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 Gunther is Vice President of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and Director of Fallingwater. Scott W. Perkins is Senior Director of Preservation and Collections at Fallingwater. Dave Bryce is an architectural and interior design photographer with a reputation for capturing the beauty and essence of a space. Glenn Adamson is a curator, writer and historian. He has previously been Director of the Museum of Arts and Design, and Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Donald Albrecht is an independent curator, author, and editor on topics pertaining to architecture and design and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Charlotte Ashby lectures in art and design history in the School of Historical Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Jeannine Falino is an independent curator and author specializing in the intersection of craft, design, and American culture. Rebecca Hagen is the Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer Director of Collections and Archives at the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. James Oles is a senior lecturer in Art History at Wellesley College and a specialist in modern Mexican art, with a focus on muralism and photography. Jennifer Way is a professor of Art History in the College of Visual Arts and Design at the University of North Texas.