FALLING WATERS(KAUFFMAN RESIDENCE)

By- Frank Lloyd Wright

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

June 8, 1867 – April 9, 1959

“Each building owes it ‘style’ to the integrity with which it is individually fashioned to serve

its particular purpose.”

“REALITY OF A BUILDING IS THE SPACE ENCLOSED WITHIN”

-FLW

BRIEF HISTORYStarted formal education in University of

Winsconsin- Madison School of Engeneering.Left the college after 2 years and moved to

Chicago, Illinois; to join the firm of J.L. Silsbee.

Year later he moved to join Adler and Sulivan’s firm as a chief assistant.

By 1893, Wright established his own practice and home in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois

IDEAS AND PHILOSOPHY• GEOMETRY was a response to purpose, structure,

material and site

1. Wright’s house, Oak Park, Illinois

2. Kauffman Residence, Pennsylvania

3. Guggenheim Museum, New York

4. Window, Robie House, Chicago

LANDMARK ACHIEVEMENTS

By 1901, Wright's completed projects numbered approximately fifty, including many houses in his hometown. • Between 1900 and 1917, his residential designs were

Prairie Houses

• Characterized by extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces, using unfinished materials

• So-called because the design is considered to complement the land around Chicago.

• These houses are credited with being the first examples of the ‘open plan’

Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York

Hillside Home School, Taliesin

PRAIRIE HOUSES

PLANNING CONCEPT

• Cruciform plan with wings radiating from a central space

• Bringing house and landscape into a more intimate relationship was a favorite device of Wright

• A central fireplace provided a visual pivot

1 2

3

4

5 6

1 – Verandah

2 – Reception Hall

3 – Dining Hall

4 – Living Room

5 – Kitchen

6 – Rear Verandah

Usonian houses represented a modernization of the Prairie

house concept, both in their greater simplicity and in their plan:

• Kept in mind that servants were a vanishing breed

• Car port

• Floor slab with integral radiant heating

• Built in furniture, Open kitchen

• Utility core

• Modular plan

• Pinwheel growth out of a central fire place and the two-level

roof

• All functions simplified, modernized, made more economical

in

construction

THE CONCEPT OF THE USONIAN HOUSES

• Another major achievement of Wright in the 1930s –

design of a low-cost house prototype called the

‘Usonian’ home (from William Butler’s term of the USA

in his Utopian novel Erewhom of 1872)

• Logical evolution from the Prairie house design and

American Ready-Cut system

• Designed a kit of parts (as in the American Ready-Cut

system) including:

• A concrete slab foundation floated on a drained bed of

cinders and sand

• Into this slab, radiating hot-water inserted

USONIAN HOUSES

INTRODUCTIONFallingwater or Kaufmann Residence is a

house designed in 1935 at the rural southwestern Pensylvania, 50 miles from southeast of Pittsburgh.

It was designated aa a National Historic Landmark in 1966 by AIA.

Fallingwater was the family's weekend home from 1937 to 1963. In 1963, Kaufmann, Jr. donated the property to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. In 1964, it was opened to the public as a museum.

THE CONFLICTKaufmann was uncomfortable with what he perceived as Wright's insufficient experience using reinforced concrete, had the architect's daring cantilever design reviewed by a firm of consulting engineers. Upon receiving their report Wright took offense and immediately requested Kaufmann to return his drawings and indicated he was withdrawing from the project. Kaufmann relented to Wright's gambit and the engineer’s report was subsequently buried within a stone wall of the house.

FALLING WATERS The site chosen was a

natural landscape area for the weekend home with a water stream with it.

It was thought that the building would have a view of the stream but FLW made it over the stream.

SITE PLAN

PLAN OF GROUND FLOOR

PLAN OF FIRST FLOOR

PLAN OF SECOND FLOOR

SECTIONAL DRAWING

FRONT ELEVATION

FALLING WATERSHorizontal and

vertical lines are the distinctive features of the building.

Spaces are designed to bring nature inside the four walls.

FALLING WATERS Interiors are simple though

vibrant, because of use of a triadic color scheme for furnishings and monochromatic scheme of brown for walls, ceiling and floors.

Staircase leading to the waterfall adds as an element of interest and is a facinating feature of the house.

FALLING WATERSUse of Intrinsic

Materials• Rock outcroppings as

structural feature and walls built directly out of rock bed of rushing stream

• Deep toned polished walnut fashioned into book shelves, ledges, low and wide tables

• Stone paved interiors

• Rugs of oriental fabrics, furs and skin

FACTSFallingwater's structural system includes a

series of very bold reinforced concrete cantilevered balconies; however, the house had problems from the beginning. Pronounced deflection of the concrete cantilevers was noticed as soon as formwork was removed at the construction stage.

Wright and his team used upside down T-shaped beams integrated into a monolithic concrete slab which both formed the ceiling of the space below and provided resistance against compression.

THANK YOU

By- Manav Mahajan