General information

A wealthy businessman from Pittsburgh, Edgar Kaufmann, commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build a country residence near the city in Pennsylvania. Kaufmann wanted a simple house with a view of the waterfall.

Wright asked permission to visit the future construction site and inspect the waterfall, all the boulders and trees. He then designed one of his most famous creations, which the American Institute of Architects declared " best job an American architect for all times." This is a stunning example of organic architecture, a harmonious fusion of man and nature through design. Following the natural topography of the surrounding rocks, Wright built the house over the waterfall in the form of several concrete “trays”, using sandstone slab material to construct the walls. Rising more than 30 feet above the falls, Wright's clean contours and low ceilings create a sense of security without disrupting the surrounding landscape.

Completed in 1939, this house is Wright's only design with original furniture and works of art designed by him, open to the public. The house houses a collection of fine art, books, furniture and other interesting items collected by the Kaufmann family from the 1930s to the 1960s. Here you can see the creations of Audubon, Tiffany, Diego Rivera, Picasso, Jacques Lipchitz, Richmand Barthes and Japanese artists Hiroshige and Hokusai.

Since the museum opened in 1964, more than 2 million visitors have visited the museum - book your tickets in advance.

The house above the Waterfall hangs over the bear stream like some kind of alien structure.
It boggles the mind. From here, from the spurs of Bear Creek, it’s actually the best
its tectonics are visible.

Frank Lloyd Wright designed everything in his head, using blueprints only to confirm
something he has already fully presented. Therefore, he was not particularly worried that one September
day 1935 learned that his client Edgar J. Kaufman was scheduled to arrive at his
Taliesin studio to see the long-promised project “Houses Over the Waterfall”.
There were no drawings.

The same Frank Lloyd Wright drawing that Kaufman fell for.

Wright sat down at the drawing board and without hesitation drew the general plan, as well as the vertical and horizontal
projections, completely ready.

His same drawing, but from the side of the slope adjacent to the house. An impeccable perspective.

When Kaufman arrived and saw the project, he was stunned. From this day on - despite terrible difficulties
technically, fiercely controversial and hugely expensive, Kaufman remained inspired by the project.
The House Over the Falls inspired him for the rest of his life.

Kaufman and his wife used to spend weekends at a scenic location near a waterfall on Bear Creek,
in the woods west of Pennsylvania. When they asked Wright to design a replacement for their small
prefabricated house, he proposed creating a house based on all the stones from which they fished and on
who rested while swimming. At first this idea seemed doomed to failure; home for sure
will destroy its own meaning of existence. But Wright was confident that he would improve nature.
His confidence was based on the principle of the console, and on the material that he had once been wary of:
reinforced concrete.

Along this staircase, which seems to flow from the lower tier of the terrace, you can go down to the platform,
hanging over the very surface of the stream. In autumn, when the water flow becomes greater, its surface
almost touches the site. It’s an extraordinary feeling, like you’re standing right on the water!

It was planned to build a large and spacious house, but it was not supposed to overlook the river bank, but
straight into the air above the waterfall. Structurally, the house's terraces were meant to resemble leaves
rhododendron hanging over the river, or an amazing, but at the same time natural type of tinder fungus.
They were also supposed to be supported by a natural continuation of the river bank in the form of walls and pillars
from locally quarried stone.

In its exterior, the House Above the Waterfall seems to cling to the surrounding rocks. Rounded ones merged together
concrete beams and rough, angular stone layers create a bizarre symbiosis, giving rise to the feeling
stability of a seemingly unstable structure by definition.

These plans were victoriously implemented. Without in any way ruining the beauty of this place, the house is
the embodiment of harmony between man and nature.
In a different setting, the huge terraces might seem aggressive and boastful; here they are
look natural and inevitable, as if this is the way of building some unknown tribe.

The interior of the house also embraces the theme of textured stone and plastic concrete, but the premises
do not look like dark stone caves due to the wide, panoramic glazing. Moreover, in
Pennsylvania is generally warm.

