Title: 86. VIEW FROM SOUTHWEST OF HOUSE AS SEEN FROM DOWNSTREAM HABS, PA,26-OHPY.V,1-86
Digital ID: 570316cv
URL: http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/displayPhoto.pl
Description:
Fallingwater, depicted in this photograph is one of the many organic architectural structures designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It is located at Ohiopyle, Bear Run, Pennsylvania and was built as a summer residence for the Edgar J. Kauffman family of Pittsburgh . The house is built of reinforced concrete and stone with cantilevers dramatically placed over rock outcropping and rushing stream giving one the illusion of living with nature inside as well as outside.
Frank Lloyd Wright (born Frank Lincoln Wright) lived from 1867 to 1959. During most of these years, from 1885 to 1959, he was a prolific architect, with close to 500 of his designs built (and hundreds more remaining unbuilt) - a career lasting three quarters of a century, and unequaled in output. Mr. Wright worked for architects J. Lyman Silsbee and Louis Sullivan, and he later himself trained many architects at his Taliesin School . Frank Lloyd Wright expoused "organic architecture" and is responsible for the Prairie and Usonian residential styles.
Why is Frank Lloyd Wright important? Do you have a living room in your house? or a carport? Does your house have an "open" floor plan? If so, then the way you live is being directly influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright's innovations in residential architecture. "Drawing inspiration from his native midwestern prairie, he coaxed Americans out of their boxlike houses and into wide-open living spaces that suited the American lifestyle" (Carla Lind, The Wright Style) Mr. Wright's "organic architecture" was a radical departure from the traditional architecture of his day, which was dominated by European styles that dated back hundreds of years or even millenia. He contributed the Prairie and Usonian houses to the vernacular of American residential design, and elements of his designs can be found (at least to some small degree) in a large proportion of homes today. While most of his designs were single-family homes (ranging from small homes for families of modest incomes, to mansions like his unbuilt design for Henry Ford), his varied output also includes houses of worship, skyscrapers, resorts, museums, government offices, gas stations, bridges, and other masterpieces showing the diversity of Frank Lloyd Wright's talent.
Frank Lloyd Wright's views on architectural space, ornamentation, and relationship to site, and concerning the place of architecture in art, life and philosophy have inspired generations of architects and artists all over the world.
