests arrived in small groups or singly, among them Walter Gropius, courteous and reserved; Alvar Aalto and his amiable family were more lively. Henry-Russell Hitchcock came when I was not present, and went wading in the run. My mother told me, "He has the most beautiful feet I've ever seen!" Philip Johnson was distracted by the noise of the waterfall; he said it exited his bladder. But usually weekends were shared quietly with friends - long walks through the woods, cold plunges under the falls, reading, listening to 78 r.p.m. records, and (what now seems sinful) breakfast in bed after a quick dip. The exhilaration of clean air, the musical murmur of the brook, the restful vistas into endless greens were enhanced by the experience of Fallingwater.
In New York, work at the Museum enlarged my awareness of Wright's position in the development of modern architecture. When museum duties were interrupted for three years' service during World War II, the renown of Fallingwater opened doors in my Australian leave area.
Returning to civilian life I was confronted with changes. Father's health had deteriorated; he had become captious. Mother was weighed down by this and other troubles. Fallingwater had suffered. Closed for lack of fuel it had been racked by raw heat and cold; without ventilation dampness had settled in; and the heavy smore of wartime freight trains, penetrating the forest, had smudged the exterior. We were eager to get Fallingwater to shape again, but unluckily a latex-based paint, supposedly an improvement, was applied to the concrete; a chilly sheen now seperated the building from its surroundings.
My parents had been spending winters in the southern California desert, which they found invigorating; they planned to build a house there by Richard Neutra. This fitted nicely into father's long record of bold building enterprises, and my mother was happy to see him absorbed in a new one. It fell to me to talk of the way this would appear in relation to Fallingwater. The Neutra house would be interpreted as a rejection of Wright, and Wright would be the first person to react. My father agreed to withold his name from publication of the new house, and during Wright's lifetime it was known merely as "a house in the Arizona desert," as the local erea, curiously was called.
For another half-dozen years I saw father commission a series of designs from Frank Lloyd Wright. As Fallingwater claimed more of the family's activities and affections, we felt some inadequacies of the planning. The entrance could become crowded, and the kitchen, adequate for cooking, provided no space where staff could relax - going back to their rooms was inconvenient. Adjoining the kitchen there was space outdoors under the west terrace where an addition could be built inconspiciously. Father wanted to build it without consulting Wright, and I had to stage a strong protest.Wright designed a very neat and satisfactory adjunct. There were other plans for changes and additions to Fallingwater, none essential and none executed, nor were any of the grandiose projects for Pittsburgh Wright designed for father. This was perhaps inevitable since father was steadily growing more self-preoccupied and Wright was eager to construct great designs at the cumilation of his long career. Among Wright's late, ambitious projects only a few were connected with my father;Wright, however, felt their friendship was fading.
In 1952, beset by difficulties, my mother died at Fallingwater; this cast a long shadow over the place. My father now needed constant attention, and two years later he remarried. These family matters influenced the fate of Fallingwater. Father and I had talked earnestly about what would become of the house when he died, in view of his plan to remarry and my decision to remain in New York. We agreed that sooner or later Fallingwater and its grounds should become accessible to the public. We also agreed that a good portion of his estate should be used to establish a foundation on whose board I, assisted by my uncle, would represent the family. With this support a carefully planned program for Fallingwater could be evolved and implemented. What agency might care for the house? I was unsure that the regular cultural, educational, governmental institutions would or could present Frank Lloyd Wright's concepts fairly. In Wright's designs and in our experience, the forested grounds and the run were as much a part of the architectural statement as was the structure. Father had become interested in a private organization in Pittsburg, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, active in nature conservation; but it was too early to approach them about Fallingwater. Thus father indicated a direction and provided for funding; we both believed a satisfactory solution would be developed. My father died in 1955 in California, a few hours after Wright had come for a friendly visit.
