Fallingwater: The Movie

1. Nora
   September 10th, 2007 at 8:20 pm

   I remember a while ago someone made a VR style Tour of this house. You could move room to room and look at everything. WOnder what happened to that, it was pretty neat.

2. jeff
   September 10th, 2007 at 9:00 pm

   that’s pretty amazing but the panning shots are way too fast and jump from one area to the next in a disorienting way. it would be nice if this or any video strove to give a real understanding of the house and how all the different spaces relate t one another. having never been there i was surprised to see several different views that i had no idea existed. not to knock this project but it’s piqued my interest and i’d like to see a more comprehensive and explanatory tour of the house and how it’s sited. i kept wishing that this were an episod of the french t.v. show “Architectures”, available on Netflix, the fourth disc of which does a loving explication of the Maison de Verre in Paris.

3. K
   September 11th, 2007 at 12:15 am

   I don’t get what the big deal is.

   The house doesn’t fit the surroundings, the colours clash all over the place, far too manhy flat surfaces that can catch the leaves, debris and rainfall that can all make the place very dirty - and where does all the shit, piss and dirty bathwater go? Down the pristine creek? Nice.

   Another way to ruin a perfect natural setting of the forest and the creek.

   See the thing about FLW is he is completely misunderstood. He kept building houses and buildings where he shounldn’t have - and that’s why the buildings seemed so much more than what they were, mostly eyesores to the environment in which he stuck them. He didn’t care about the nature surrounding the buildings, otherwise he wouldn’t have put them there.

   This one in particular is out-dated, ridiculous, and competely wasteful. Why would anyone think that such a thing is beautiful is beyond my comprehension. I suppose that’s because I don’t like to dirty up nature more than we need to, or already to by doing this sort of thing. Cos in the infrastructure is all we have in the modern world and no one’s really going to care when the pipes underneath the house burst and pollutes.

4. Kellie
   September 11th, 2007 at 6:15 am

   Give us a break already! He built this ONE house on hundreds of acres of land. It was thoughtfully and painstakingly planned and built to mesh with the surroundings. Compare that to how neighborhoods are built now…..all the trees, bushes, flowers and grass are completely cleared away. The land is stripped beyond recognition. Then they squeeze as many houses as possible and profitable onto the land. Then they replant tiny trees and generic landscaping. FLW thought about the environment way before it was trendy. Had Falling Waters been built today, the land would have been cleared and a condo complex would be there instead.

5. Sid Morrison
   September 11th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

   My arguments against FLW are not that his structures are ugly and don’t fit in (although I can see those points), but rather that they require inordinate maintanence & even complete re-engineering at incredible cost to keep from collapsing.

   Wright was arguably a talented designer, but NOT a skilled architect. A real architect has to understand building science and materials engineering enough to work within these constraints. Wright either didn’t understand these or he just didn’t care, and as a result his structures (including the absolutely notorious “Fallingdown Water” shown here) have frequently required major structural re-engineering in just a scant few decaudes following their construction. These were not cheap FEMA trailers intended for short lifespans; rather, they were high $$$ custom design commisions for wealthy clients — with normal maintenance, they should have been capable of lasting hundreds of years.

   If Wright had designed the dome in Florence’s cathedral (an enormous engineering challenge) it would have failed in 45 years (I’m being generous). Brunelleschi’s dome is still there after 450 years.

   Let’s stop speaking of Wright like he was a god. The number one rule in architecture is that the building can’t fall down. Wright was an artist/designer, not an architect. ‘Nuff said.

6. Sid Morrison
   September 11th, 2007 at 3:18 pm

   Whoops. I just looked it up… I was off by about a hundred years. Brunelleschi’s dome was finished in 1436, which makes it 571 years old! Dang.

   Also, I’m a bit curious… Are people outside the U.S. as enchanted by Frank Lloyd Wright as we seem to be? Is he really regarded a a great architect outside our borders? If so, why?

7. Denita TwoDragons
   September 11th, 2007 at 6:01 pm

   Sid–it’s even worse than that! FLW had a nasty habit of NOT listening to any of the building contractors working on his “babies”. If they dared to suggest that he needed to add more reinforcing to a structure, he would get all indignant and have even LESS put in instead. Fallingwater was literally falling apart because he deliberately sabotaged his own work, rather than condescend to pay attention to a skilled builder!

   –TwoDragons

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