Fallingwater: Living with and in Art

An international treasure on the UNESCO World Heritage List, Fallingwater is a total work of art. This book, an exciting new look at a masterpiece, is a revelation for the first time seen here in its fullness.

Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for Edgar Kaufmann Sr., his wife, Liliane Kaufmann, and their son, Edgar Kaufmann jr., Fallingwater is lauded for its architectural daring and drama. Here the Kaufmanns sought to live in harmony with the natural world. The rooms of the house reflect this ideal and remain suffused with a natural aesthetic that embraces stone and wood, handwork and craftsmanship. In the living room, the great stone floor flows riverlike toward the horizon of Wright-designed built-in sofas and large-paned casement windows, where views open to balconies, to forest, and to cascading falls. From here ＂the hatch＂ opens to the flowing stream below. Pools and the waters of Bear Run were beautiful and for swimming. Relaxed elegance was the order of the day. Delicacy, softness, tactility are everywhere in evidence.

This atmosphere pervades the whole and serves as an organic setting for the Kaufmanns’ collection of objects, paintings, textiles, sculpture, and products of craft that enrich and awaken the corners and nooks, secreted here and there on the multiple layers and throughout the rooms of the house. But much more than the sum of its parts and what it holds, Fallingwater itself is art, total and sublime.

Justin W. Gunther is director of Fallingwater and vice president, Western Pennysylvania Conservancy. Scott W. Perkins is director of preservation and collections at Fallingwater. Donald Albrecht is a curator and author. Jeannine Falino is a curator of American decorative arts. James Oles is a lecturer in art at Wellesley College. Jennifer Way is a professor at the College of Visual Arts and Design, University of North Texas. Charlotte Ashby is an art and design historian. Rebecca Hagen is the registrar at Fallingwater.