What Fallingwater Is -and Is Not
To understand Fallingwater one needs to explore its unusual structure, and Wright's reasons for designing it. The house may appear to consist of massive stone piers anchoring reinforced concrete projections, but this is misleadingly simple.Wright established a core, a sturdy stone-walled enclosure containing a kitchen and one bedroom above another, while also carrying flues, pipes, and wiring up to the various floors. Other stone walls, however, are divided into discontinous segments - the concrete slabs continue intact right through the stonework. As the slabs extend outward, the pull on one side, in many places, counteracts the pull on the other. In addition, the main house is massed high at the back, and the accumulated weight counters the great projection over the stream. Thus Fallingwater utilizes and combines three kinds of cantilevering: extension from an anchorage (as in the iron arm suspending a kettle over the living room firegrate); counterbalancing (like simple scales); and loaded extension that permits limited anchorage (the way that a man squatting, with only the balls of his feet and toes touching the earth, extends his knees). Another unobvious aspect of the construction is that each floor level has its own support system. The main level is carried on four inconspicuous stub walls rising at the edge of the stream bed; the slab extends far beyond them. The next level is supported from a central square of reinforced concrete beams, with corners resting on stone masses; from this square the second slab or tray, is cantilevered. The narrow top level is set along the rear edge of the house, bearing down on the whole.
Why did Wright design so complex a structure? Why was he so intent on cantilevering? I see Fallingwater as an irregular web of forces skillfully balanced to create floating horizontal levels. It is proper for such a structure to be inserted amid horizontal rock ledges naturally settled by similar adjustments of forces. Moreover, cantilevering is a constituent feature of modern structural technology. For millennia building was dominated by uprights - posts or walls holding up beams, trusses, or vaults to provide shelter. Within the past two hundred years, however, a more scientific understanding of materials and forces gradually led (among several results) to horizontal constructions so strong in themselves that vertical supports can be greatly reduced in number and bulk. Furthermore, supports can be distributed freely between horizontal planes. This technological liberation gave rise to the "open plan" that has preoccupied all major creators of modern architecture,Wright in particular.
It has been claimed that Fallingwater has flat roofs, ribbon windows, and unornamented surfaces - even pilotis - all derived from the International Style of modern architecture. Indeed, there are echoes of past and modern work in Wright's design; he willingly acknowledged that creative work requires precedents. However, at Fallingwater there are no ribbon windows; they appear to excist in some photographs and drawings only because upturned edges of slabs mask what lies behind them. Flat roofs, some used as livable terraces, have been common in many kinds of architecture. And, plain surfaces were evolved in Wright's work over decades as he learned to manage structure with a delicacy of touch that finally made decoration superfluous. Simplicity became typical of his buildings about the same time as avoidance of ornament began to be preached theoretically abroad; the trends converged from antithetical sources. Lastly, can one relate the modest stub walls underneath Fallingwater to Le Corbusier's demonstrative pilotis? These misapprehensions of Fallingwater - touching its structure, its program, and its links to contemporary design - have led to much pointless analysis of the house, diverting attention from Wright's concept and his achievement.
Three petty misconceptions of Fallingwater should also be dispelled: that it is dedicated to Frank Lloyd Wright; that it exemplifies the 1930s; and that it is a museum of the arts. Each building by Wright is a memorial to his genius; Fallingwater was endowed and is operated as an example of this genius applied to the splendor of the Appalachians and to the life of a particular family. Numerous decades and cultures enliven Fallingwater with art and artifacts, and neither these supplements nor the house and its setting were meant to remain static - Fallingwater grew and still grows. It might not be far wrong to call Fallingwater an anti-museum, for it is rooted in the idea of living relationships, not in the storing of isolated treasures whether architectural or artistic. Fallingwater is dedicated to the values inherent in nature and in Wright's architecture, to my parents who made it happen, and above all to the visitors who enjoy it according to their various capacities.
What images do not tell
The spatial and immaterial values discussed earlier can be illustrated by tracing my own slow discovery of some recondite but powerful elements of Fallingwater's design. These are visible in drawings and photographs, but their actions and interactions are unlikely to be sensed until experienced on the site. To begin with, my father, in examining the plans, questioned the value of steps leading down from inside the living room to the stream. The water was shallow in this stretch, impractical for even a dip. The steps would be extravagant to build and would complicate the structure of the house. Granting this I felt that Wright wanted to keep the main room in touch with the movement and energy of the run, and I pleaded for trust in Wright's intuition.Wright himself considered the steps not so much a proposal as a decision. Eventually my father agreed and the steps were built. Only later I began to think about the steps in conjunction with the glazed trellis above them. Clearly Wright had gone to some length to achieve transparency along a vertical axis here; the eye could look down to the run and up to the sky. Diagonally across the room stood the great, solid chimney wall. I then saw the pair as a column of stone and a column of air making a precinct, and was pleased with the discovery though ashamed of recognizing it tardily.