The premises in the house are quite traditional: a large single living space and four spacious bedrooms.
But rooms are of secondary importance compared to the complex multi-layered organism of concrete
terraces and stones holding them. Sometimes the rooms are carved in stones, sometimes they represent
areas of the terrace, fenced glass walls in steel frames. The elements of the building are intricate, but
without any special bells and whistles, since they correspond to the general design: a flight of stairs descends
from an opening in the floor of the living room and floats directly above the surface of the stream; three tree trunks
sprout directly into the floor of the western terrace; an uncut boulder protrudes from the stone-lined floor
like the rock on which a house was built. This final touch was suggested by Kaufman himself and
immediately fully approved by the architect.

From the inside, from the covered part of the terrace, the staircase to the water can be closed with such a clever design
so that the cold from the water does not penetrate inside. By the way, notice the contrast between the angular, relief, almost
sharp stone, and soft rounded lines of concrete. A wonderful example of revealing character
material in architecture.

But you have to pay dearly to live in such an architectural masterpiece, both psychologically and
as well as in the material sense. For many years after the completion of the Kaufman house
I watched with concern as the structure cracked and sank.

The architect had a completely different attitude towards the vegetation that surrounds the house. If into a rock, into a stone
the building bites into it, holds on to it with all its strength, then it gently, carefully walks around the trees with its openwork
concrete structures.

Engineers were regularly invited to inspect the building, who also regularly advised to prop up
console racks. Of course, this would ruin the whole plan. Kaufman did not give up, and the house was preserved
almost in the form in which it was created, now protected by the Western Nature Conservation Society
Pennsylvania.

Source - tartle.net/grivarius

"House Over the Waterfall"- a great blessing, perhaps one of the greatest that can be known here on earth. There is probably nothing that can be compared with the harmony and peace that arises here from the combination of forest, river, cliff and structural elements. You hear the waterfall here as if you hear the silence of the earth...`
(F. L. Wright)

In 2001, the International Academy of Architecture asked its members to name ten architectural masterpieces of the 20th century. The opinions of authoritative experts practically coincided. In this “golden list” among others famous personalities the name of the largest American architect was named Frank Lloyd Wright, who shared second place with another famous architect - Le Corbusier. The architectural masterpiece awarded such a high praise is widely known as "House Over the Waterfall" - a private building commissioned by an American millionaire Edgar Kaufman.

The building owes its appearance to Edgar Kaufman Jr. – future curator of the Museum’s design department contemporary art in New York and founder of the Good Design movement. He was a student of Wright. He lived for six months at the Teilizin Partnership, a school-workshop founded by an architect in Wisconsin. When in 1933 his father, Edgar Kaufmann Sr., the owner of a large thriving store in Pittsburgh, a philanthropist, and a lover of exotic antiques, decided to build himself a weekend home on the newly acquired forest area several hundred hectares, his son advised him to contact Wright. The architect came to inspect the place - a picturesque place called Bear Creek, which was a solid rocky outcrop, rising in the form of a cantilever next to a waterfall, in Pennsylvania, 45 miles from Pittsburgh.

Wright was struck by the vitality of this young forest and the sculptural leapfrog of rocks emerging to the surface.

They inspired Wright to create complex system terraces overhanging each other. He designed "from the inside out" . Believed that " interior space buildings are its true essence.” The first floor was dedicated to the living room. Low ceiling And torn stone the decoration creates a feeling of a cave. In this chamber interior, relics are especially beautiful - Indian terracotta objects, French faience from the early 19th century, ancient Chinese sculptures. There are bedrooms on the second and third floors. In the northwestern corner of the building there is a turret made of local stone. Its lower floor is occupied by the kitchen, and the upper floors are occupied by guest rooms.

The house seemed to have grown in the forest along with trees and rocks. He seemed to be floating above the slope. The three-level terraces running down the cliff seemed sculpted by nature itself, and the lowest one hung picturesquely over the rapidly falling stream of water.
Construction of the house cost 155,000 dollars V , of which the payment for the architect's work amounted to $8,000 . Not everything in the construction of the house turned out to be perfect, and it was reconstructed twice in 1994 And 2002 years with the addition of additional steel supports.

