A 3d animation featuring the Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece.
Created by Cristóbal Vila

Edgar Kaufmann Sr. was a Pittsburgh businessman. His family owned a property in a rural area with a waterfall and some cabins 50 miles southeast of the city. Mr. Kaufmann contacted Wright to order a new project on this property: that was the origin of Fallingwater. Wright responded to the family's love for a waterfall on Bear Run, a rushing mountain stream. The Kaufmanns assumed quickly the idea of Wright designing a house that would overlook the waterfall. They were surprised hearing the Wright's suggestion to build a house positioned exactly over the falls.
Given the contour of the land, Wright located a house anchored in the rock next to the falls, just over the stream. He oriented the house to the southeast as preferred, by this way the house would hover serenely over the water.
Near the property, native Pottsville sandstone was available to compliment the reinforced concrete Wright had in mind for the cantilevered floors. With these materials he needed glass, framed to give structure and rhythm to the group. By this way, light would come from several angles to provide a balanced ambience.
Wright extended the floors in horizontal bands, which echoed rock ledges, in a series of cantilevered concrete terraces, anchored to masonry walls made of the same sandstone as the rock ledges. The strong horizontal and vertical lines composed by terraces and walls are a distinctive feature of this house.
Building Fallingwater was a complicated and detailed operation, yet the resulting house seems to belong quietly in its setting. It fits into the hillside and extends out over the waterfalls just as if it has always belonged there.
Fallingwater has always been my preferred work from one of my favourite architects: Frank Lloyd Wright. I remember seeing and admiring this building in some history book from school since I was a child. There was a photo of its outside with that characteristic point of view: the fall in the foreground and the deep forest surrounding the house. At 13 or 14 years old it seemed to me a very modern construction, almost futuristic; later it surprised me to find out that it dates from the Thirties of the Twenty Century. With this animation project I have tried to understand —and to explain at the same time— how this house was built, showing its internal structure and offering points of view not so well-known or disclosed. I hope you enjoy it. Cristóbal Vila, September 2007