Fallingwater is considered by many scholars to be the greatest example of American architectural design. Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater in 1935 as a vacation home in Bear Run, Pennsylvania for the Kaufmann family. After thirty years into his career, Wright comes to a certain maturity in the architecture of Fallingwater. After creating enduring precedents for the modern office building, museum, place of worship and suburban house, Wright built Fallingwater under no precedence. Japanese influences and Wright’s evolution of his own prairie style are evident in the home’s structure and integration of indoor and outdoor space, but its originality seems almost out of the blue and leaves a legacy that is difficult to define. Long before Fallingwater, Wright had begun his own architectural practice in 1894. He had designed hundreds of buildings and had earned an international reputation. But by the mid-1920’s his career was in decline. When the Depression came in 1929, Wright was left with fewer commissions and faced financial bankruptcy. Determined to turn things around, Wright founded Taliesin Fellowship, an apprentice program where young, aspiring architects paid him to be able to learn both architecture and his principles of life. Although Fallingwater is Wright’s brainchild, the project was possible because of the patronage of his enthusiastic clients. Edgar and Liliane Kaufman were owners of Kaufman Department Store in nearby Pittsburgh. They were introduced as clients to Wright by their son Edgar Jr., whom had began apprenticing at Wright’s Taliesin Fellowship the previous year. During the Depression, Edgar Sr. was involved in New Deal public works programs for Pittsburgh. After visiting Taliesin, Kaufmann first corres... ... middle of paper ... .... In a sense, the entire house can be seen as a balancing act: between the outdoors and family space, between the smooth terraces and rough masonry mass, between the out-flowing space and the enclosed shelter. The land surrounding the waterfalls on Bear Run is a heavily forested area. It is jagged and precipitous with not a horizontal line in sight. Wright uses the repetitive rhythm of horizontal planes and lines to give the living spaces of the house an expansive feeling and adventurous freedom that Wright found fundamental to American life. These horizontal lines are made possible with the use of cantilevered terraces. The large, dark stone masonry counterbalances the cantilevered terraces by creating a sense of warmth, shelter, and refuge. Along with this sense of sanctuary, the steady sounds of the waterfalls underneath reinforce the quietness of the forest.
Reality falls a little short of this vision -- most of the shelters are actually three-sided cabins with four bunks-- Mouse infested-- But still, finding a structure of obviously human origin in the wilderness is a comforting thing. Sometimes, on the trail, you'll come across an artifact of a previous traveler -- say -- a rope swing -- that is obviously constructed with such care that it seems to carry something of the soul of the person who put it there.
The design principles that Wright and Olmsted lived by helped to create a standard for following generations. Using Nature as an inspiration and a employing a consistent programmatic style have been characteristics that designers have picked up on from Wright, and plan to continue using. Juxtaposing nature and thick urban life, and finding innovative ways to mix the two, has become a signature characteristic that points to Olmsted. Both, Frank Lloyd Wright and Frederik Law Olmsted have had a heavy influence on designers today when it comes to including nature in design, but in very contrasting ways.
Many of Frank Gehry’s early works reflect a refined manipulation of shapes and structures, whereby many of his buildings present distorted shapes or apparent structures. From the Guggenheim museum to the Walt Disney concert hall, Frank Gehry’s architecture is close to none. He cleverly plays with shapes and geometries. In this essay, I shall start with a brief analysis of Gehry’s house and the influences in the design of the house. I shall then analyze the extent to which Frank Lloyd Wright has inspired and influenced Gehry in the design of his house through a comparison with Frank Lloyd Wright’s Jacob’s house.
Dell Upton is a historian and renowned professor of architecture and Urbanism at the University of California. He has published several books on architecture; one of them is “Architecture in the United States”, published in 1998. In this book, Upton analyzes the architecture of the United States in different aspects, such as nature, money and art, thus depicting the great variety in architectural forms, and how throughout the decades, different interests have lead communities to different ways of building, different purposes and materials, thus reflecting their way of thinking and their relationship with the environment. By exploring so many different architectural styles, Upton reveals the great diversity and richness that has always, and continues to characterize American architecture.
Landscape architecture has been around since the beginning of time, but it was not until Frederick Law Olmsted came along that the idea of integrating design into the landscape with plants, water, and structures that it turned into a thriving profession. To many, Olmsted is considered “a pioneer in the profession of landscape architecture, an urban planner, and a social philosopher, one of the first theoreticians and activists behind the national park and conservation movements” (Kalfus 1). Growing up, he did not ever graduate from formal schooling and just sat in on a few classes while at Yale in New Haven, Connecticut. Instead, he acquired his education from being out in the world through traveling and reading. He had a hard childhood. His mother died when he was just four years old and on his journeys around the world to Europe and China, he became sickly with seasickness, paralysis of the arm, typhoid fever, apoplexy, sumac poisoning, and at times suffered from depression. For many years he went on a journey within himself to find out whom he really was and what he wanted to do with his life, career wise. Frederick had one brother, John Hull, who died in 1857. This left Olmsted feeling empty and at loss of what to do. That was when Calvert Vaux came and filled the space in Olmsted’s life that his brother left. Vaux convinced Olmsted to enter the Central Park Commissioner’s design competition with their design entitled the “Greensward Plan.” With the success in that project, Olmsted figured out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, which was to become a landscape architect. Olmsted practiced from the years of 1857 up until he retired in 1895. Olmsted’s two boys, adopted son John Charles and biological son Frederick La...
