mark handler
SAWHORSE
One of America’s greatest residences, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, is celebrating its 75th anniversary and fifth restoration. In 1936, the design was astonishing. Cantilevered over a small Pennsylvanian Creek for the Kaufmann family, there was little design precedence for it and few since. Fallingwater, like many of Wright’s structures, leaked and the overstressed steel and concrete started to fail immediately. Wright loved to use new materials and stretch the limits of known science and engineering. Today architects can’t afford such experimenting. Materials or structural systems that haven’t withstood the test of time or extensive laboratory experiments should be avoided. That goes for the so called “green products” that claim sustainability but haven’t been around long enough to be proven.
Wright spent his latter years at his Arizona home office, Taliesin West, and was once visited by a reporter in a torrential downpour. Upon entering the abundantly leaking main building and after searching the hollowed halls for the owner, the reporter found Wright huddled in the only dry place in the building — the fireplace.
Wright spent his latter years at his Arizona home office, Taliesin West, and was once visited by a reporter in a torrential downpour. Upon entering the abundantly leaking main building and after searching the hollowed halls for the owner, the reporter found Wright huddled in the only dry place in the building — the fireplace.