More years passed until I began to consider how unconventional a country house Fallingwater really is. A regular country house on ample acres would have a standard program in which outbuildings edge the approach, then a gateway announces the private domain (with implications of guards and challenges, a checkpoint) and in due course one reaches the entrance front, emphatically centered on the main door. On one hand lie hospitable facilities, on the other, work areas of all sorts. Unseen but promised is a garden front, more open and relaxed than the approach fa‡ade.Wright sidestepped this whole program - or did he?
Our property had its outbuildings, none designed by Wright: caretakers's house, greenhouses, swimmingpool, and lesser bits lining the drive. Today most of these have been eliminated in favor of parking areas and the visitors' center, dispersed among trees. The gateway-checkpoint at Fallingwater is the bridge across the run, where visitors must abruptly turn, gaining a first full view of the house. A second turn then leads under the driveway trellis. This is the formal entry, a generously proportioned porte-cochere (as well as a link between house and cliff and a structural necessity counterbalancing the east balcony). Once within the architecture, people and cars part; the cars, passing along the surface area, are taken up to a garage. People are led in by a recessed, transparent door unless they choose to explore the remarkable entry front just passed. This is enriched with projections and recessions in concrete and stonework and outside stairs, with trees and planting and spouts of water as well as the rock face along the drive. As you enter through the main door, your eye is drawn to the far corner of the interior, the south point of the house projected as a balcony right above the falls. Immediately at hand, however, on the right, are the dining alcove, a kitchen door next to the large fireplace, and stairs leading up, visibly open to the entryway. On the left are seats and a broad desk flooded in daylight and more groups of seating disposed with views and features untill the circling gaze again meets the fireplace.
Where is the garden front? At the falls! The south balcony, noted as one entered, when seen from the rocks at the foot of the falls, marks the center of this angled front. The house extends in strong horizontals to the right; to the left rises a stone-wrapped, glazed vertical shaft, a sturdy mast. This is the essential image of Fallingwater, the one best remembered. It is also the perspective chosen as background in Wright's color ported on the cover of Time magazine. This perspective,Wright's choice, is set so that the outer corner of the south balcony lines up with an edge of the stone chimney pier, establishing a spine for a composition as rich as that of the approach front but more calm. Thus every canonical device of a conventional country house had its analog at Fallingwater.
The differences, however, are stronger than the similarities. For flat fa‡ades, here one must expect to see angular views; for each central motif, a corner features.Wright has taken the conventions apart, sundered them as in a cubist drawing, but more consistently. The rectangular layout of the house, the house in utilitarian terms, is obvious in plan. But at another level understanding one sees a diagonal pathway that leads from the fireplace with its native boulder hearth (earth and fire) to the skylit, open steps down to the brook (air and water). Thus the ancient cardinal elements lend sanction to the modern architect's statement. Crossing this pathway at right angles is a grand sweep of hospitality that begins in the shadowed, sunken entryway, extends through the expanse of living room, and goes beyond south balcony into a widening forest vista down the glen - to the accompaniment of the falls. These two diagonal, virtual pathways establish the character of Fallingwater.
It is worthwhile, now, to examine Wright's earliest surviving sketch for Fallingwater, a rough draft in colored pencils, which shows the floor plans of each level in different colorings, drawn one over the other. This exploratory sketch, not meant for use outside the studio, indicates the irregular bays of the building. Furthermore,Wright set the plan diagonally on the paper, eventhough there was no earlier sketch on it. He conceived the house on angle, as he had done with many earlier designs. What led Wright to these angled conceptions? For a structure to have body and not merely be implied behind screening fa‡ades, it must protrude toward the observer (as the pyramid builders of Egypt already knew). Moreover, fa‡ades end; their statement is fixed. But structures set at an angle cause the observer to go around corners, exploring, moving on. Architecture becomes dynamic.
