On: Fallingwater
images of shifting seasons flashing before my eyes
For as long as I can remember, my father always talked about this home as one of his greatest inspirations as an architect. Hidden away in an autumnal forest, I was finally able to experience the place for myself.
Part of a week-long series to close out 2019
Nestled in the trees, a geometric protrusion of ochre concrete hung: suspended, over a gentle stream. Pools of shimmer danced on the underside from sunlight reflected below by slow rolling water; gentle gusts threw leaves like Autumn shards of painted glass into the rays of sun piercing overhead. Juxtaposed; Fallingwater felt both eerily out of place and yet entirely embedded in the natural shapes of the landscape; the cantilevered shelves of the home almost like clean cut flagstones at the edge of a cliff face.
For years, I dismissed the rapture my father expressed about this place, nestled in the woods about an hour outside of Pittsburgh. Because to us, Frank Lloyd Wright was a joke; an old-man-architect loved by our old-man-architect; irrelevant in the naive worldview of a child surrounded by computers and a concrete jungle. And just as children often rebuke the passions of their parents in staged rebellion, we too dismissed this house as “just some weird thing dad was obsessed about.”
And yet, there were so many moments; walking the halls of this home; that I found myself lost in.
Gravel crunching underfoot, parallel to the river,
the path to the house felt
a cavernous dampness;
a restricting darkness;
a rocky safeness;
as if traversing some hidden mountainside cave.
A cliff-face retreat waiting in welcome on the other side.Boulders arose from the floor slabs,
enveloping the rocky fire-warm hearth of a winter cave.
And yet, from the other side of the room,
a breeze of cooling moisture wafted up from the stairwell in the floor.
Like an indoor dock-side lounge sighing of lazy summers by the water,
it lead down to the river, hovering above its pools of glass.Or perched up high,
in the small library of the son who came to inherit the house,
and eventually gave it away.
A secluded mountaintop monastery of study,
a tempest of autumn leaves and spring downpours raging below.
For a moment, secluded from all the terrors of the world.
Hanging suspended over that stream in the valley; propped up and peering over a small waterfall; surrounded by nature and the gentle chime of water below; I came to realize the beauty of this oasis in the forest.
I realized this was no longer just some weird thing dad was obsessed about.
I was too.
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Despite all the hype, this beautiful home lived up to expectations :)Fallingwater @ fallingwater.org