Inside is an aesthetic cave. Outside there is a pile of rocks. This is how Frank Lloyd Wright realized his dream of a relief house. And millionaire Edgar Kaufmann found the perfect grotto to house his exotic collection of antiques.

The architect himself named his creation "organic architecture". “If the architect's efforts in this direction are successful,” he said, “you will not be able to imagine this house anywhere other than where it is located. He becomes an integral part of his environment. He beautifies his surroundings rather than disfigures them.”

The most famous residential building In America, the Kaufman villa became famous after the largest American publisher, Henry Lewis, told about it in leading American magazines, after which “The House Over the Waterfall” turned into a cult place. There were countless people who wanted to look at the miracle of architecture. Now every weekend the most famous guests came to the Kaufmans, including Albert Einstein, Ingrid Bergman, William Randolph Hearst, Marlene Dietrich.

The fame of the amazing villa, which was also called “Falling Waters,” reached the President of the United States. And one day Franklin Roosevelt himself came to the Kaufmans, in whose honor the owners staged a grandiose fireworks display over the waterfall.
After the president's visit, visiting the Kaufman villa became good manners and a sign of belonging to high society.

“The House over the Waterfall,” cascading down the slope, seems to have grown in this forest along with the trees, foliage and grass and became perhaps the most amazing discovery of the past century: it turns out that the world built by people is fragile and finite. And it is impossible to restore what has been created over centuries. I believe that in the new, 21st century, the understanding of this simple truth will become widespread.”

In 1963, Edgar Kaufman Jr. donated the house to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. The house is now used as a museum. Nowadays, it receives 120 thousand visitors annually.

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House over a waterfall- a project by Frank Wright, which was implemented in the period from 1936-39. It is located in the southwest of the American state of Pennsylvania, in a wooded area called “Bear Creek”. The nearest city is Pittsburgh, which is located 80 kilometers to the northeast. In 1966, it received the status of a US National Historic Landmark. Today " House over a waterfall» is included in the mandatory program of many tourist routes.

The history of the creation of “House over the Waterfall”

Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect who developed the “Houses Over the Waterfall” project, was a very famous and sought-after specialist in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. However, during the Great Depression of 1929-1933, he found himself virtually unemployed. During these years, he opened the art studio “Taliesin” in his home, which was attended by Edgar Kaufman, the son of an influential businessman from Pittsburgh. Edgar was very inspired by Wright's architectural ideas and persuaded his father to entrust him with the construction of their new country house. The difficulty was that the construction site was located in a rocky area. When Wright saw the picturesque surroundings of Bear Creek, he came up with the idea to create a house that would become part of this picture. When building the “House Over the Waterfall,” he tried to leave all the trees intact and not move a single boulder. For this purpose Pennsylvania engineering company Fayette Engineering Company of Uniontown took a detailed topographical survey of the site, showing all the trees growing and the location of all the rocks, rocks and streams.

On the development of the project “Houses over a waterfall” Frank Wright worked with two colleagues, engineers Mendel Glickman and William Wesley Peters. In March 1936, they completed the development of the project and began building the house. It lasted 6 years and required costs of 155 thousand US dollars. This amount included the cost of building the main house ($75 thousand), its decoration and interior furnishings ($22 thousand), guest house, garage and servants' house ($50 thousand). Architect Frank Wright's fee was $8,000.
The exterior of the house is designed primarily in light colors, matching the color of the surrounding landscape. The interior of the entire house is similar in design to the exterior. There is almost no plaster inside the house. To soften the overly harsh look stone walls and reinforced concrete, wood cladding is actively used in the interior. Wright did not stop at designing just one house. Many interior items were created based on his sketches. For example, carpets and living room furniture.
In 1963, Edgar Kaufman, Jr. donated the Falls House to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. In 1964, the house became a museum and was open to public visits. As of January 2008, The House Over the Falls had been visited by approximately six million people. Despite its location in a remote corner of Pennsylvania, the House Over the Falls currently welcomes more than 150,000 visitors annually.