Diagonality was explored by Wright over the years, as has been demonstrated by various scholars. Diagonal layouts of a structure, diagonal paths of movement or vistas through buildings - these were physical events. At Fallingwater Wright used diagonality differently. I believe it was the first time he separated virtual paths of signification from material structure, creating a new counterpoint. This freed and clarified central concepts, influencing his later, controversial designs. Wright has run changes on expectations, stirring people out of their habituations but not depriving them of comforts; he made Fallingwater exciting but not disturbing.
Fallingwater thus reveals the astonishing vitality of Wright's architecture, which he endows with riches like those of polyphonic music, stirring responces instinctual as well as rational and esthetic. Through this human wholeness the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright appears unique in the twentieth century.
Fallingwater, Known and Unknown
Fallingwater is famous; from all over the world many thousands of visitors come each year to its remote site. What draws them? - a most unusual house in an exceptionally picturesque setting and, something more, a reputation. In 1936 even before it was finished, knowledgeable people talked about this new work of Frank Lloyd Wright. It upset the experts' opinion that the contentious old American architect (he was then nearing seventy) had nothing of value to add to his achievements. In fact, this house and three more individually superlative buildings that went up almost simultaneously announced an entire new quarter-century of Wright's ebullient creativity. Fallingwater itself was quickly and widely displayed in exhibitions, in magazines and newspapers, and in many books. After a time a consensus arose that Wright had created a masterwork that appealed not only to professionals but to the public generally. Fallingwater was not much like the earlier architecture that had made Wright famous; it was just as distant from the avant-garde styles of the 1930s, and surely like any popular ''dream house.'' Yet now that Fallingwater has been tested by half-a-century of the widest exposure, one can say that it marks a high point in Wright's vast oeuvre, in American architecture, in the architecture of this century, and possibly in all architecture.
Fallingwater is famous, but decades of commetaries and critiques have not succeeded in making some of its puzzling aspects more understandable. Why, for instance, did Frank Lloyd Wright select a seemingly inadequate site, perhaps even dangerous one? Was he, as claimed, following a suggestion of the client? If so, why did the client say that he expected to look from his house toward the waterfall rather than dwell above it? Why is the view from the house confined by placing the building low in the glen where Bear Run flows? Why is the front door inconspicuous, and why, once within the building, are the ceilings low? Granted that the architect decided to lift the main room over the stream just where the waterfall breaks, why was the structure freely cantilevered, why not bridged, anchored at both ends? Was reinforced concrete the best material to embody the architectural idea? And why should the stone walls be aggressively rough, as rough inside as out? What, too, of the proliferation of terraces, so that almost as much built area stands roofless around the house as is enclosed within it? What can have persuaded the client to accept this spendthrift scheme? What is the likelihood that Wright chose a particular boulder top as the hearth in the living room (from which all levels of the house were determined) because he thought it was "Kaufmann's favorite spot for lying in the sun and listening to the falls"? Such questions could be multiplied, and to answer them calls for more than common sense and insider's knowledge. It calls for a probing of Wright's architecture. Then answers begin to be surprising. No doubt the greatest puzzle posed by Fallingwater is more basic than those just listed. It is this: why does a house designed by an architectural individualist for the special purposes of a special client appeal so much to the public in general? And what does it contribute to the art of architecture if its character is so circumscribed? One part of the answer is that Fallingwater is a happy flowering of Frank Lloyd Wright's genius, a great work of art. Yet underneath the effects of great art - however masterly and ingenious - there lies a consistency of the whole. To understand this quality one must consider those principles that guided the artist. In Wright's statements his principles are denoted by words embodying deep intuitions: organic, democratic, plasticity, continuity. During careful study of his texts and his architecture, I have come to believe that these terms present different aspects of one central insight. To Wright, architecture was a great inclusive agency through which humankind adapted the environment to human needs and, reciprocally, attuned human life to its cosmos; amid continual changes architecture could keep human life more natural and nature more humane. This idea pervades Fallingwater in accord with the aims of both architect and client, and gives it not only basic meaning but also powerful subliminal appeal. Personal recollections, some facts, and ideas tested by time will help me to illustrate this.
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