In Chicago, he worked for architect Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Wright drafted the construction of his first building, the Lloyd-Jones family chapel, also known as Unity Chapel. One year later, he went to work for the firm of Adler and Sullivan, directly under Louis Sullivan. Wright adapted Sullivan's maxim "Form Follows Function" to his own revised theory of "Form and Function Are One." It was Sullivan's belief that American Architecture should be based on American function, not European traditions, a theory which Wright later developed further. Throughout his life, Wright acknowledged very few influences but credits Sullivan as a primary influence on his career. While working for Sullivan, Wright met and fell in love with Catherine Tobin. The two moved to ...
Smith, C. Ray. Interior Design in 20th-century America: A History. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. .
James F. O'Gorman, Dennis E. McGrath. ABC of Architecture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Document. October 2013.
It will discuss the different types of dwellings throughout recorded human history from the perspective of how art and culture influences building design. This will fulfill my own curiosity to understand the different influences on homebuilding and design over the years and how people have dealt with these changes.
The natural wonder Fallingwater is recognized as architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s most acclaimed and famous works. In 1991, a poll of members of the American Institute of Architects voted Wright’s Fallinwater the best all-time work of American Architecture. Fallingwater opened a new chapter in American architecture and Wright became the first and foremost architect of houses. Fallingwater is known for its simplicity. This is not a skyscraper, it is a home situated in a remote section of Western Pennsylvania, in Ohiopyle, (or called Bear Run). In a talk to the Tallies Fellowship Frank Lloyd Wright said of the house; “Fallingwater is a great blessing - one of the great blessings to be experienced here on earth. I think nothing yet ever equaled the coordination, sympathetic expression of the great principle of repose where forest and stream and rock and all the elements of structure are combined so quietly that really you listen not to any noise whatsoever although the music of the stream is there. But you listen to Fallingwater the way you listen to the quiet country.”
“In the Cause of Architecture” is an essay written by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1908. In this work, Wright outlines many of his architectural values. This text goes into great detail about the philosophy behind Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture, as well as many important milestones in his life, such as working for Adler and Sullivan. This text is useful because it comes straight from Frank Lloyd Wright himself. It talks about many things important to his role as a notable American, such as his influences for his architecture and his architectural
Gehry’s additional design of the exterior has created an unconventional model form of house. The asymmetrical form characterizes the entire external side of the house. According to Goldstein, Gehry tried to slant the house roofline, create a false perspective and cause an absurd viewer’ perception or expectation (1979, 9). The complexity of the form might also produce a relationship with the house’s elements such as door, wall, and roof. For example, those elements, which linearly constructed, were hardly noticed since the distraction of geometric form around the exterior part of the house. It’s even barely hard to find the entrance of the house as a result of the salient angles of exterior.
In the spring of 1893 Wright decided to build his own house in Oak Park, Illinois. Taking six years to build, Wright was free to experiment with his objectives in residential architecture over the next twenty-year period. Designing and re-constructing his buildings was a continuous process. He always changed his designs. For twenty years this home served as an independent labatory for Wright. This too went under constant changes. Rooms were enlarged or added, ceilings heightened, the arrangement of the windows changed, and the entry route into the house was modified. Wright even allowed the growth of a willow tree to be uninterrupted by placing a hold in the roof of the studio.
In conclusion, Wright had successfully break through his vision of destructing a rigid boxy style of 19th century architecture and refined his idea of what a house should look like; to be in a harmony with nature. As been described earlier, with plenty of technical problems, he acknowledged young architects; even a house needs constant attentions (Stungo, N., 1999). Wright’s ideal of bringing human closer to the nature had inspired many architects until today, Wright to his students “Falling water is one of the great blessing to be experienced”. In point of fact, admirers of him never stop praised of his works; Cliff Hickman passionately said “I had never before seen anything so beautiful … Over and over I came back to look at the photograph of Fallingwater, the most illustrious of all Frank Lloyd Wright architectural masterpieces” (Hickman, C., n.d).
Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier are two very prominent names in the field of architecture. Both architects had different ideas concerning the relationship between humans and the environment. Their architectural styles were a reflection of how each could facilitate the person and the physical environment. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, is considered one of the most important buildings in the history of American architecture and Le Corbusier s Villa Savoye helped define the progression that modern architecture was to take in the 20th Century. Both men are very fascinating and have strongly influenced my personal taste for modern architecture. Although Wright and Corbusier each had different views on how to design a house, they also had similar beliefs. This paper is a comparison of Frank Lloyd Wright‘s and Le Corbusier ‘s viewpoints exhibited through their two prominent houses, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye.