Wright’s admiration for Japanese architecture was important in his inspiration for this house, along with most of his work. Just like in Japanese architecture, When Wright came to the site he appreciated the powerful sound of the falls, the vitality of the young forest, the dramatic rock ledges and boulders; these were elements to be interwoven with the serenely soaring spaces of his structure. He wanted to create harmony between man and nature, and his integration of the house with the waterfall was successful in doing so. The house was meant to compliment its site while still competing with the drama of the falls and their endless sounds of crashing water.
Fallingwater consists of two parts: The main house of the clients which was built between 1936-1938, and the guest room which was completed in 1939. The original house contains simple rooms furnished by Wright himself, with an open living room and compact kitchen on the first floor, and three small bedrooms located on the second floor. The third floor was the location of the study and bedroom of Edgar Jr., the Kaufmann’s son.The rooms all relate towards the house’s natural surroundings, and the living room even has steps that lead directly into the water below. The circulation through the house consists of dark, narrow passageways, intended this way so that people experience a feeling of compression when compared to that of expansion the closer they get to the outdoors. The ceilings of the rooms are low, reaching only up to 6’4″ in some places, in order to direct the eye horizontally to look outside. The beauty of these spaces is found in their extensions towards nature, done with long cantilevered terraces. Shooting out at a series of right angles, the terraces add an element of sculpture to the houses aside from their function.
The materials of the structure blend with the colorings of rocks and trees,
while occasional accents are provided by bright furnishings, like wildflowers or birds outside.
The terraces form a complex, overriding horizontal force with their protrusions that liberated space with their risen planes parallel to the ground. In order to support them, Wright worked with engineers Mendel Glickman and William Wesley Peters. Their solution was in the materials. The house took on “a definite masonry form” that related to the site, and for the terraces they decided on a reinforced-concrete structure. The whole house used only 4 materials: sandstone, reinforced concrete, steel and glass.
Fallingwater opened a new chapter in American architecture, and is perhaps rightly considered Wright's greatest work, for he was first and foremost an architect of houses. In its careful yet startling integration of stone walls anchored to the bedrock and modern reinforced concrete terraces hovering in space, Connors states that Fallingwater may be understood as 'one of the great critiques of the modern movement in architecture, and simultaneously one of its masterpieces'. Yet we cannot help feeling that there is more to this design than even that; this is an architecture that seizes our imagination, letting us see space and habitation in ways that seem new, but which we simultaneously feel to be ancient, somehow fundamental to our human nature
INTERESTING LINKS
http://www.wright-house.com/frank-lloyd-wright/fallingwater-pictures/pictures-of-fallingwater.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CVKU3ErrGM
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario